Council Asks Supervisors for Sheriff’s Probe : Violence: Request stems from killing of a man in Ramona Gardens housing project by a deputy. The board majority rejects the plea, saying the department is well run.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday unanimously asked the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to launch an independent investigation of the Sheriff’s Department and the shooting of a 19-year-old man at the Ramona Gardens housing project.

The council also requested the Los Angeles Police Department, which normally patrols the housing project, to prepare a report on whether a breakdown in communications among law enforcement agencies in the area contributed to the fatal shooting of Arturo Jimenez.

“There are a lot of questions that remain to be answered,” City Councilman Richard Alatorre told the council. “Because of the growing incidents of violence, the growing incidents of the use of excessive force, it is time they (the supervisors), too, examine the way in which law enforcement is dealt in the county of Los Angeles.”

“We don’t ask them (county officials) to do anything very often,” City Council President John Ferraro said. “I don’t know if we’ll get any results from it.”

Indeed, a majority of the five-member Board of Supervisors flatly rejected the city’s request, saying they believe the Sheriff’s Department is well run and they have no intention of second-guessing another elected official, Sheriff Sherman Block.

“I think the Board of Supervisors has utmost confidence in Sheriff Sherman Block and the Sheriff’s Department,” said board Chairman Mike Antonovich.

“Sheriff Sherman Block goes before the voters every four years, and he’s reelected overwhelmingly,” Antonovich said.

Block declined to be interviewed, but in a written statement, suggested the department already was reviewing the incident. In the statement, he singled out Alatorre and Mark Ridley-Thomas, the council members who have been most vocal on the issue.

“With all due respect to Councilman Alatorre and Ridley-Thomas, the issues raised about the Sheriff’s Department are already being addressed based on requests made by the Board of Supervisors,” Block said.

Supervisors Deane Dana and Kenneth Hahn also opposed a board review of the sheriff’s policies.

Gloria Molina, the board’s only Latino and the supervisor whose district includes Ramona Gardens, was vacationing in Mexico. But she called her chief deputy on Tuesday and dictated a letter to Block asking for a report on how complaints alleging excessive force are handled by the department.

Molina also asked whether the Sheriff’s Department intends to implement any of the recommendations of the Christopher Commission, an independent panel that investigated the Los Angeles Police Department following the outcry triggered by the videotaped police beating of motorist Rodney G. King. The commission recommended major reforms in the LAPD but did not probe the Sheriff’s Department.

Liberal Supervisor Ed Edelman said he will bring a motion to the board Thursday asking the sheriff to make public what portions of the Christopher Commission report, if any, he will implement.

“As to the City Council request that we institute our own Christopher Commission, that is not warranted at this point,” Edelman said. “The matter that triggered this request is under investigation. We ought to wait until they finish.”

Sheriff’s deputies and Ramona Gardens residents who witnessed the shooting of Jimenez have given conflicting accounts of the incident.

Deputies said they were pursuing a speeding motorist early Aug. 3 when they entered the housing project in Lincoln Heights.

There, they said, a beer bottle was thrown at them. When they stopped to investigate, Jimenez grabbed a deputy’s flashlight and knocked him unconscious, the claimed. Authorities said the other deputy then shot Jimenez.

That sparked a confrontation between residents of the housing project and about 75 sheriff’s deputies and police officers.

Members of Jimenez’s family and other Ramona Gardens residents have said that Jimenez, though an acknowledged gang member, did nothing to provoke the shooting.

On Tuesday, lawyers for the Jimenez family filed a wrongful death claim that accuses the two deputies involved in the incident--Jason Mann and Dana Ellison--of being members of white supremacist groups who “knowingly practice excessive force.”

The five-page document, the first step in a lawsuit, also charges Block with negligence for continuing to employ the officers, despite assertions that they are “predisposed to violence.” Court records show that Ellison shot a man in East Los Angeles six years ago and that Mann was transferred from the Lynwood station last December amid allegations he was among several officers who belonged to a racist group called the “Vikings.”

The claim, filed by R. Samuel Paz on behalf of Jimenez’s parents, seeks $3,000 to cover funeral expenses, as well as unspecified general damages and punitive damages.

Last year, The Times reported that excessive force lawsuits against the Sheriff’s Department had nearly doubled over the previous five years, and such cases cost the county $8.5 million in settlements and jury awards during a three-year period ending in September, 1989.