Police Shootings Target of Protest

Expressing their “outrage” at a number of recent shootings by law enforcement officers, a group of human rights activists Thursday called on local and federal authorities in San Diego to prosecute and discipline lawmen who wrongly resort to lethal force.

“I think the only solution . . . is a recognition by the leadership of the existence of a problem and a resolve to solve it,” said Betty Wheeler, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union chapter representing San Diego and Imperial counties. “There are lots of alternatives to deadly force.”

She and representatives of several other rights organizations--including the Chicano Federation, the Coalition for Law and Justice and the American Friends Service Committee--spoke at a San Diego news conference during which they condemned what they characterized as a rising number of improper shootings by law enforcement officers.

They asserted that existing laws and guidelines were generally sufficient to deal with the problem, but that authorities were hesitant to accuse officers.

In general, law enforcement guidelines prohibit officers from discharging their weapons or using other lethal force unless their lives or the lives of other innocent people are in jeopardy.

Officials of the San Diego Police Department, U.S. Border Patrol and San Diego County district attorney’s office--three agencies targeted Thursday by detractors--later disputed the characterizations and maintained that all officer shootings are subject to numerous reviews.

“I think it’s a little bit irresponsible for anybody to look at a series of incidents and lump them together and draw a single conclusion,” said San Diego police Commander Larry Gore, adding that all police shootings were thoroughly investigated.

Specifically, the critics singled out three heavily publicized cases that occurred last month: the fatal shooting of an unarmed Vista motorist by a sheriff’s officer who wrongly believed that the suspect was driving a stolen truck; the shooting death by a San Diego policeman of a Mexican citizen who was walking along Interstate 5, brandishing a plastering tool; and an incident in which a Border Patrol agent fired at the rear of a van full of unarmed, undocumented immigrants, wounding a Salvadoran woman and a 16-year-old Mexican boy.

“It’s time to start sending a message that law enforcement officers will be charged criminally in shootings where no apparent threat exists to him or other officers,” said Roberto Martinez, a San Diego-based rights activist who is involved with several immigrant advocacy groups.

Martinez and others charged that San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller, whose office investigates all shootings by local law enforcement agencies, is predisposed to rule that all police shootings are justified. The activists called on the district attorney’s office to pursue such cases more vigorously, and they renewed a call for establishing some form of independent bodies to investigate law enforcement shootings.

Stephen J. Casey, a special assistant to district attorney Miller, defended the prosecutor’s record. “The investigations and reviews are fact-driven,” Casey said of the inquiries into law enforcement shootings.