Criminals, Unlikely Targets Were Snared in Curfew Nets

Only hours remained in the curfew when Robert Haines, self-styled presidential candidate from Colorado, became a footnote to the Los Angeles riots--arguably the oddest of the 3,000 people arrested for being out after dark.

Headlights blinking, his 1967 pickup pulled behind a National Guard truck patrolling Hollywood at 1 a.m. on May 4. When guardsmen responded to his signal to stop, they discovered the 45-year-old Haines wearing a bulletproof vest (“to protect against assassination”), carrying hand-scrawled legislation (“horses shall be allowed on the public byways”) and demanding “to be taken into federal custody.” So he was.

From the start, the curfew was the most controversial tool of a Los Angeles criminal justice system struggling to cope with the nation’s worst civil unrest of the century.

Community activists complained that blacks, Latinos and the homeless were unfairly targeted. City prosecutors retorted that most curfew violators were veteran criminals looking for an opportunity to loot.

Now, three months after the riots, the courts have virtually completed the curfew cases--and a countywide survey of their outcome by The Times has found evidence to bolster each view.

Many homeless people were, in fact, snared in the curfew sweeps, reflected in the extraordinarily high percentage of arrestees in downtown Los Angeles courts--24%--who claimed that they had no home address.

At the same time, however, nearly half of the curfew violators were found to have criminal records, many including felony convictions.

But the assembly-line processing of the thousands of suspects made it difficult to differentiate willful violators from those with good explanations for being on the streets--a problem that prosecutors and defense attorneys, in rare agreement, believe led to injustices.

So intense was the pressure for accused curfew violators to accept plea bargains that only five of 1,030 cases in the downtown courts wound up going to trial.

In recent weeks, prodded by defense lawyers, some prosecutors have been re-evaluating the parade of guilty pleas and the trickle of cases still before the court, looking for people swept up in mass arrests who deserved not an iron fist, but mercy.

Hundreds of arrests, meanwhile, were made far from core riot areas, exemplified by the most unlikely riot defendants of all, the “Mulholland 53.”

While much of Los Angeles was in turmoil, they traveled to Mulholland Drive, the city’s famed hilltop thoroughfare, to watch the fires in the distance or enjoy a lovers’ lane--only to be descended upon by Santa Monica Mountains rangers in a stark reminder that the curfew covered more than the inner city.

Almost as soon as the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case set off rioting in many parts of Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 29, Mayor Tom Bradley declared an official state of emergency. It was under that declaration that the sundown to sunrise curfew was announced shortly after midnight--at 12:15 a.m. on April 30. As the violence spread, Long Beach and other Los Angeles County cities adopted similar measures to keep people indoors.

The curfews were portrayed as a way to clear the streets for fire and other emergency vehicles and as a tool to help police restore order in riot zones. Even if they did not see people looting, officers could pull them in for a curfew violation.

“They’re not trying to arrest everybody in town,” Bradley said, “not trying to prevent them from carrying on their normal lives.”

Indeed, during the first full day of rioting, police had little time to worry about who was merely ignoring a curfew--court records show they made four times as many arrests for looting offenses than for curfew violations.

By Friday, curfew arrests matched those for looting. And in the days following, with rioting diminishing, curfew arrests outdistanced all others.

By the time the emergency order was lifted at daybreak on May 4, no fewer than 3,156 people had been arrested for misdemeanor curfew violations, according to a Los Angeles Times computer study of countywide booking records. About 46% were black and 45% Latino. Men outnumbered women 90% to 10%. Those arrested ranged in age from 12 to 67, but the greatest number--40%--were between 19 and 24.

Curfew violation was by far the most common criminal charge stemming from the riots, well above the 2,239 felony looting cases lodged throughout the county.

The curfew cases also generated the most intense public debate.

Although few challenged the wisdom of police arresting suspected arsonists or looters, many questioned their broad leeway in enforcing curfews. The county public defender’s office complained that making a crime of “passive activities, like merely walking on the street, gives an undue amount of discretion to police.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a lawsuit challenging enforcement of the curfew, said its survey of 122 defendants found that 33 were taken into custody less than two blocks from their house, or on their property. Many stories of injustice were offered: women arrested while supposedly out looking for milk for their babies; men supposedly searching for medicine, or people arrested after they “were displaced because their houses burned down,” as one defense attorney claimed.

