Deputy Involved in Attack on Gay Motorist Resigns : West Hollywood: The low-profile disposition of the case has heightened the resentment of those who want gay and lesbian rights in the city assured.

A sheriff’s deputy has pleaded no contest to a charge of assaulting a gay man whom he had pulled over in a traffic stop.

The deputy, Reserve Officer Stanley B. Gill, was placed on two years’ probation after entering the plea last week. As part of the plea bargain, he has resigned from the department and agreed to pay damages to the assault victim, Roland Robson.

The quiet disposition of the matter last week, however, seemed more likely to rekindle than settle the debate over the attitudes of the Sheriff’s Department toward the city’s sizable gay population.

Robson, 26, sustained broken bones in his hand and foot, two fractured ribs, nerve damage to his arms and a gash on the head that required five stitches to close. He has filed a lawsuit against the department.

Capt. Rachel Burgess, who commands the West Hollywood sheriff’s station, said the prosecution of Gill “proves more than anything . . . that we are willing to investigate cases of excessive force when they are brought to our attention and pursue them to the full extent of the law.”

However, Robson’s attorneys contend that more than one deputy was involved and say the decision to single out just one officer--and a volunteer reserve officer at that--is a sign that not enough has changed.

Some West Hollywood gay activists have frequently accused the Sheriff’s Department, which provides police services to the city, of insensitivity toward gays. In response to this criticism, the City Council last year established a Gay and Lesbian/Sheriff’s Conference Committee and authorized it to discuss complaints and seek ways to improve relations between West Hollywood citizens and the Sheriff’s Department.

Robson’s case was one of the first to come before the conference and was the first to prompt a formal investigation.

His run-in with the sheriff’s deputies occurred early in the morning of Oct. 27, 1989, when he and a friend, James McAdams, both wearing women’s clothes, were driving home from a Halloween party.

According to law-enforcement investigators, Gill and another deputy, Phillip Butch, ordered them to pull over because, the deputies said, they matched the description in a case involving an assault with a knife.

The two were stopped at Sierra Bonita and De Longpre avenues in Los Angeles, just outside the West Hollywood city line.

“It was late, and we were tired,” Robson recalled in a recent interview. “We heard the officers over their loudspeaker telling us to pull over.” Deputy Butch asked McAdams to get out of the car for questioning. Gill approached Robson on the passenger side and told him to get out also.

“I asked him why, and the next thing I knew he opened the door, yanked me by my hair and pulled me out,” Robson said.

He said he tried to free himself from the officer’s grasp and was knocked down, handcuffed and beaten on the head with a nightstick. Several people who lived nearby and heard the commotion confirmed Robson’s account when interviewed later by sheriff’s deputies.

“I blacked out for a while, and when I woke up and saw I was lying in a pool of blood, I began screaming,” Robson said.

Deputy Gill “was beating him for no reason,” said Leah Cabrera, 23, who was drawn to her balcony when the deputies ordered the two men to pull their car over. “I started yelling at him to stop it. I started to call 911 but then I asked myself, what good would that do?”

Cabrera left her apartment and went to the street, where several other patrol cars had gathered. Robson, who was handcuffed and lying face down on the sidewalk, continued to yell at the deputies after the beating stopped.

“That’s when another officer (a third deputy, who was not identified by witnesses or investigating deputies) walked over to him, kicked him in the side and yelled, ‘Shut up . . .’ ” and used a common epithet for a homosexual, recalled Cabrera, one of four witnesses interviewed by investigators.

Finally, both Robson and McAdams were put in patrol cars and taken to the West Hollywood sheriff’s station. McAdams was unhurt.

Robson said he experienced another instance of abuse when he was taken from the station to Cedar-Sinai Medical Center’s emergency room, to have a deep cut in his head stitched.

While handcuffed to his bed, Robson said, he leaned forward to read some printed material on how to care for his wound when another deputy grabbed him by the throat and threw him back onto the bed. Robson was brought back to the station, where he was released a few hours later along with McAdams. Neither man was charged with anything.

Sheriff’s officials said they were aware of Robson’s allegation concerning the pushing incident at the hospital but had been unable to confirm it.

Word of the incident spread throughout West Hollywood’s gay and lesbian community and it became one of the first major challenges of the city’s Conference Committee. Robson testified about the beating before the committee at a public forum in early November.

The Sheriff’s Department immediately began an inquiry. Butch, the deputy accompanying Gill on the night in question, cooperated with the investigation. Less than 72 hours after Robson testified, the Sheriff’s Department suspended Gill and confiscated his badge and gun. The district attorney’s office was notified, and the assault charge was filed in February.

“It was a clear-cut case of excessive force on the part of the deputy, and everyone was unanimous as to what occurred,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Herbert Lapin, who handled the case.

But in an interview this week, Robson’s attorney, Guy Lewis, criticized the handling of the case, contending that it was “strange and unusual,” for example, that the district attorney’s office never contacted his client.

“I think they wanted to make this a quick and easy plea bargain that all sides could live with,” Lewis said. “Thus they preserve the appearance of justice without really obtaining it.”

Lewis contended that Lapin was trying to minimize the problem by bringing charges only against a reserve deputy. Reserves are part-time volunteers, even though they are sworn peace officers and have to undergo much of the same training that full-time deputies receive. The West Hollywood sheriff’s station uses about 25 reserves, and in most cases they have the same authority and responsibilities on the job as the full-time deputies.

Lapin said there was nothing to indicate a deliberate effort by authorities to play down the case. “The Sheriff’s Department conducted the investigation and immediately brought it to us, and the witnesses concurred,” he said.

Despite witnesses’ recollection that a deputy used a homosexual epithet in the course of the incident, Lapin said, “That type of language was definitely not in the report. “I didn’t see anything like that,” he said. “In fact, there was nothing to indicate that Robson may be a homosexual (in the report). I’m taking his statement on face value that they were only dressing up for Halloween.”

The use of an epithet in the line of duty would be a serious breach of discipline and would result in disciplinary measures against an officer, said Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Collinsworth, a member of the city’s Conference Committee. “It is the kind of thing that would be put on permanent record and could stand in the way of advancement.”

Collinsworth said the disciplinary action against Gill by the Sheriff’s Department “only strengthens” the department’s credibility in the community.

“Some people are under the misperception that when we come to work we come to beat up some people,” he said. “That is wrong. We don’t want to be treated like an occupying army. If the public has a sense of fear about what we do, then we are not going to accomplish our goal, preventing crime and catching criminals.”

Collinsworth added that as a result of Conference Committee discussions and an effort by the department to be more sensitive to community needs, four deputies assigned to West Hollywood had transferred to other posts. He declined to elaborate.

Robson said that after the beating he was forced to quit his job as a waiter because of nerve damage in his arms and chronic back and neck pains.

“My life has changed,” he said. “I still feel a tremendous amount of paranoia about the police and what happened that night, and I’m in constant pain. It was a nightmare.”

Kim Kralj, a community activist who is a member of the Conference Committee, said the case could stand in the way of the committee’s attempts to forge better relations between the gay community and the Sheriff’s Department.

Thus far, she said, the committee has managed to improve communication by encouraging the filing of complaints when incidents of abuse against gays are suspected, and it has led efforts by the city to recruit openly gay and lesbian applicants as sheriff’s deputies.