Investigation of Private Detective in Deputies’ Brutality Case Assailed : Law enforcement: Civil rights lawyers condemn the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office. The agencies launched a criminal probe of the man who worked for those who brought charges against the officers.

A coalition of civil rights lawyers Thursday condemned the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office for launching a criminal investigation into the conduct of a private investigator for the plaintiffs in a massive brutality case against the Lynwood sheriff’s station.

“The Department of Justice would better serve the people of Southern California by prosecuting the law enforcement officers responsible for making this area infamous for its police brutality, rather than the messengers who bring evidence of civil rights violations to its attention,” said a statement released on behalf of 21 lawyers.

The statement was the first disclosure that a grand jury investigation of private investigator David Lynn had been initiated by federal authorities.

Last month, the Sheriff’s Department charged that Lynn had induced a former sheriff’s cadet, Anietra Haley, into concocting a story implicating deputies in the December, 1990, drive-by shooting death of Lloyd Polk. The department released a transcript of Haley’s June 26 interview with two sheriff’s deputies saying her earlier statements were fabrications.

Additionally, in an interview with The Times, Haley recanted her earlier statements that she told Lynn she had heard six deputies plotting to kill Polk.

Polk was one of 70 black and Latino plaintiffs who filed a federal class-action suit against Lynwood deputies in September, 1990, three months before he was killed. The suit alleges that deputies engaged in “systematic acts of shooting, killing, brutality, terrorism, house-trashing and other acts of lawlessness and wanton abuse of power,” especially against minorities.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. issued a finding that Lynwood deputies “regularly disregard the civil rights of individuals,” are motivated by “racial hostility,” and use “terrorist-type tactics” with the knowledge of their superiors.

Lynn has maintained that he did not induce Haley to make up anything, an assertion he repeated Thursday.

Additionally, attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case released audiotapes and transcripts of Lynn’s interviews with Haley that tended to corroborate the investigator’s account. The tapes previously had been filed under seal with Judge Hatter.

The lawyers also contended that tapes of interviews of Haley by investigators for the Sheriff’s Department suggest that Haley had been browbeaten into changing her story. In addition, they asserted that the grand jury investigation of Lynn is intended to intimidate witnesses in the class-action suit and to discredit the suit.

At least three people have been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, according to John C. Burton, one of the lawyers in the Lynwood case. They are Terry Clark, who was Polk’s girlfriend; her mother, Gloria Clark, and Los Angeles attorney Barry Litt, who has advised them.

Hugh Manes, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, also contended that the attorneys had turned over massive amounts of information about the situation at the Lynwood sheriff’s station and the Polk killing to the FBI, but the agency did little to investigate those matters.

On the tapes released Thursday, Haley expresses her frustration to Lynn that the FBI agent assigned to interview her about the Polk killing frustrated her efforts to make secret recordings of incriminating statements by one of the deputies allegedly involved in the shooting.

And, Haley told Lynn in a May 23 taped interview released Thursday, a deputy admitted shooting Polk in “a freak accident.”

According to the transcripts, Haley also told Lynn that an FBI agent made unwanted advances to her, then apologized when she complained to him about it.

Immediately after learning of the grand jury investigation, Lynn “waived his right to remain silent and submitted to a three-hour interview by the FBI and an assistant U.S. attorney,” Burton said.

The lawyers said in their statement that Lynn’s “only crime was naivete--believing that the FBI would act in good faith on information that Los Angeles sheriff deputies plotted and carried out the shooting of a civil rights plaintiff.”

They added: “In comparing our evidence with that produced by the Sheriff’s Department, we ask that the public consider whether, following the coldblooded murder of a client, we would ‘coax’ somebody to ‘concoct’ a story that six specific deputies conspired to perpetrate the killing hours before it took place, thus jeopardizing the basis of one of the largest and most significant police misconduct cases in the nation.”

FBI spokesman John Hoos said there would be no comment on the allegations leveled Thursday. However, he said that the bureau initiated an investigation into allegations about the Polk shooting last December. “That investigation is still ongoing,” he said.

U.S. Atty. Lourdes G. Baird said in a statement that she could not comment on an ongoing grand jury investigation. But she said:

“The U.S. attorney’s office takes allegations of civil rights violations quite seriously and will continue to investigate such allegations vigorously. No individual is above the law regardless of whether he or she is a law enforcement officer, a private investigator or a private citizen.”

A Sheriff’s Department spokesman issued a brief statement that made no direct response to the attorneys’ allegations and said he would take no questions.