Some tales proved apocryphal, however, like that of the woman arraigned in Hollywood who insisted she was trying to get to her father’s home around the corner. A court clerk recognized her as a prostitute with a long record--and pending arrest warrants. “She was just giving this line of baloney,” said Bill Sterling, the head prosecutor in Hollywood courts.

The city attorney’s office began checking criminal backgrounds so they could offer a competing--and more ominous--portrait of the defendants.

The differing views of curfew violators reflected radically divergent visions of the riots themselves. Some saw a revolt to protest oppression, others an outbreak of criminality.

But even as the debate was beginning, most cases were quickly becoming history. While the more serious felonies creaked through overburdened courts, the misdemeanor curfews whizzed through.

With jails overflowing, the defendants were brought before Municipal Court judges in groups and offered 10-day jail terms if they would plead guilty--meaning they would serve only four days under early release programs designed to control jail crowding.

Because they could spend far longer in custody awaiting trial, it was an offer hard to refuse. In addition, some judges did not hesitate to nudge the suspects in the desired direction.

“You can roll the dice . . . take your chances,” was the way one described the option of contesting the charges. “(But) if you lose, I guarantee you you’ll lose big time.”

The guilty and no-contest pleas resounded through the courts. Of 1,030 curfew defendants in downtown Los Angeles courts, 860 “pled out,” according to the city attorney’s office. In 96 cases, defendants failed to make court appearances and bench warrants were issued for their arrests. In 67 others, charges were dropped. Only a few cases are pending.

Only five curfew suspects have gone the full route, pleading not guilty and going to trial.

One of them, Harold Duane Taylor, made no apology for being on downtown streets the night of April 30. That morning, he had taken a bus there from his Long Beach home and, “I was kind of looking around for posterity’s sake,” he told Municipal Judge Susan E. Isacoff, “so I can look back on this landmark event in the city’s history.”

Taylor said he became “trapped” downtown when buses stopped running, and “felt like I was in a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode, so I just kept staring at the turmoil in disbelief.”

Early in the evening, a police officer warned him to “hurry up and get home,” he said, but he was still outside when others, in riot gear, “came over to us and told us to put our hands up against the wall.”

Taylor was found guilty and is appealing. Two other trials also ended in convictions and two produced acquittals, one when a judge agreed with a common defense argument that it was not enough to show someone was outside after curfew--that there should be evidence they intended some other crime.

There was no such receptive ear, however, when Taylor summed up his role in the riots. “I was an eyewitness,” he said.

The moment varied in different courthouses, but at some point the emotions generated by the riots cooled. When a second wave of defendants hit the system--those who had been released on bail pending their court appearances--judges began sweetening the deal to induce guilty pleas. Now, curfew violators with clean records could get off with $300 fines or 10 days community service. No jail.

The ACLU and Public Counsel, a nonprofit defense group, asked the city attorney’s office to review the cases of some homeless people who had pleaded guilty “because of the insanity going on in the courts.” City prosecutors agreed.

“Our job isn’t just to get convictions willy-nilly,” said Maureen Siegel, the supervising prosecutor.

On July 21, her office notified Public Counsel attorney Richard Novak that four guilty pleas would be thrown out and the charges dismissed.

In other courts, prosecutors checked out the explanations of defense attorneys that their clients had valid reasons for being on the street.

The public defender in Hollywood, Leslie Ringold, recognized one curfew defendant as a homeless man from the Salvation Army next door. Sterling, the prosecutor, agreed to drop charges against him and another man, who worked in the San Fernando Valley and “had to walk all the way home” the first night of rioting.

When tall, gaunt and scraggly-bearded Johnny Davis showed up in the downtown courthouse July 9, he expected his curfew trial. Instead, he learned that the charge was being dropped “in the interests of justice.”

For more than two months, Davis, 37, had been trying to explain that he never sleeps at night because “every time I get a dime, somebody takes it . . . (there’s) pounding and robbing, people jumping each other . . . cutting and shooting and robbing right on the sidewalk.” So he sleeps in the day and walks Figueroa Street at night, miles each way through South-Central Los Angeles.

“It’s bad enough to be homeless,” he said. “Then to be forced into a curfew with no place to go. Whew!”

He was not the only one freed that morning.

Carrying an American flag and his presidential campaign sign, and wearing a plastic “Junior Police” badge from Jackson, Wyo., Robert Haines arrived in court ready for his trial as well.

Haines had earlier rejected a plea bargain, telling a judge: “I am innocent of the charge, sir! It was a set-up arrest.”

