When It Comes to Cop Showdowns, Video Cameras Are Everywhere

It won’t rival the Rodney King beating video, but the tape of James Fosbinder’s run-in with police at the Mission Beach boardwalk does have its moments.

There’s Fosbinder handcuffed and sitting on a retaining wall. Surrounded by three cops, their nifty four-wheel beach cycles nearby.

And you can hear the voices of some Arizona college students describing what had happened just before one of them turned on his camcorder.

One says: “They (the cops) were just talking to him a while ago and got right in his face and almost pushed him over the fence.” Another says a cop was “pushing him over the side.”

Fosbinder, 37, an attorney and Mission Beach skating store owner, says the videotape backs up his contention that a cop went ballistic over a small matter. He wonders how common that is.

It started when Fosbinder and his wife, Rhonda, a law student, were strolling with their two poodles.

The cops cruised by. Fosbinder yelled that cycles on the narrow boardwalk are inappropriate.

He used an anatomical epithet in reference to the cops. An “injudicious” use of words, he now concedes.

Quickly, he was cuffed behind his back and written a misdemeanor citation for “threatening and indecent conduct.”

Fosbinder says that while he was forced to sit on the wall, the lead cop began berating him and bumping him with his chest, putting Fosbinder in danger of falling backward unless he dug in his heels.

The drop would have been several feet onto a concrete step, maybe head first.

Fosbinder says he’s dealt with cops in tense situations in New York, Tucson and Dallas, representing protesters and the punk rock group “The Dead Kennedys.”

“I’ve never seen a cop react like this. To be put in fear of a crippling injury because of using the wrong words doesn’t seem right.”

The cop who signed his citation and allegedly pushed Fosbinder isn’t talking.

It may never make CNN, but Fosbinder has taken the tape to a lawyer specializing in police brutality cases.

A Steal to a Deal

Here and there.

* How soon they forget.

Replicas of the Padres old brown and gold uniforms are on sale for 50% off at the Sports Fan store in Mission Valley.

* A defense attorney trying to subpoena San Diego County Dist. Atty. Ed Miller decided not to take any chances.

So he gave the process server sent to Miller’s office a list of explicit instructions--instructions the server left attached to the subpoena.

One warned: “Miller is the big cheese and you will not be able to find him.”

Another ordered, in the event Miller could not be located, to give the subpoena to his secretary or receptionist and “MAKE SURE YOU GET THEIR NAME.”

The process server had to settle for Miller’s secretary, Punaotala Siulagi. Conventional spelling.

* “The Book of Mamie,” a picaresque novel of two Wisconsin runaways by San Diego writer Duff Brenna, has just been optioned by Canadian film director Jim Kaufman.

Kaufman just directed “A Star for Two,” with Lauren Bacall and Anthony Quinn.

Ink, Ink and More Ink

Media media.

* The National Enquirer is heavily snooping the deputy-kills-deputy story in Olivenhain.

The supermarket tabloid is particularly interested in learning the dying words of Deputy Michael Stanewich and how Deputy Gary Steadman feels about killing a colleague.

Nobody who knows the truth is willing to talk.

* Vanity Fair and Architecture magazines are doing photo spreads on the new Mandell Weiss Forum at UC San Diego.

* The Betty Broderick splash in Mirabella magazine is out in the next edition, just in time for the retrial.

* Financial World magazine just named San Diego one of the nation’s best-run cities, fiscally speaking.

San Diego got a grade of B. Then again, New York got a C-plus, so decide for yourself how much San Diego should brag.