Arrest of Gay Man Stirs Claims of Injustice

A man charged with interfering with Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies outside a West Hollywood bar last week has accused deputies of mistreating him because he is gay.

“It was like they (the deputies) wanted to make an example of me when all I did was complain about their mistreatment of someone else,” said Edward Michael Crawford, 33, of Los Angeles.

Sgt. Rick Cartwright of the sheriff’s department said that Crawford, who was arrested about 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, threatened deputies who had detained a man on the street in view of the Gold Coast Bar, 8228 Santa Monica Blvd., where Crawford was a patron.

Crawford, a chauffeur who is a citizen of West Germany, was charged with interfering with a peace officer, a misdemeanor, and released on his own recognizance. He is to be arraigned May 9 in Beverly Hills Municipal Court.

Cartwright said Crawford came out of the establishment and “began telling officers they couldn’t do what they were doing” and, after being told to leave, “went back into the bar and brought out about six people” who began harassing the officers.

A Different Story

However, Crawford and several other patrons of the bar told a different story.

They accused deputies of unjustly detaining the man who sheriff’s officials said was reportedly lying in the street, and of provoking a group of mostly gay onlookers by “unjustly” arresting Crawford.

“It got very ugly, and it was uncalled for on the part of the deputies,” said the Rev. Bob Lucas, one of the bar patrons. “They acted as though they had come to put down a full-scale riot.”

Cartwright said that four patrol cars were called to the scene after the arresting officer reported that a crowd had become unruly, but he said that “there was absolutely no force used” and that the officers did nothing to provoke anyone.

But several of the patrons, angered by what they said was “an unnecessary show of force” aimed at members of the gay community, disputed the Sheriff’s Department’s account of the incident.

“He (Crawford) never went back into the bar. He was arrested after walking over to a pay phone to call the (West Hollywood) sheriff’s station and complain about what was going on,” said Ron Tillinghast, who said he witnessed the incident from inside the establishment.

The incident took place on La Jolla Avenue, near Santa Monica Boulevard. The bar has windows that face both streets.

Sheriff’s officials say the stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard where the establishment is located is a hot spot for male prostitutes and street hustlers, and that it is not uncommon for officers to approach and question people who appear to be loitering there.

Man Wasn’t Arrested

However, Tillinghast and others said that the man whose detention triggered the incident was doing nothing to warrant being detained. The man, who was not identified, was not arrested.

“He was sitting on a ledge against a bookstore across the street doing nothing as far as we could tell,” Tillinghast said. “That’s what set things off. Several of us had been noticing him there before the deputies showed up. People inside the bar couldn’t believe it when they saw the deputies stop and start hassling him.”

Crawford said he became upset when he saw the deputies approach the man “for no apparent reason” and place him “in a spread-eagle position and begin frisking him.”

“There was a male and a female officer and the female officer, who appeared to be a rookie because the other officer seemed to be instructing her how to conduct the spread eagle, was the one actually doing the frisking, which also surprised us,” he said.

Crawford said that he went outside to complain to the deputies about the way the man was being treated, and that the male deputy told him to “Get . . . away from here, or I’ll place you under arrest.”

He said that he told the deputy he intended to report the incident to the Sheriff’s Department, and walked to a public telephone about 60 feet away to call the sheriff’s station.

“As I was talking to the dispatcher, trying to tell him what was going on, this other deputy who’d driven up about then came over to where I was e and I heard the first one (deputy) who’d told me to leave yell to him to detain me. And he slammed the handcuffs on me.”

Lt. Rudy Walker, who was in charge of the West Hollywood sheriff’s station on Thursday, said he was unfamiliar with the incident and could offer no details beyond those provided by Cartwright. Capt. Rachel Burgess, who heads the station, was on vacation.

“We’re not going to try the matter in the newspapers,” Walker said.

Meanwhile, Lucas, a gay rights activist who has often publicly commended the Sheriff’s Department for its law enforcement efforts, said he has asked Jack Bollen, West Hollywood’s public safety coordinator, to forward a formal complaint about the incident to the Sheriff’s Department.

“This community is at the boiling point, and I’m talking about gay people who perceive that they are often mistreated (by the Sheriff’s Department), and then you have incidents like this that only reinforce that,” he said. “We want the city or someone to investigate this.”