Suit Asks Court to Take Over Sheriff Station

Civil rights attorneys representing 81 plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit accused Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies on Tuesday of engaging in a three-month wave of wanton shootings, beatings and excessive force while working out of the Lynwood station.

In a lawsuit lodged in U.S. District Court, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other attorneys asked the federal court to take over control of the Lynwood sheriff’s station. The lawsuit alleges that deputies have been involved in more than 40 incidents this year of “shooting, killing, brutality, terrorism, house-trashing and other acts of lawlessness.”

Dozens of people--most of them black or Latino--were unlawfully detained, beaten and, in two instances, shot to death during altercations with sheriff’s officers, the complaint alleges.

“Either there is an institutionally condoned reign of terror in Lynwood or there is a state of anarchy here,” Patrick Patterson, western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told reporters outside the sheriff’s station.

Sheriff Sherman Block, who was named as a defendant in the lawsuit along with 22 Lynwood deputies, said he would have no immediate comment on the allegations. Capt. Bert Cueva, commander of the Lynwood station, also declined comment. But sheriff’s officials said that Block would issue a public response today.

Lynwood, a city of 55,000 located 11 miles south of Los Angeles, is one of 37 cities that contract for services with the 8,000-member Sheriff’s Department. Deputies assigned to the Lynwood station, one of 21 such facilities, also serve Willowbrook, Compton and unincorporated areas.

The 47-page lawsuit had been lodged with the federal court clerk late Tuesday afternoon but was not assigned a formal filing number because of a technicality, attorneys said. A magistrate must first approve the inclusion of two dozen minors listed among plaintiffs in the suit.

In seeking unspecified monetary damages, the plaintiffs are asking for a court injunction that would allow federal officials to wrest control of the Lynwood station and place the station in receivership or in the hands of “a special law enforcement master.”

George V. Denny III, the lead counsel among 18 attorneys representing the plaintiffs, claimed the action is necessary because the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office have shown an unwillingness to discipline deputies involved in excessive force.

“We’re not bashing law enforcement as a whole, but there is a cancer in this community,” Denny said. “There is a cancer in the Sheriff’s Department.”

Lynwood city officials strongly disputed that.

“We’re not going to relinquish control of our community to a handful of people and their attorneys who are just wanting to make a quick buck,” said Mayor Robert Henning, whose city pays $5 million a year to contract with the county for law enforcement.

Henning declined to talk about individual cases involving deputies but defended the department’s overall performance. He said he had not received any complaints from Lynwood residents about alleged brutality.

“It seems to me that this is a game that is being played on the community,” said Henning, who said he was particularly miffed that the lawsuit was announced outside the City Hall complex.

Denny said the plaintiffs had chosen that location to dramatize their complaints before a packed crowd of television cameras, photographers and reporters. During the news conference, a half-dozen plaintiffs recounted stories of alleged brutality while holding up photograph of their injuries.

Darren Thomas, 29, a county public works employee, displayed a photo that showed a large gap in his teeth. He said two teeth were kicked out by deputies during a beating on April 28. Thomas said he and three other family members were arrested for drinking beer in their front yard and were taken to Lynwood jail. When he questioned deputies, Thomas said he was choked into unconsciousness, revived with a stun gun and beaten.

Speaking through an interpreter, Sergio Sanchez, a 33-year-old factory worker from Lynwood, said he was attending a wedding reception when attacked by deputies. He suffered head injuries, he said, when he was clubbed from behind by a deputy, then his face was smashed against a curb.

Marianne English, whose 15-year-old son was shot to death last May, held a photograph showing bullet wounds in his back, and she alleged she was not told of her son’s death until a week after she had filed a missing person’s report.

And 18-year-old Sandi Leonard described watching in horror as her father, William Leonard, was shot more than 30 times outside her apartment on Feb. 10 when Lynwood deputies had ordered her father to leave his car after a vehicle stop.

Responding to a report that Leonard was armed, a dozen or more deputies formed a half-moon around him and shouted conflicting orders at him, said Sandi Leonard.

She said her father appeared confused and as he attempted to kneel down with his hands behind his head, deputies opened fire with a fusillade of bullets.

“I would like for someone to answer me what gave them the right to be judge and jury and executioner,” she said, clinging to the photograph of her father.

Sandi Leonard said a gun was found in her father’s truck but other than a sheathed knife, he was unarmed when he was killed.

Most of the attorneys associated with the suit are members of the Los Angeles-based Police Misconduct Lawyer Referral Service, which handles brutality complaints against law enforcement agencies. Denny said that although the lawsuit centers on the Lynwood station, it is merely the worst of what he called a widespread instances of excessive force by sheriff’s deputies.

The Times reported last May that violent encounters between deputies and people they confront while on patrol have cost taxpayers millions of dollars and forced the department to repeatedly defend itself against allegations of brutality. Over a three-year period ending in September, 1989, excessive force cases cost the county $8.5 million and jury awards. About 150 lawsuits were filed in the last year--nearly double that of five years ago.