Council Flip-Flops, Votes to Pay Officers’ Legal Costs

The Long Beach City Council in a surprise reversal late Tuesday night voted to pay legal costs of the two police officers facing criminal charges stemming from the controversial arrest of black activist Don Jackson.

Last week, the council rejected a proposal to pay the officers’ legal bills by a 6-3 vote. But during the weekend, a police officer’s wife, who is an East Long Beach mother of three, organized volunteers who passed out about 10,000 leaflets asking residents to protest the council decision.

Will Pick Up Defense Costs

The council emerged from a closed-door meeting shortly before midnight Tuesday and voted 7 to 2 to pick up the defense costs of officers Mark Dickey and Mark Ramsey, accused of writing a false police report of the Jan. 14 incident. Dickey is also charged with assaulting Jackson.

The council reversal came nearly five hours into the meeting. Consideration of paying the legal fees was not on the agenda. Councilman Warren Harwood, who supported paying the legal costs, said the closed-door meeting did not violate state open-meeting requirements because it amounted to reconsideration of a previous action.

Only Councilmen Evan Anderson Braude and Clarence Smith dissented.

Had it not been for the efforts of Becky Bishop and her army of volunteers, the council probably would not have reconsidered the issue, Councilman Tom Clark said. His office received about 70 calls from irate residents responding to the leaflets.

“The basic feeling (of the callers) was that we should support the officers,” Clark said.

However, Councilman Les Robbins, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, said he would have brought the issue up for reconsideration anyway. He said the city is protected against runaway defense attorney fees and that he had received more information regarding the case. He would not say anything about the additional information.

Both Clark and Harwood said the council changed its mind because of legal issues raised in the closed session. Neither councilman would discuss the issues.

Harwood said the city should back the on-duty police accused of crimes.

In this case, Dickey and Ramsey were secretly videotaped by an NBC camera as they confronted Jackson, a Hawthorne police sergeant on stress disability leave who came to Long Beach to try to show brutality and racism by the police force. During the arrest, Dickey appeared to push Jackson through a plate-glass window.

“My simple position was that our officers, in the line of duty, ought not to have to rely on their personal resources to have a defense,” Harwood said. “The greatest concern was that if we had not provided the defense, it’s like a message to the rest of the force that they are risking their family’s financial well-being” if they are ever accused.

Like Clark, Harwood credited Bishop with bringing pressure on the council to change its mind.

Bishop, whose husband is a city policeman, said she was outraged at the council’s failure last week to back its officers.

So she said she printed 3,000 leaflets at the Police Officers Assn. headquarters and asked friends to help distribute them. “I sat in the parking lot at El Dorado Park wondering if they would show up.”

They did. There was so much help, that the batch was gone in an hour. Armed with 6,000 more leaflets from a quick print shop, Bishop said volunteers worked through the day.

Volunteers Cheered

The response was immediate, she said. Sixty-six people called association headquarters Saturday asking how they could help. She said she and her volunteers cheered after listening to each of the recorded phone messages Sunday morning.

Bishop said that by Monday she had distributed all but 2,000 of the 12,000 leaflets she had printed at her own expense. She said the association has promised to reimburse her.

She said the public outcry shows “there’s a lot of public support for those police officers.”