Police Investigating Stun-Gun Incident : Ventura: An officer’s use of the 50,000-volt device on an epileptic driver leads to a criminal inquiry.

The Ventura Police Department, responding to witnesses’ accounts of a traffic officer’s use of a stun gun on an epileptic driver, announced Monday that it has begun a criminal investigation into the June 23 incident.

The department, which already was conducting a review to see whether the officer acted within police policy, began its criminal probe Friday after witnesses confirmed newspaper reports of the incident, Lt. Pat Rooney said.

Rooney would not say specifically what witnesses told investigators or what laws the officer might have broken. However, state law requires that officers use only reasonable and necessary force when dealing with citizens.

Veteran motorcycle Officer Steven Mosconi acknowledged in a report last week that he jolted a 26-year-old Ventura man up to nine times with a stun gun after the man--still groggy and disoriented from a seizure--refused to get out of his truck.

The officer said he was told when he arrived that the driver, Donn Christensen Jr., was still recovering from an epileptic seizure.

Christensen and two witnesses have told The Times that Mosconi not only used his 50,000-volt Nova gun to force Christensen out of his truck but also shocked him at least twice after he was standing passively beside the vehicle.

One of the witnesses said Mosconi appeared berserk at the time. Another said the officer cursed and threatened him. A third said the officer called him a liar.

“After verifying some of the reported accounts, it was decided that we needed to talk to all of the witnesses,” Rooney said. “It’s in our interest to maintain public confidence in our department. If there is the slightest possibility that there was a violation of criminal law, then we need to investigate it.”

Mosconi, a 14-year veteran of the Ventura force, remained on duty as a traffic patrolman on Monday, the lieutenant said. The officer could not be reached for comment.

Rooney said that five investigators have been assigned to the Christensen case and that they had questioned more than a dozen witnesses by working through the weekend.

Although the investigation is focused on the conduct of Mosconi, investigators are also analyzing the actions of four other officers, Rooney said. The officers are Tammie MacInnes, Ronald Rojo, Dennis Ward and Cpl. Gary McCaskill, he said.

All five responded to two minor car accidents that occurred when Christensen swerved in front of oncoming traffic on Thompson Boulevard while having a seizure, Rooney said.

The other officers were preoccupied with the accidents while Mosconi dealt with Christensen, witnesses have said. Rooney said the inquiry will determine if the other officers had any role in the Christensen incident.

The Police Department’s findings, expected in about two weeks, will be forwarded to the district attorney’s office, county prosecutors said.

“We’ll get copies of all their reports,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris, who interviewed Christensen last week.

Kossoris is conducting a separate criminal inquiry into the death of psychiatric patient Duane Johnson, an Oxnard man with heart disease who died in February after Ventura police shocked him repeatedly with stun guns while he was tethered to a bed. The county coroner found the stun gun to be one of three primary causes of the death.

Kossoris said he interviewed Christensen because the Ventura department’s continued use of stun guns to gain compliance from crime suspects is relevant to the Johnson case. The prosecutor said he had noticed a similarity between the two cases.

“In both cases, it appears the officer used the weapon a number of times over and above what he reported,” Kossoris said.

Kossoris said his interest in the Christensen incident had not reached the status of a criminal investigation by his office.

“Usually we don’t do an investigation on our own except in cases of death,” he said. “Typically, the police would investigate, and if they thought there was a possibility that a crime was committed, then we would consider whether to go forward with it.”

Neither Kossoris nor Kevin McGee, acting chief deputy district attorney, could say Monday how many brutality cases involving Ventura police officers the district attorney has prosecuted in recent years.

Ventura Police Department policy allows officers to use stun guns--which are considered a nonlethal alternative to nightsticks and firearms--to control people who pose a threat to officers or the public.

The weapons also can be used to force crime suspects to comply with officers’ orders. The department found that officers had acted within policy in the Johnson death case.