On that day, wearing a yellow dandelion in the lapel of his khaki suit, he explained to the court that he came to Los Angeles to survey riot damage but was unemployed at the moment--”Reaganomics!”--and was “sleeping in my car.”

After a July trial date was set, he strode from the court shaking hands of other defendants and declaring, “Haines from Colorado! I’m running for President!” City prosecutor Ron Low said he made a mental note that “this is not an ordinary defendant.”

Haines’ return to court was not to be a happy one: the city attorney had decided not to pursue the case.

“No, no,” Haines said, “I want this information to come out.”

He explained that when he came here for the riots, he took a video camera to Beverly Hills and “caught them all violating the curfew . . . in their limos, Rolls-Royces, you know what they drive--anything but American cars.

“I filmed the rich people driving around,” he said. “That’s why you had revolt on a massive scale, because of economic repression.”

Haines seemed distraught that there would be no trial. “All they’re trying to do is suppress the truth,” he said.

It was a common perception that middle-class and white communities were largely immune from curfew prosecutions. But court records show that police divisions in the San Fernando Valley--where there was minimal looting compared to other areas--were among the most active in enforcing the curfew, producing more than 500 arrests. And the wealthy hillsides overlooking the Valley were the scene of the last curfew cases to make their way to court.

“We have half a dozen parks up there,” said Gary Moser, chief ranger for the Mountains Recreation Conservation Authority. “You could observe the fires up there.”

The first night of the riots, his crews dispersed the crowds on Mulholland Drive. But the 53 people caught there on Friday and Saturday nights were not so lucky.

In a crisis situation, Moser said, law enforcement “has to be very careful. . . . We couldn’t discriminate because of someone’s color. . . . It can’t just be blacks (arrested).”

Given ticket-like citations, the Mulholland Drive defendants were notified by mail of the misdemeanor charges filed against them and have been called in for arraignments over the last two weeks.

“The riots now seem like a memory,” Van Nuys Municipal Judge Alan E. Ellis told one group that stood before him in court. “Even a distant memory.”

But although they were “not in a riot area,” he said, “watching the city burn is the same.”

The offer for a plea now? Ten days community service on a Caltrans cleanup crew.

Pondering his offer were: A 20-year-old Pierce College student who said he merely “wanted to look”; two young sisters from Canoga Park who hoped to spend a “cool” Saturday evening with there friends--and some beer--at an old Nike missile lookout site, and a 36-year-old Hollywood man returning home from a pool party on Mulholland when he got sick to his stomach and stopped at an overlook.

“I’m pretty outraged,” he said. “There were lots of people on the street . . . and they come all the way up the hills to give us a ticket . . . . Thursday, when they were looting, I went down to look . . . I just stood there watching them loot these stores and getting away with it. . . . Then we’re up in the hills doing absolutely nothing. . . . “

His voice trailed off. He pleaded no contest.

SIMI VALLEY VS. SOUTH L.A.: Softball game between the two communities seeks healing. A3

Curfew Arrests

At least 3,156 people were arrested countywide for curfew violations during the Los Angeles riots. The curfew began at sundown April 30 and was lifted at dawn May 4, except in Long Beach. Among those arrested, Latinos tended to be younger and blacks older. They were predominantly male, especially Latinos, but one-fifth of the Anglos were female.

This chart breaks down the percentages of those arrested by various categories. THE NUMBERS: BY AGE

UNDER 18 25 35 45 GROUP 18 TO 24 TO 34 TO 44 AND UP OVERALL Anglo 3.9% 35.2% 39.1% 18.4% 3.5% 8.1% Black 5.9% 24.8% 41.8% 23.0% 4.5% 46.1% Latino 16.0% 56.8% 20.9% 5.2% 1.1% 44.7% Other 5.7% 54.3% 31.4% 8.6% 0% 1.1% ALL GROUPS 10.2% 40.3% 32.1% 14.5% 2.9% 100.0%

THE NUMBERS: BY SEX

FEMALE MALE Anglo 19.9% 80.1% Black 11.1% 88.9% Latino 7.0% 93.0% Other 17.1% 82.9% ALL GROUPS 10.0% 90.0%

THE NUMBERS: BY DAY

DAY/DATE ARRESTS Thursday/April 30, 1992 179 Friday/May 1, 1992 622 Saturday/May 2, 1992 1,176 Sunday/May 3, 1992 928 Monday/May 4, 1992 203 Tuesday/May 5, 1992* 48

* Long Beach only

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times computer analysis of L.A. County Jail arrest bookings by Richard O’Reilly