Poway Dragnet Aftermath : Feelings Conflict Over Retreat on Rape Case

A Poway businessman just couldn’t figure it. On a Sunday evening two months ago, a virtual army of law enforcement officers conducts a massive sweep, rounding up 85 Latinos for questioning after a 15-year-old girl reports being accosted by eight illegal aliens and raped by one of them.

Six suspects are arrested. Bail of up to $75,000 is set. Criminal charges are filed. Then, on Thursday, the district attorney abruptly drops the case, releases the defendants, closes the investigation.

“The good news is, since that big sweep for the suspects, they’ve stopped gathering in the afternoon behind the store to down a few six packs,” he said Friday of the migrant workers who until the March roundup congregated behind a small collection of stores on Midland Road in an old part of Poway.

But the man, who lives in the area and asked not to be identified for fear deputies will not like his criticism, said he is still critical of how the Sheriff’s Department deployed 27 deputies--including 17 SWAT officers--in the neighborhood sweep. The 85 Latino suspects were questioned, photographed and fingerprinted. Among those taken in was one of the businessman’s employees, a teen-ager, and the boy’s father, who is in his mid-40s. The suspect was identified as in his 20s.

And now, the man said, he feels confused by the decision Thursday by the district attorney’s office to dismiss charges against the suspects who were identified and arrested after the dragnet.

The district attorney’s office would only say that the girl’s family--themselves members of the law enforcement community--had developed “information favorable to the defendants” that would make conviction unlikely.

“If the charges were dropped, the public has the right to know why,” said the man. “If it embarrasses the young lady, that’s her problem. But, if a mistake was made, someone has to own up to it and say they goofed.”

No Such Comment

But there was no such comment Friday from the Sheriff’s Department, which said through a spokesman that it had developed “no information which contradicts” the girl’s story that she was sexually attacked.

“Our position has not wavered from the initial investigation, and the victim’s story has not changed from the initial investigation,” said Sgt. Bob Takeshta of the department’s public affairs office.

“But new facts have surfaced, given to us by the girl’s parents, which we believe is favorable for the defendants, and, based on this information, we believe we’d have difficulty getting 12 jurors to vote for guilty pleas,” he said.

Joint Decision

Takeshta said a decision was made jointly by the girl’s parents, the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office not to disclose the new evidence, but that all agreed “it would be difficult to proceed with the case.”

He acknowledged that the public would try to “read between the lines” and speculate about Thursday’s turn of events. “That will happen, and that’s unfortunate,” Takeshta said.

The alleged assault occurred April 24 when, the teen-age girl said, she was forced off her horse in an alley behind a Poway market by eight men and a woman, then raped by one of the men.

The search for suspects and witnesses to the alleged rape--characterized by the Sheriff’s Department not as a sweep but as “contacts”--brought resounding criticism from civil rights groups who said Latinos as a whole were victimized by being indiscriminately hauled in for questioning simply because they were identified as “illegal aliens.”

That criticism continued on Friday, bolstered by the release of the suspects.

“I think the whole case was just absolutely outrageous, and the public should be made aware of that,” said attorney Carol Frausto, one of the court-appointed attorneys for the suspects.

“Maybe they were undocumented, but these were six, squeaky clean, hard-working kids who spent over two months in custody for something they had nothing to do with--something that may never have happened at all.”

Frausto said her client, 20-year-old gardener Jose Romero, was never identified by the girl and was implicated only because he told authorities he had socialized with the other suspects the day of the alleged rape.

Attorney Robert Carriedo noted that his client, the alleged rapist, did not match a sketch of the assailant drawn from a description provided by the girl, depicting a clean-shaven man. Carriedo’s client, laborer Leonardo Cedillo Martinez, 24, has a mustache and a distinctive scar on his cheek.

Furthermore, he said, the girl did not identify his client until a second review of his photograph. “It was then she suddenly remembered he had a mustache and a scar,” he said.

Carriedo noted, too, that his client was willing to undergo any tests to compare his blood to that of the fetus being carried by his pregnant accuser, and that he had an opportunity to flee--and did not--when he was released after the first round of questioning.

Said Betty Wheeler, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in San Diego:

“It should come as no surprise that a massive roundup, based on nothing more than skin color and national origin, failed in the end to serve the goals of the criminal justice system.

“Our Constitution requires that law enforcement officers act upon individualized suspicion. No amount of public outcry about a reported crime should justify the kind of indiscriminate roundup that occurred in Poway.”

Others, however, maintained on Friday that, rape or no, the incident helped highlight the dilemma residents and law enforcement alike face in dealing with illegal alien crime.

“The rape served to focus attention on the itinerant worker problem in Poway, even if the rape incident itself is not typical of the problem,” said Jerry Hargarten, the “community protection chairman” for the Green Valley Civic Assn.

He said Poway residents have long been concerned about problems he said are caused by itinerant workers in their neighborhoods, posing fire and sanitation hazards and generally affecting “the quality of life around here.”

He said a growing number of itinerant workers are “very blatant and aggressive in their conduct, almost thumbing their noses at the citizens, challenging them, intimidating them.”

Hargarten said the alleged rape “got a lot of press attention and, in a sense, it helped us get some publicity for what we’re trying to do” and illustrated the problem for law enforcement in tracking down suspects “who have no identities . . . and are unaccountable for their actions.”

Others who live and work near the site of the alleged rape said they are unwilling to speculate on why the charges were dropped, given the prosecution’s silence.

“If they dropped the charges, there must be a reason,” said Sue Thomas, a secretary at a Midland Road business. “I’m a true believer in the criminal justice system, and ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ ”

In an interview Thursday, two classmates of the girl at Poway High School said the girl frequently socialized with migrant workers while horseback riding in areas where the men congregate.