Report Called Vindication of Brutality Claims : Law enforcement: Panel’s sharp criticism of the Sheriff’s Department underscores charges of abuses in Santa Clarita, Antelope valleys.

An investigative panel’s report that severely criticizes the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department served to underscore complaints about sheriff’s operations in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys.

The 359-page report, issued by retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James G. Kolts and ordered by the County Board of Supervisors, concluded that there is a disturbing pattern of excessive force and brutality in the department, that discipline and oversight systems have broken down and that racist attitudes and abuse against minorities are often tolerated.

Though county supervisors called for the six-month study of the department in response to public outcry over fatal deputy-involved shootings of minority residents in areas of the south county, critics of the department’s operations to the north said the report vindicated longstanding claims that the department has problems with excessive force.

“This report is not surprising,” said the Rev. Samuel Hooker, a member of the board of directors for the Antelope Valley chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “There is vindication here.”

Three years ago, Hooker called for a federal mediator to help resolve a conflict between the area’s minority community and the Sheriff’s Department after three deputy-involved shootings, including an incident in which deputies fired 28 times at a black woman who was wielding a butcher knife, killing her.

Hooker said the shootings raised concerns that deputies were “trigger-happy” when it came to dealing with minorities. After a meeting between members of the NAACP and Sheriff Sherman Block, relations between deputies and the minority community improved, “but we still get calls and complaints about how people are treated by deputies,” he said.

“We have not had another shooting that was suspicious since then,” Hooker said. “But I have to say that not a lot of change has happened. My deepest yearning is that the deputies would just be fair to everybody. It’s not that hard to do. I am glad that these findings are coming out. Maybe it will help.”

Sherman Oaks attorney George V. Denny said the Kolts report highlights problems already well-known to attorneys specializing in civil rights cases. He likened the report to last year’s Christopher Commission report which was highly critical of the Los Angeles Police Department.

“At the time that came out, all of us in the civil rights field said, ‘Hey, the Sheriff’s Department is worse,’ ” Denny said Monday. “The reason it is worse is that the sheriff runs the jails.”

Denny has handled a number of high-profile lawsuits against the department, including a black man’s claim that a gang of jailers--who allegedly called themselves the “Wayside Whities”--beat him and intentionally broke his leg while he was incarcerated at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic in 1990.

Though deputies vehemently denied the accusations made by Clydell Crawford, the county settled the lawsuit this year, paying Crawford $40,000, Denny said. Denny said all deputies become indoctrinated in the department’s systematic overuse of force because they are assigned as rookies to work as jailers during their probationary period.

“It’s brutalizing even on the best-intentioned rookie,” he said. “This is unfortunately part of the system.” Denny said that areas such as the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys are not immune to departmental problems of brutality and racism.

“Deputies are transferred from one station to another so they carry these things with them,” Denny said. “I’ve had a number of people come to me complaining of being pushed around in areas to the north.”

In recent years, other incidents involving the questionable behavior of deputies in northern Los Angeles County created controversy and in some cases cost taxpayers money.

In 1990, a Sylmar tow truck driver was awarded $510,000 in damages after he was shot and critically wounded by an off-duty deputy who had chased him when he drove away from the scene of a minor accident.

In the case that sparked the protest of the NAACP, a 50-year-old black transient threatened deputies with a butcher knife at a Palmdale fast-food restaurant on April 11, 1989. Three deputies shot 28 times and struck her with 16 bullets.

Five months before that, a man of Asian descent was shot five times by a deputy in Palmdale when he repeatedly charged at him while drunk and unarmed. A $5-million claim against the department for excessive force is pending in that case.

Another civil rights attorney, Stephen Yagman, said he represents clients in approximately 50 cases against the Sheriff’s Department, including claims that inmates have been beaten by jailers at Pitchess Honor Rancho. He called the department a “quiet cesspool” of brutality and racism problems.

“The Sheriff’s Department has always been a quiet cesspool in comparison to the LAPD, which is a noisy cesspool and got all the attention,” he said. A sheriff’s spokesman declined to comment on criticisms in the report until administrators can study it.

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