Keep Calabro Off Bench, D.A. Urges Supervisors

A defiant Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, unswayed by an emotional outpouring of sympathy for a Glendale Municipal Court commissioner who used a racial slur in court, continued Tuesday to attack him, saying he is “used to playing fast and loose on the bench.”

“This clearly was the single worst example, but it was not the first, not the 10th, but a matter of a course of conduct over an extended period of time,” Reiner, in an impassioned speech, told Los Angeles County supervisors, referring to Daniel F. Calabro.

Both Reiner and Calabro appeared before the board in response to a motion from Supervisor Mike Antonovich asking the district attorney to allow the commissioner to resume hearing criminal cases. Because Calabro is not a judge, both the prosecution and defense must agree to his handling of a case.

Last month, Reiner announced that his office would no longer let Calabro preside over criminal matters. He cited a June 15 court hearing for a white defendant from Burbank who was accused of attacking a black man after saying, “Your kind is not welcome here, nigger.”

“Another nigger case?” Calabro responded, according to a transcript. “Another one where this nigger business came up? We’re not past that yet? I thought we were all past that.”

Calabro told the board Tuesday that he voiced the epithet “out of agony, disgust, discouragement and disappointment” because he had heard a similar case only five days earlier.

Reiner, labeling this defense a “contrivance,” said the commissioner actually was “irritated” because he had hoped to duck a case that he viewed as “sensitive.”

“Yes, he (Calabro) has an explanation, but I must tell you, we file 300,000 cases a year, and there are very few where there is not some kind of explanation,” Reiner said.

”. . . The point that needs to be emphasized is not that he is necessarily the biggest racial bigot of all time, not that he belongs in the Ku Klux Klan or not that he is maybe even basically a decent person,” the district attorney added.

“The point is that he sits in a courtroom as a bench officer. He wears black robes and he has people’s lives in his hands.”

Before Reiner addressed the supervisors, nine other speakers testified in Calabro’s favor. They included county Public Defender Wilbur F. Littlefield, Glendale Superior Court Judge Joseph R. Kalin, former Glendale Mayor Robert Garcin and Albert De Blanc Jr., past president of the county Human Relations Commission.

Describing Calabro’s supporters as “well-intentioned,” Reiner said they were misinformed as to the facts.

‘A Just . . . Decision’

Without voting on Antonvich’s measure, the board unanimously approved a motion by Supervisor Deane Dana formally requesting that Reiner meet with leaders of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the presiding judge of the Glendale Municipal Court, representatives of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. and Calabro “in an effort to hear fully the evidence and attempt to reach a just and appropriate decision.”

The two-hour board hearing marked the first time Reiner and Calabro had ever seen each other.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who recently held a prayer breakfast at which Calabro apologized to black community leaders, suggested that Reiner might have committed perjury in saying that a deputy district attorney had approached Calabro several months ago and criticized him for using a “mock Charlie Chan accent” in court.

Several prosecutors have accused the commissioner of mocking Asian defendants.

Calabro has denied these charges as well.

“Put them under oath and see who’s committing perjury,” Hahn said.

Judicial Investigation

In a related development Tuesday, Cheryl Krott, presiding judge of the Glendale Municipal Court, and Barbara Lee Burke, senior Municipal Court judge, announced that, based on an investigation, they have concluded that Calabro’s use of the derogatory word is “in no way indicative of racial bias.”

“We conclude that Commissioner Calabro should not be removed from the bench based on this incident, as there is no evidence to support a finding of malicious conduct,” Krott said in a statement.

Times staff writer Stephanie O’Neill contributed to this article.