Silverman Plans Claim for Penn Witness : Black Ex-Officer Arrested by Police Had Expressed Fear of Retaliation

Defense attorney Milton J. Silverman said Thursday he will file a civil claim against San Diego seeking damages for Nathaniel Jordan, the black former San Diego police officer who alleges he was attacked by police last week for testifying in the Sagon Penn murder trial.

Silverman won acquittals on major charges in two controversial trials as the attorney for Penn, a 25-year-old black man who said a racist attack by police forced him to kill one officer and wound another in self-defense.

Silverman said Jordan had contacted him about last Friday’s altercation with police and the attorney offered to take his case.

Moral Obligation

“I feel morally obligated to represent him because he didn’t want to testify, and he told me there would be retaliation,” Silverman said. “I told him if there was, I would represent him.”

Jordan, 35, an associate minister at Mount Zion Baptist Church, faces misdemeanor charges of assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest. The city attorney’s office received the case Thursday and will begin reviewing police reports and interviewing additional witnesses before deciding whether to prosecute Jordan, said Susan Heath, chief deputy of the criminal division.

Jordan is the second figure connected to the Penn defense to allege police abuse in the wake of last month’s acquittal.

Reiko Obata, the former head of the Penn legal defense committee, said she was harassed Aug. 8 by two San Diego police officers who took her to jail on suspicion of driving under the influence even though a breath test revealed only a trace of alcohol. Authorities later dropped the charges, the officers are under investigation, and Reiko is considering filing a lawsuit.

In Jordan’s case, the seven-year police veteran claims that Detective Ronald King struck him in the back and Officer John McGill put a choke hold on him. King, who Jordan said he recognized from his days on the force, approached Jordan as he sat in his car in a handicapped Jordan was waiting for two boys on his youth football team to return from buying an ice cream cone.

After Jordan was taken to police headquarters, cited and released, he filed a complaint with the Police Department’s internal affairs division. The incident is under investigation. The filing of a claim, which Silverman said he expects to do within the next day or so, is a legal prerequisite before a lawsuit can be filed.

Police maintain that Jordan pushed King, leading McGill to fear for King’s safety and apply a standard police neck restraint on Jordan. Police say Jordan became “belligerent” and “very hostile” and repeatedly shouted obscenities after he refused to move his vehicle.

However, friends and colleagues of Jordan, including a police source who asked to remain anonymous, were surprised by the reports because they had never seen the former policeman lose his temper or use profanity.

The police case hinges on the statements of a Pacific Bell employee who said she viewed the incident from her office across the street and saw a man identified as Jordan push a police officer. The woman could not be reached for comment.

The other key witness, Bernard Davis Jr., 9, one of the youths in Jordan’s car, was quoted in a police report as saying that Jordan pushed a uniformed officer with both hands and then tried to walk away from police.

Sought Some Breathing Room

However, Davis said in an interview that he told police that Jordan was being pushed by the officers and was jostling with them to get some breathing room when McGill applied the choke hold.

“They were crowding him so close,” the youth said. “(Jordan) didn’t have enough room. He tried to walk away. The detective pushed Nate into the other police officer. Nate tried to move him out of the way. They were like so close. He didn’t push them. He tried to move them with his shoulder. He just tried to walk away. That is when they got him in a choke hold.”

In the Penn trial, the defense argued that detectives altered statements by eyewitnesses in police reports to provide a favorable version of the altercation that would help prosecutors convict Penn.

Jordan testified in the second Penn trial that Police Agent Donovan Jacobs, who witnesses said beat Penn, routinely used words such as “nigger” and “boy” when dealing with black prisoners. Jordan and Jacobs nearly got in a fight during a squad conference when Jacobs called him “a nigger,” Jordan said on the witness stand.

Jordan’s testimony supported the defense argument that Jacobs had a reputation as a racist and a hot head before he launched a brutal attack against Penn.