FBI Probes for Rights Violations by Deputy : Crime: Federal officials investigate 1991 attempted robbery by sheriff’s deputy who was killed during the incident by a fellow deputy.

Federal authorities have completed an investigation into whether the civil rights of an Olivenhain man and his 82-year-old grandmother were violated last July when an off-duty San Diego County sheriff’s deputy attempted to rob their home at gunpoint.

FBI officials in San Diego acknowledged Tuesday that they had conducted “a preliminary civil rights investigation.” The results of the investigation go to the U.S. Department of Justice, which then decides whether to present the findings to a grand jury.

A Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington also confirmed that FBI agents in San Diego had been directed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the attempted robbery at the home of Donald Van Ort and his grandmother, Helen Van Ort.

On the morning of July 3, Michael Stanewich, a 10-year veteran assigned to the department’s street narcotics unit, went to the home on Cole Ranch Road and pistol-whipped the pair, demanding that they open a bedroom safe.

Stanewich was shot to death by a fellow deputy and friend who responded to the robbery at the home, confronting Stanewich in the kitchen.

“Right now, we’re reviewing the civil rights questions involved in the incident,” Justice Department spokeswoman Amy Casner said. “We’ve asked that local FBI officials investigate the matter.”

Dwight Ritter, an attorney for the Van Orts, said that on at least two occasions FBI agents had met both Donald and his grandmother at the ranch-style home in Encinitas--asking them to re-enact what happened the morning that Stanewich burst through the front door armed with a pistol and about the events that led up to the robbery attempt.

Records show that Van Ort had pleaded guilty a year earlier to assaulting an ex-girlfriend in a domestic violence charge involving drugs and alcohol. That triggered a follow-up search of Van Ort’s home by sheriff’s deputies on May 30, 1991, about a month before the holdup.

Stanewich was the lead detective in the routine, on-duty search during which the deputies spotted some of the more than $100,000 in cash kept in a bedroom safe by the 33-year-old free-lance travel agent.

On July 3, Stanewich returned, armed and masked, with what the Van Orts say was an accomplice who fled as Van Ort yelled out: “It’s a robbery, Grandma!”

The family contends that the would-be second robber was probably a fellow deputy, but the Sheriff’s Department has all but ruled out that possibility, officials say.

Ritter said he is preparing a lawsuit on behalf of the Van Orts against the county and has advised his client to cooperate in the Justice Department probe.

“Here you have a deputy sheriff who obviously used his resources within the department to gain access to a person’s home,” he said. “That’s a little out of the ordinary. The department put him into the position to do this.

“They may say they didn’t authorize him to commit the crime, but . . . without them, he wouldn’t have been able to be there.”

Dan Greenblatt, chief special assistant to Sheriff Jim Roache, said the accusations are untrue.

“He’s entitled to his opinion, even if he is wrong,” he said of Ritter. “He’s going to have to prove that in court. And he’s going to fail in that effort.

Greenblatt speculated that the Justice Department was following through on the Van Orts’ request for an independent investigation into the attempted robbery.

“Right after the incident, Mr. Van Ort made a series of emotional outbursts. For a while, he was calling a press conference a day, saying some things that were just plain bogus and inflammatory, and calling for an outside investigation.”

Ritter, however, said his client is still upset over his portrayal by the Sheriff’s Department following the incident.

“All along, they’ve taken this defensive posture, trying to discredit him, saying ‘What difference does it make that one of our men tried to break into his house?’ They’ve suggested that he was involved in drugs and alcohol, and so it was all OK.”

Ritter said that, although drugs and alcohol were involved in the domestic case to which his client pleaded guilty, he has since straightened himself out and teaches a self-help class for alcoholics.

“Nonetheless, they suggested all along that the money he kept in that safe were illegal assets from the sale of drugs--drug money. And that’s simply not true.”

Meanwhile, the Van Orts have put their Olivenhain home up for sale, saying it evokes only bad memories.

“Mr. Van Ort just doesn’t want to live there,” Ritter said. “Clearly, there is a second suspect who he fears may return, and he just doesn’t want to live there. It’s an emotional reaction.”

On a recent visit to the home, Ritter said, Van Ort became unsettled after receiving an anonymous telephone call during which a silent caller hung up.