Police, D.A.’s Office at Odds Over Handling of Cases in the South Bay

The National City police thought it was a slam-dunk case. They had arrested a suspected thief after an eyewitness saw the man deftly swipe a battery from under the hood of a parked car.

But when the case was forwarded to the district attorney’s South Bay office for prosecution, it was shipped right back. The problem? Prosecutors wanted a written statement from the victim, verifying that the suspected thief had not been given permission to make off with the battery.

“Our reaction was, ‘Oh my God,’ ” National City Police Chief Terry Hart recalled. “We found it a rather ludicrous question.”

District attorney officials, however, say it’s just not that simple. For starters, there were other gaps in the police report. More to the point, prosecutors say they need such seemingly inane details so they can head into court with every base covered.

“We could have inferred that the victim didn’t know the defendant and therefore assume that there was no consent to take the battery,” said Michael Running, chief of the district attorney’s South Bay office. “But if we guess at what the facts are, we may later be surprised.”

While such disagreements are routine in the American criminal justice system, the legal debate between the San Diego County district attorney’s office and law enforcement agencies in the South Bay over what makes a good case has grown particularly pointed of late.

Complaints of Nit-Picking

Police and Sheriff’s Department officials in Coronado, National City, Chula Vista and Imperial Beach complain that cases they consider to be solid and sufficient for convictions are frequently rejected by prosecutors or sent back with a laundry list of questions that are either already answered or seem superfluous.

Moreover, law enforcement authorities gripe that the South Bay is used as a training ground for rookie prosecutors who lack the necessary seasoning to understand the intricacies of complex cases. The result, police say, is frustration and a lot of unnecessary, time-consuming work for officers.

“The most frequent problem from my point of view is that they only want winners in terms of cases to prosecute,” Coronado Police Chief Jerry Boyd said. “The other day-to-day irritant is that their deputies appear to have a habit of not carefully reading the cases we submit, because an awful lot of them come back with questions that we’ve already answered in our reports. I think the fact that they do a lot of training down there contributes to that and causes inconsistencies.”

Prosecutors, meanwhile, dispute the charges and have some complaints of their own.

True, they say, the South Bay and other outlying court branches in Vista and El Cajon are the first rung on the new deputy district attorney’s career ladder. Because there is no Superior Court in Chula Vista, the South Bay office--comprised of 17 deputies--handles only misdemeanors and the initial processing of felonies, a blend considered appropriate for the novice prosecutor.

But Running and others insist that having a higher proportion of young deputies does not dilute the quality of the South Bay operation, noting that each case handled by the less experienced staffers is reviewed by a veteran before it is rejected or issued.

“You start at the bottom, and the outlying areas are the places where the cases are the least complex and least serious,” Running said. “But these cases are screened by more experienced district attorneys. Quality doesn’t suffer.”

Poor Training Cited

As for the number of cases rejected or kicked back for additional work, longtime prosecutors say that poorly trained police officers who submit inadequate reports bear a large part of the blame.

“The standards we apply to all the agencies are identical, but the quality of police work varies greatly. That has an impact on the percentage of cases we issue,” said Donald MacNeil, whose four-year tenure as supervising district attorney in the South Bay ended in September. “Those (departments) with experienced officers who pay close attention to the reports they present to us have better luck.”

At the heart of the dispute, both sides agree, is an institutional difference of opinion over just how justice should be meted out.

If police had their way, every case they forward to the district attorney would be taken into court. Because their job is to catch criminals, every time a case is rejected, it hurts.

“It really hits home with the patrol deputy, because he’s right there on the street and probably will have to go out again and arrest the guy who got let off because the D.A. didn’t prosecute,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Bob Trevino, who worked in the Imperial Beach substation for three years until his recent transfer to Lemon Grove. “It’s frustrating for them. It gets real old.”

Prosecutors, however, point out that they must employ a higher standard in evaluating whether a case should be brought to trial. While police are permitted to make arrests based merely on “probable cause,” charges hold up in court only if a jury or judge is convinced of a defendant’s guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“There is an ongoing, legitimate disagreement between us and all police agencies over what is the quantum of evidence necessary to secure a conviction,” MacNeil said. “The police would like us to issue every case. But the fact is, many of them are disqualified because of insufficient evidence or a problem with the quality of police work.”

Calls for Tighter Enforcement

South Bay police officials acknowledge that prosecutors are bound by different rules and therefore cannot pursue every case brought forth. They also stress that, overall, they enjoy a cooperative, productive relationship with the district attorney’s office.

Nonetheless, some chiefs say that in the past year or so, the percentage of cases dismissed appears to have increased, causing concern that prosecutors are increasingly reluctant to go for a conviction unless it’s an open-and-shut affair.

“I understand the courts are backlogged and all, but there are cases that may not be slam dunks but still have all the facts there, and I’d like to see them prosecuted,” Coronado Police Chief Jerry Boyd said. “My feeling is when you have laws, and they’re not being enforced, why have laws?”

