Black S. African Clergyman Says He Lost Way in Jog, Was Detained

A visiting Anglican priest from South Africa, here as a guest of Amnesty International to speak on human rights, says he got lost during a jog in Altadena this week and ended up being detained by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies because he is black.

Officials of both Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union contend that the Tuesday encounter illustrates the biased way in which minorities are often treated by law enforcement officers.

There are, however, major contradictions between The Rev. Lulama Ntshingwa’s account and the version of events offered by sheriff’s officials, who contend that Ntshingwa is pursuing a “political agenda.”

Ntshingwa, 40, said in an essay about the incident and in interviews on Thursday that he had run up the driveway of a home where he mistakenly thought an Amnesty International official lived. There, he said, he encountered an elderly woman and asked where he could find the nearest phone to call his host to pick him up.

Within minutes, Ntshingwa alleged, he was approached by two “baton wielding” deputies, who ordered him into a patrol car, locked the door and drove him to the station, where he was held for almost an hour. He said the deputies, who did not hit him, initially had promised to drive him back to where he was staying.

According to Ntshingwa, who had no identification, the deputies told him that someone had complained that he was going around the neighborhood “banging on doors and asking to use the telephone.”

On the way to the station, he said, the deputies also said that “many blacks are in jail because of criminal offenses.”

About 1 1/2 hours after he was stopped, Ntshingwa said, he was released by a supervisor at the Altadena station.

“Not only did it (the arrest) remind me forcibly of past experiences at the hands of South African security forces,” Ntshingwa wrote in his essay, “but it has also given me the opportunity to reflect on a few of the similarities between apartheid South Africa and the U.S.A.”

But Sheriff’s Capt. Michael Quinn, after interviewing deputies involved in the encounter, offered a far different account. He called Ntshingwa’s essay “a political statement,” adding: “He’s trying to follow his own political agenda and the facts do not in fact bear that out.”

He said a deputy, accompanied by an Explorer Scout, approached Ntshingwa without batons and that it was Ntshingwa who brought up racial issues.

He said Ntshingwa willingly accepted a ride to the nearby sheriff’s station to use their phone and prove his identity. It was unfortunate, Quinn said, that the priest, who was wearing jogging shorts and a shirt, was upset that the car’s doors were locked but that is the case with all sheriff’s patrol cars.

At the sheriff’s station, Quinn said, Ntshingwa used the desk phone, had a conversation with a supervisor about his allegations of harassment and was back at his host’s house within 45 minutes of being stopped.

The conversation about black criminals, Quinn said, occurred while Ntshingwa was being driven to his host’s home. The deputy, according to Quinn, merely stated that when he had worked in sheriff’s detention facilities, most of the prisoners “were blacks and Hispanics.”

Ntshingwa’s host, Magdaleno Rose-Avila, Western regional director of Amnesty International, said Thursday that she has known the priest for almost a year and believes he would neither embellish nor distort his story.

Said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California ACLU: “There is no question in my mind that this is an example of the kind of racism that exists in so many law enforcement agencies.”