Directors Seek Investigations in Man’s Death : Pasadena: After a meeting to ease racial tensions, the board calls for state and federal inquiries into the case of a black man who died after a struggle with private security guards.

Community outrage over the death of Robert Earl Holloway, who died Jan. 18 after a struggle with security employees at the King’s Villages housing project, prompted the Pasadena Board of Directors to call Tuesday for state and federal investigations into his death and the security guard company involved.

Although the district attorney’s office declined last week to file charges against five Gold Security Patrol employees involved in the incident, city directors unanimously approved requesting further investigation by the district attorney’s office, the county grand jury, the state attorney general and federal authorities.

In addition, the city will request that the state Department of Consumer Affairs investigate the security company to determine whether it should be fined or lose its license.

“This is an opportunity to face one of the deepest social cleavages in our community today,” Director Rick Cole said, referring to the unrest that Holloway’s death has sparked among many of the city’s black residents.

The death also sparked calls for changes in Pasadena Police Department practices, although its officers were not accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the incident.

But the board stopped short of banning police use of the carotid control hold, as some black activists had requested. Acting Pasadena Police Chief Bruce Philpott told the board that no deaths have occurred at police hands as a result the hold since 1981 and that no complaints about the hold were lodged with the department last year.

The carotid hold is used hundreds of times each year by Pasadena officers to subdue combative people, Philpott said. It is applied in three levels of increasing force. He said the third level, which renders a person unconscious, was not used at all last year.

He also credited the hold with saving his own life in an alley fight while on duty in 1972.

“There are very little other options available to an officer who is fighting a combative subject who doesn’t want to be taken into custody,” Philpott said.

The board also took no action to limit the police practice of requiring some individuals stopped by police to sit on the curb or lie prone on the ground. However, the board directed Philpott to meet with community activist Eugene Pickett about the matter.

Pickett and other black community representatives said Tuesday that Pasadena police use the practice more frequently in dealing with blacks than whites. They also said young black males find the practice demeaning and will resist in the future.

“The fact of the matter is, I don’t see white people on the ground being demoralized. I see black people,” a young black man, who identified himself as J. C., told the board. “If you treat us like animals, we’re going to act like caged animals, violently.”

The board also asked city staff to prepare a report on the use of Nation of Islam members as security guards in housing projects. Members of the religious order have asked to replace Gold Security Patrol at the 313-unit housing complex along Fair Oaks Avenue. However, the complex is privately owned by Goldrich, Kest & Associates, which hires the security company, and the board has no standing in the matter.

Tuesday’s actions arose from recommendations made by Directors John Crowley and Chris Holden, who met Friday with about 40 residents of the city’s predominantly minority Northwest section, where King’s Villages is located.

Tenants have for some time been troubled by conditions at the complex and have blamed management practices, but Holloway’s death and subsequent community protest forced the board to take action.

Holloway, 28, well-known and liked in the Northwest area, was stopped for allegedly trespassing at the complex Jan. 18, and refused to leave. He struggled with four security guards and a security dispatcher, who chased him off the property and wrestled him to the ground. When police were summoned, they noticed that Holloway had stopped breathing. He was taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital, where he died about 1 1/2 hours later.

The coroner’s office determined that Holloway’s blood alcohol level was 0.17% and that he died of “compression of the neck.” However, the district attorney’s office declined to file charges against the dispatcher, Steve Goldbaum, who allegedly administered the neck hold, after determining that Goldbaum held an expired security guard license.

Because that gave him the status of a private citizen, not a trained guard, he could not be legally held responsible for Holloway’s death, the district attorney reasoned.