Counts Against Officers in Transient’s Death Dropped

Charges were dropped Wednesday against two Los Angeles police officers accused of using excessive force in the death of a transient in MacArthur Park last year after new evidence was presented to the district attorney’s office.

“We felt we could not prove that their actions caused the man’s death,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Shidler said after reviewing 2,000 pages of transcripts from a Police Department Board of Rights hearing held in March.

At the prosecution’s request, the case was dismissed by Los Angeles Municipal Judge Alban Niles.

Shidler said the new evidence consisted primarily of accounts given by four witnesses to the entire incident, transients who were located later by the defendants. They said the victim had been in a fight minutes earlier, and police struck him with a baton only after he lunged at them with a “ghetto-blaster”-type radio. They said they saw no police brutality.

“It changed the complexion of the case,” Shidler said, adding that paramedics and firefighters--who were at the scene to treat another man who had been fighting with the victim--gave uncertain, or inconsistent, accounts of what happened.

Eyewitnesses initially said the officers, Stephen Geon and Jose Salazar, beat and kicked a transient they were arresting for throwing bottles, shoved him against a wall, allowed him to fall face down on the pavement while handcuffed and stuffed him head first into a shopping cart.

The officers did not call for medical aid until after taking the man, identified as Raymond Diaz Triana, age and hometown unknown, to the Rampart Division police station, where they noticed that he was no longer breathing. Triana was pronounced dead 90 minutes after his altercation with police last New Year’s Day.

Forensic pathologists had disagreed initially over what caused fatal bleeding beneath the skull. But Shidler said they came to essentially the same conclusions after being presented with new information about what had occurred just before police arrived at the scene. His death could have resulted from injuries suffered earlier, rather than abusive treatment by the officers, they said.

An attorney representing Salazar, 31, a seven-year veteran, said the defense had turned over evidence developed for the police administrative hearing to criminal prosecutors.

“We decided to let the cat out of the bag strategically,” said the attorney, Paul De Pasquale. “And it paid off.”

He credited Triana’s peers--”people who would not necessarily tend to favor police”--with clearing the officers:

“The street people saved these guys from the real bind they were in because of conclusions jumped to by Fire Department and paramedic people,” the lawyer said.

He said that the witnesses were no strangers to police brutality, but testified that they did not view the officers’ actions as such.

Salazar’s lawyer, Michael Stone, could not be reached for comment. Salazar, 43, has been a police officer for 17 years.

“They are very pleased and relieved to finally get this over with,” De Pasquale said of the officers, who were suspended from duty without pay pending the outcome of the investigation. Both have been reinstated with back pay.