Anaheim Prosecutor Says Warning Accompanied Data on Sheriff’s Foe

An Anaheim prosecutor testified Thursday that his police chief warned him to be careful in handling a criminal case brought by sheriff’s investigators against a political foe of Sheriff Brad Gates.

The prosecutor, Assistant City Atty. Mark A. Logan, said Police Chief Jimmie D. Kennedy had been reluctant to explain his warning but finally hinted that the suspect was involved in a lawsuit against Gates, alleging that the sheriff had ordered surveillance and investigations as political harassment.

The suspect, private investigator Preston Guillory, was eventually charged with nine criminal counts, including impersonating an officer and carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.

He was tried in 1985 and acquitted of all counts and is now suing Gates and Anaheim officials for $5 million, alleging conspiracy to deprive him of his civil rights. His attorneys are trying to prove that investigators from an elite intelligence unit reporting directly to Gates, and later Anaheim investigators, went to unusual lengths to generate a case against Guillory as political harassment.

Logan testified that in Anaheim, misdemeanor crimes are prosecuted by the city attorney, not by the district attorney.

Occasionally, he said, crimes occurring within Anaheim that are investigated by the Sheriff’s Department are brought to him by sheriff’s investigators.

He said that in December, 1984, he received a telephone call from Police Chief Kennedy saying that sheriff’s investigators would be bringing him a case and that “I should look at it carefully.”

Logan said he did not, and still does not, know the motivation behind Kennedy’s warning. Kennedy is expected to testify during the trial.

Logan testified that he had never received such a call from the police chief before and that he considered it odd.

“It piqued my curiosity,” he said, which caused him to press Kennedy to explain the nature of the case.

“He basically indicated initially that he didn’t want to be involved,” Logan testified about Kennedy. “He was reluctant to specify.”

When Logan asked him for “a clue,” Kennedy “asked me if I had followed Bobby Youngblood versus Sheriff Gates in the papers,” Logan said.

(Youngblood, a Municipal Court judge who ran unsuccessfully against Gates and has been an outspoken critic of the sheriff, had filed suit against Gates, alleging political harassment, and eventually won a $375,000 settlement. Guillory had acted as a private investigator for Youngblood.)

Kennedy became involved when Gates’ top aide, Undersheriff Raul Ramos, personally delivered the sheriff’s file on Guillory to Kennedy for prosecution.

Ramos testified that the investigation had been “objective, careful and correct,” but he conceded that he had never before been ordered by Gates to deliver a file personally.

The case was eventually turned over to an Anaheim police investigator, Gordon Blair, for further investigation.

Blair, a defendant in the suit, testified for most of 2 days, defending his investigation as proper and impartial.

The trial adjourned Thursday before Logan could be cross-examined by defense attorneys. He is scheduled to continue his testimony today.