While the reasons for rejection provided by prosecutors run the gamut, Boyd said cases frequently will be killed rather cryptically “in the interest of justice.”

“Sometimes, they’ll tell us that means the case just doesn’t have jury or judge appeal, and my response is, well so what? The point is there are some cases that should be prosecuted that aren’t,” Boyd said.

In Imperial Beach, sheriff’s officials track the cases rejected by prosecutors and the reasons behind them. Those that failed to pass muster due to an error by sheriff’s deputies are described as “controllable,” while rejections made at the discretion of the district attorney’s office are called “non-controllable.”

“I can tell you that the non-controllable rate far surpasses the controllable rate, which runs about 3% to 5%,” Lt. Trevino recalled.

Another complaint voiced by Trevino and police chiefs in each of the South Bay cities concerns what they describe as excessive or ill-conceived questions that prosecutors seek answers to before deciding whether to issue a case.

Hart said a review of cases returned to his department for more work led him to believe that at least half already contain enough facts upon which “any reasonably intelligent person” could proceed. Coronado’s Boyd, who reads every police report before it’s sent to the district attorney’s office, estimates that about 25% of the cases returned by prosecutors involve legitimate deficiencies caused by his officers.

The balance involve requests for information that is “already in our reports or simply not necessary to prosecute the case,” Boyd said. “It’s almost a joke.”

Chula Vista Police Chief Bill Winters agreed, noting that “sometimes it looks as though they’re making work for us . . . There’s enough to be done without the invention of more work that’s really non-productive.”

Finally, law enforcement officials speculate that the relative youth of the district attorneys practicing in their area creates an experience gap that contributes to the rejection of cases or the nagging follow-up requests.

Chief Winters cited, for instance, South Bay prosecutors’ handling of complicated cases involving bad or forged checks.

“Our investigator will submit a case with plenty of facts but the deputy will not understand the intricacies of getting a conviction on a forgery case,” Winters said. “We’re spending an inordinate amount of time explaining to them what it takes.”

Taking Issue With Criticism

Prosecutors, though conceding that some tensions exist between their office and certain police departments, take issue with the criticisms voiced by South Bay law enforcement officials.

Responding to the assertion that the district attorney only tackles winnable cases, South Bay chief Running said it is “our duty as prosecutors to file provable cases. We cannot and should not ethically file cases that cannot be won, that lack in evidence. If you look at the statistics, you’ll see we don’t win all our cases. So clearly they’re not all slam dunks.”

Those that are rejected or returned for additional information, prosecutors say, are simply the product of faulty police work by inadequately trained officers that do not know what is needed to make a charge stick in court.

“Let’s take National City,” MacNeil said. “As long as I’ve been in the DA’s office, they have had the lowest percentage of cases issued compared to cases presented. There’s a host of reasons for it. . . . It comes down to inadequate attention to the work by inadequately trained people.”

Prosecutors say that on drug cases, for example, National City police until recently routinely submitted reports without including the type of drug involved and its net weight: “How can you try a drug case without those two things?” Running said, noting that the department recently assigned someone to look out for such omissions.

By contrast, MacNeil said that the San Diego Police Department, which has a division in the southernmost corner of the county, does an exemplary job in putting together cases for prosecution. The department is benefitted in part by its assignment of a liaison officer who is responsible for making sure that all reports submitted are complete. MacNeil said Chula Vista also has a good track record for its officers’ attention to detail.

As for the charge that police are subject to unreasonable, excessive demands for information, prosecutors say that criticism reflects a lack of understanding as to what’s required to win a case.

“It’s extremely time-consuming for us to send the cases back for additional information, but we do it because we feel it’s necessary,” Running said. “When we charge people with crimes we have to make sure they are crimes . . . I don’t think anyone wants us to charge defendants based on our best guess of what the facts are.”

If occasionally a request is made for information already presented, then “maybe we made a mistake,” MacNeil said. After all, he noted, the South Bay office receives 300 cases from police agencies in a typical month and issues about half that number.

Or, MacNeil speculated, maybe “we never got the information because they accidentally left the last page of their report in the copying machine.”

A few months back, disagreement between the two sides reached a point where Boyd and Hart were contemplating a summit meeting with MacNeil and mulling the thought of airing their gripes with Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller.

Then in September, a routine switch among prosecutors resulted in the appointment of Running as new chief deputy in the South Bay. Boyd and Hart said the move persuaded them to adopt a “wait-and-see posture” toward the historical problems between their agencies and the district attorney’s office.

“I don’t think a satisfactory resolution has occurred thus far,” said Boyd, whose investigative commander once met regularly with the supervising district attorney but discontinued the practice more than a year ago because it wasn’t productive. “But I’m willing to put it on hold for now.”

Times staff writer Jim Schachter contributed to this story.