Lynwood Panel Will Review Complaints About Deputies

The City Council has created a law enforcement review board to investigate the activities of sheriff’s deputies in reaction to a federal class-action lawsuit filed recently by civil rights attorneys against the local sheriff’s station.

By a 3-1 vote Tuesday, the council formed the city’s Law Enforcement Advisory and Review Board at the suggestion of acting Mayor Paul H. Richards.

Richards said the board will receive complaints about deputies from citizens, conduct hearings and hold informational workshops on police service.

“We have no entity to conduct formal investigations,” he said. “The time is now for us to form a body where citizens can feel comfortable expressing their complaints” about deputies.

“Typically, what happens is a citizen’s complaint is made to the Sheriff’s Department, and we never hear about it. The case is lost in the shuffle. We need to know what happens.”

It will take about a month to work out specifics on how the board will work, Richards said.

A federal lawsuit filed last month accused deputies of engaging in wanton shootings, beatings and excessive force while working out of the Lynwood station.

The suit, filed by attorneys representing 81 plaintiffs, named as defendants Sheriff Sherman Block, Los Angeles County, the city, the commander of the Lynwood station, Atty Gen. John K. Van de Kamp and Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner.

While the council voted to create the review board, two of its members expressed doubt about how the council will control board members.

“I’m concerned that a board like this might feel it can just bash the Sheriff’s Department,” Councilwoman Evelyn Wells said.

However, she voted for the board’s creation, along with Richards and Councilman Armando Rea. Mayor Robert Henning was absent, attending a Houston transit conference.

But Councilman Louis J. Heine, who voted against the board, said city officials should discuss a review board with Block and other department representatives before forming one.

Heine said City Manager Charles Gomez meets with the Sheriff’s Department regularly to discuss operations at Lynwood station, from which about 150 sworn deputies cover 7.6 square miles in the city and the unincorporated county area of East Compton and Willowbrook.

The station’s acting commander, Lt. Mark A. Thompson, said the department regularly meets with council members to discuss citizens’ complaints. He would not comment further on the review board.

There was no comment from the public during the council debate, but after the meeting residents generally disagreed with the council’s action.

Clayton Depner said he thought the review board does “not make sense. It’s just another bureaucracy. The council has the power to hire the sheriff, and it can fire the department if it is dissatisfied.”

Acting Mayor Richards said the review board will probably consist of five members appointed by the council and have the authority to conduct “fact-finding investigations” and hold seminars describing police service in the city.

When the suit was filed Sept. 25, city officials and residents expressed surprise and defended the department’s overall performance.

Longtime city activist Bennie Miranda said complaints were about deputies driving too fast or orally abusing residents. He said he was not aware of any physical abuse.

Both Miranda and Mayor Henning accused attorneys who filed the suit of “staging” the complaints to get media attention.

Henning said: “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.”

BACKGROUND A 47-page lawsuit was filed in federal court Sept. 25 accusing 22 deputies of a wave of beatings, shootings and other instances of excessive force during three months early this year. George V. Denny III, the lead counsel among 18 attorneys representing 81 plaintiffs, said the suit is necessary because the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office failed to discipline deputies. Lynwood has contracted with the department for police services since 1977. The ethnic makeup of the blue-collar community of 55,000 is mostly black and Latino.