City Paying $25,000 to Settle Suit : Police in Drug Stakeout Fired Barrage at Citizen in Driveway, Jailed Him

No one needs to tell 71-year-old William Holmgreen Zuehl that his Willard neighborhood is unsafe.

Having frequently observed drug dealing outside his Durant Street home where he has lived for 40 years, Zuehl often complained to police to take action. Never, he says, did he expect police would take action against him.

But that changed one night last March.

As he returned from a city-sponsored meeting concerning increased security measures in the neighborhood, Zuehl pulled into his driveway and saw some men in dark clothing in his back yard. He turned his truck toward them, he said, to shine the headlights on them.

What he got in return, he said, was a barrage of gunfire. After he bailed out of his truck, he was slammed to the ground. A gun was put to his head. Someone warned him that he would be killed if he moved.

Zuehl said his “attackers” turned out to be Santa Ana police.

He was jailed for nine hours on suspicion of using a deadly weapon--his truck--to assault the officers in his back yard, he said.

The case against Zuehl, however, was eventually dropped, and on Monday night the City Council agreed to pay him $25,000 to settle his claim against the city for the March 19, 1991, incident.

“The rationale was that settling was the right thing to do,” said City Councilman Robert L. Richardson, who has led efforts to rid drug trafficking from the Willard neighborhood.

“I am happy that they settled,” Zuehl said Tuesday. “I am very damn unhappy with the methods of the Police Department here.”

In addition to the money, Zuehl said, he wants an apology.

“I want somebody to come here and face me and tell me the truth as to what happened,” he said.

Police Lt. Robert Helton said two narcotics officers dressed in dark-colored jackets with the word police across the front had positioned themselves in Zuehl’s back yard. They were there to cover the rear side of an apartment building next door, where two other officers were attempting a drug bust.

Helton said that just as Zuehl was suspicious of the officers, the officers felt threatened by Zuehl as he drove up because they did not know that he was the homeowner.

“He (Zuehl) believed they were unlawfully there, and they felt their lives were in jeopardy because he was driving his truck at them,” Helton said. “It was night time and all those things coupled together . . . the officers that were there thought he was (up to) no good.”

The officers responded by firing seven shots into Zuehl’s 1976 Chevrolet pickup truck, Zuehl said. He said he jumped out of the truck and was not wounded.

But it was not until after he was pinned to the ground and handcuffed that he realized that he was dealing with police officers. His wife did not know that the officers were there until she heard the gunfire, Zuehl added.

Zuehl said the confusion could have been avoided if the officers had warned him and his wife that they were planning a stakeout from his back yard.

But Helton said that is up to the discretion of the officers involved. And in a neighborhood victimized by drug dealers, Helton said, officers could reasonably wonder whether the neighbors also are drug dealers and alert the suspects under surveillance.

“We did not know the gentleman until after the incident, so we did not know who we were dealing with,” Helton said.

“They better find out who they are dealing with,” Zuehl responded. “If I had been home and seen them in here, you better believe somebody would have been dead--and it would not have been me.”