Prosecutors to Examine Bail Rules, Apologize : Controversies: District attorney’s office representatives respond to criticism after granting $20,000 bond to two youths charged in the killing of a black Pacoima minister.

High-ranking officials in the district attorney’s office promised Friday to reevaluate bail-recommendation policies and publicly apologize to the family of a black Pacoima pastor for freeing the alleged murderers, two white men, on $20,000 bail.

The unusual steps were reported after a 2 1/2-hour private meeting at the San Fernando courthouse between three top prosecutors and three black community leaders who contend that the decision to grant bail--which was later revoked--was racist.

The meeting with the black leaders was attended by Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory Thompson, Richard W. Hecht, the district attorney’s director of branch and area operations, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Billy D. Webb, head of the district attorney’s office operations at the San Fernando courthouse.

Webb sparked the controversy last month by recommending the unusually low bail for Philip J. Dimenno and Dana L. Singer, two Northridge college students charged in the July 28 killing. Pastor Carl White was shot in the back of the head at his Chatsworth home, allegedly during a dispute that arose when Dimenno and Singer tried to persuade him not to report a minor traffic accident.

The black leaders, who contend that the low initial bail was an affront to the pastor’s family and to the black community, went to the meeting to demand a public apology from the highest levels of the district attorney’s office and a reappraisal of bail policies.

The prosecutors left through a back courthouse exit without speaking to reporters, but district attorney’s office spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons confirmed that a joint news conference with the black community leaders is planned for next week to make public apologies and discuss possible changes in bail policy.

“We have agreed to look at things with an eye toward changing some policies,” said Gibbons, who called the meeting “very substantive.”

Gibbons said the three prosecutors who attended the meeting did not speak to reporters because “there are some internal policy things that have to be discussed and they have to report to the district attorney about the meeting. This all must be taken back to the district attorney and discussed among the upper echelon,” she said.

Gibbons said she does not know whether Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner will participate in the news conference but added that officials will seek input from the ministers before holding the session.

Singer, 18, a pre-business major at Cal State Northridge, and Dimenno, 19, who has been accepted to UC Santa Barbara on a scholarship, have pleaded not guilty to the charge and are awaiting a Sept. 11 preliminary hearing in San Fernando Municipal Court.

A group of black ministers had demanded that Webb be fired or resign, but it backed away from that stand after Friday’s meeting, saying he had apologized and that the organization does not believe him to be racist.

“Based on the information he received, if I had been sitting there, I would have made the same decision,” said Pastor James V. Lyles, president of the Ministers Fellowship of the Greater San Fernando Valley, an alliance of pastors from 41 churches. That alliance voted Saturday to seek Webb’s resignation.

Lyles said, however, that the district attorney’s office is racist.

“All institutions that are run by whites in America are racist institutions. Racism is institutionalized,” said Lyles, who called the meeting with prosecutors “frank, deliberate and fruitful.”

“I can assure you the district attorney’s office is not a racist institution,” Gibbons said.

Fred Taylor, president of Focus 90s, a group of six homeowner associations and more than a dozen community groups in the northeast San Fernando Valley, said the meeting will be discussed today at a gathering of ministers and community representatives at the slain pastor’s church.

A second meeting is planned Aug. 25 with Mayor Tom Bradley. The ministers’ protests have already led to a call from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for an investigation into the district attorney’s bail-recommendation procedures.

The pastors said they do not want bail set for anyone accused of murder. Although district attorney’s office policy calls for holding murder suspects without bail, prosecutors sometimes seek “bail deviations” for people who have no prior record and ties to the community that make it unlikely they will flee before the trial or endanger the public. The bail in those cases is set by a Municipal Court judge.

Prosecutors said they set the low bail for Singer and Dimenno because both of the defendants lived with their parents, and a search turned up no prior criminal records.

The bail was revoked three days later after investigators learned that the two men had been arrested earlier for carrying a silencer-equipped pistol in a city park and may have been involved in credit card fraud.

“What we’re saying is everyone accused of murder should be held without bail,” Taylor said. “We don’t care whether they’re black or white.”

District attorney’s officials later admitted that it was an error to set the bail so low but denied charges of racism.

Gibbons said Webb did not know the race of the victim when he set bail for Singer and Dimenno.

But Lyles said the prosecutors should have taken race into account, anticipating that the low bail would be a slap in the face of the black community.

Investigators contend that Dimenno was involved in a minor traffic accident with White on the night of July 27. The next day, Dimenno and Singer went to White’s house to try and persuade him not to file an insurance claim. When White refused, he was shot by Singer, prosecutors say.

The two were arrested on July 31 when they tried to use White’s credit card to purchase new tires and rims for a car.