Police Panel Measures Debated at Rival Press Conferences

A group of people claiming to have been abused by police, with their attorneys, announced their support Thursday for Proposition F, saying San Diego needs a strong police review board to discourage brutality.

The group included a woman who said a police officer stuck a gun in her face and forced her naked out of her Ocean Beach apartment, and a businessman who said a policeman beat him to the ground with a baton when he was suspected of violating a dog ordinance on Point Loma.

“As these examples show, there have been a number of unfortunate events in the last couple of years,” said Barry Schultz, chairman of Citizens for Effective Law Enforcement, who organized the press conference outside City Hall.

“And, because of these events, one thing has become clear: Today we are faced with a crisis of trust in our Police Department,” Schultz said.

Another Press Conference

At another press conference Thursday, supporters of Proposition G, which would create a different police review board, presented a former member of the Berkeley police review commission.

Seeing similarities between the Berkeley panel and the one called for under Proposition F, Leo Bach strongly advised San Diego voters to reject that measure.

“This proposition in many ways emulates the Berkeley plan,” he said at a Mission Valley hotel. “And, since that’s the case, I would recommend the people of San Diego stay away from it.”

Propositions F and G are rival measures facing voters on next Tuesday’s ballot.

Proposition F would create a review board appointed by the mayor and City Council that would hold closed hearings and have the power to issue subpoenas.

Proposition G would create a board similar to the current review panel, which reviews the Police Department’s internal investigations, except that its members would be chosen by the city manager. It would not hold hearings or have the power of subpoena.

Control Their Tempers

The alleged abuse victims at the morning press conference said the Proposition F panel would prompt more officers to control their tempers and thus reduce the complaints against police.

Barbara Dockstader said a police officer charged into her apartment in the middle of the night in September, 1986, after he mistakenly thought her art gallery next door was being burglarized.

She said the officer pointed a gun between her eyes and ordered her out. But Dockstader said she had pulled a blanket up over her naked body and begged the officer to let her dress first. He refused and forced her out the door, she said.

“He paraded me outside in front of three other officers,” she said.

Her attorney, Paul F. Sorrentino, said he filed a lawsuit and that Dockstader eventually was awarded between $50,000 and $95,000 in July. He declined to divulge the exact amount.

Officer Frederick McGee, like the other officers named in the abuse cases, could not be reached for comment. And Cmdr. Cal Krosch, a Police Department spokesman, declined to discuss the cases.

“Since these cases were discussed at a political news conference, we would prefer not to become embroiled in a political argument,” Krosch said. “Any statements we might make concerning these cases could be construed as such.”

‘Completely Ignored It’

Dockstader said that neither the police internal affairs unit nor the current police review board interviewed her about the case. “They never even came over to ask me who I was,” she said. “They completely ignored it.”

John Bauer said he was walking his dog one Sunday two years ago on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard when an animal control officer told him dogs were not allowed there. He said police were called after he made an obscene gesture.

He said he protested as police put him under arrest. He said he raised his hands and one officer grabbed his arm while another struck him once in the chest with his baton.

“It was hard enough to completely knock the wind out of me,” Bauer said. “They choked me to where I almost lost consciousness. Then they threw me down and I scraped my chin.”

He said he was jailed and that a police sergeant refused to let him file a complaint.

Bauer said he was later found not guilty of resisting arrest. He said he sued the officers and last week received a $15,000 settlement.

Offensive Remarks

In other cases, attorney Michael R. Marrinan described instances in which he said three of his clients were abused by police.

According to a lawsuit filed by Thomas Tyrrell, who was stopped one night in April, 1987, in Hillcrest, an officer made two offensive remarks about the fact that Tyrrell was a homosexual and then arrested him for being drunk in public. “He’d just left a bar where he’d had two drinks,” Marrinan said.

The lawsuit contended that Tyrrell was taken in a police van to the County Jail in Vista. En route, police refused to let him use a restroom, despite problems with his bladder, and he urinated on himself in the van, according to the suit.

Tyrrell also contended that an officer took his $45 jacket and $4,000 ring and never returned them.

At the afternoon press conference to boost Proposition G, Bach, the former Berkeley commissioner, said the board there decimated the morale of rank-and-file officers. He said the officers’ main problem with the review board was that they knew they could be fired if they did not honor subpoenas and testify at the board’s hearings.

“We lost a lot of our veteran officers,” he said. “New members didn’t want to come to Berkeley. Berkeley for a while had a very difficult recruitment problem. And the morale was lousy.”

Further complicating problems, he said, were individual board members who would rush to crime scenes and encourage citizens to file complaints.

“Some of the commissioners were known to be out on the streets handing out their business cards,” he said. “They were out there ambulance-chasing. So many of the complaints that came in were as frivolous as could be.”