Family Defends Deputy Who Fired Fatal Shot : Portrait: Father says Brian Scanlan was best friends with slain O.C. officer. But records show different side.

Dennis Scanlan shook his head miserably Wednesday as he stood on the front stoop of his son’s home, still stunned by the turn his family’s life has taken in the last few days.

He’d heard all the talk about his 32-year-old son, Brian, all the sneers and suppositions about his training, his competence and even his motives in the Christmas Day shooting that had taken the life of fellow Deputy Darryn Leroy Robins during an impromptu training session.

He’d met it all with a mix of anger and incredulity. And now, he’d had enough. Scanlan and Robins “were out there every day working together,” the father, a retired Long Beach police officer, declared Wednesday, his face in pain. “They were best friends. That’s the hardest part about this whole thing.”

But the glare of public scrutiny seems certain to intensify as his son--police brat, Army soldier, football field-goal kicker and sheriff’s deputy--now has a more infamous niche as the man who fired the shot that has reverberated around the county.

“He’s devastated. It’s really hard for him to deal with,” said Scanlan’s brother, Michael, a Long Beach Police sergeant. “He’s a big guy . . . and to see him in tears and stuff, it’s hard for the rest of us.”

Officials say Scanlan and Robins, 30, were running through an informal training session behind a movie theater in Lake Forest on Saturday around 2 p.m. when Scanlan’s gun went off, hitting Robins in the face and killing him. Less than an hour earlier, the two had assisted in a CHP felony stop on the freeway, and Robins apparently was bothered by how the stop was made.

The Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against Scanlan in a case that has generated criticism over the Sheriff’s Department’s adherence to training and safety standards. It may be a month or more before prosecutors announce any decision on the filing of charges.

Orange County Urban League President George Williams said the organization, deluged with 50 calls on the case, will be watching the investigation closely to ensure that prosecutors do a thorough and speedy job.

“There’s a general perception in the community that the manner in which justice is administered is skewed toward blacks and other minorities not having the same kind of rights,” said Williams. Robins was black.

The Urban League plans to hold a press conference on the case today to discuss its concerns, and Williams said the group may call for a separate investigation later if it is not satisfied with the work by the district attorney’s office.

Even as family members sought to defend Scanlan, threads from Scanlan’s life have continued to weave an often-clashing tapestry of a young man who has been the target of at least two separate excessive-force complaints and a third accusing him of theft.

Sheriff’s Department colleagues have portrayed Scanlan as a solid deputy--dependable, well-liked, respected. The department itself had enough confidence in Scanlan to make him a field training officer, responsible for showing rookies the ropes.

Orange County sheriff’s officials have refused to discuss the process for becoming a field training officer.

Officials at the state’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training said training officers are typically “model officers” without high rates of citizen complaints or vehicular accidents on their record. And officials at local agencies said they generally demand the highest standards from officers chosen to train young recruits.

“Normally, these officers are the cream of the crop,” said Anaheim Police Lt. Marc Hedgepath. “They are your most experienced, most professional officers who also have the ability to teach.”

But Scanlan has had his share of legal woes that call into question his judgment both on and off duty.

Traffic court records in Laguna Hills show that Scanlan faces an outstanding warrant for his arrest. The court issued a bench warrant in June, 1989, because he had failed to appear in court to answer a traffic citation. He had been ticketed at 4:25 a.m. one Saturday the month before for driving in San Clemente with a defective headlight.

Bail was set at $190, but Scanlan was never arrested. A traffic court supervisor said Wednesday that the warrant remains in force.

Sheriff’s officials declined to discuss the warrant because they said it might interfere with the district attorney’s investigation into the shooting. Lt. Tom Garner said he was not aware of the warrant and added: “Let’s let the DA do their thing. . . . It’s all part and parcel of (the) Scanlan (case) right now. I won’t make any comment on that.”

Scanlan was also behind more than $10,000 in child-support payments to his ex-wife, court records show.

In addition, records show that two Orange County men filed claims against the county alleging they were victimized by Deputy Scanlan. Such complaints are not uncommon against longtime officers.

One man alleged that Scanlan stole $300 from him during a drug arrest, while a teen-ager claimed that Scanlan used excessive force while detaining him for possessing a false identification.

Deputy Scanlan denied wrongdoing in both cases. The claims, both filed in 1990, were rejected after county investigations found no evidence of misconduct.

Andrew C. Howe, 32, of Fountain Valley was arrested Nov. 17, 1990, on drug charges after Deputy Scanlan said he saw Howe with cocaine in his hand as he sat in the passenger seat of a car in the parking lot of an El Toro bar.

In a claim filed the following month, Howe said Scanlan stole his wallet containing $270 and $30 in cash in his jeans pocket and other minor items in his wallet during the arrest.

“Investigation disclosed no negligence on behalf of the County of Orange,” read the county’s February, 1991, letter to Howe notifying him that his claim had been rejected.

In the second complaint, 19-year-old Keith Pearson of El Toro accused Scanlan of abusing him during a stop in July, 1990, for skateboarding and disturbing the peace

Pearson alleged Scanlan forced him against a patrol car and began kneeing him in the behind several times “to the point my feet left the ground.” Pearson also claimed that Scanlan handcuffed him so tightly he was bruised for days.

“He (threw) me in the back of his car and when I was telling him he must have the wrong person, he told me to shut up or he will beat me up because his fellow officers were not around to see,” Pearson wrote in the complaint.

Pearson was later issued a ticket for illegally possessing a false identification.

Scanlan told investigators that he never physically abused Pearson, but said Pearson began kicking and struggling as the officer tried to detain him. Scanlan said he used his knee to hold the suspect against the hood of the patrol car while he was handcuffed.

The county rejected his claim for $5,000 in damages.

These two claims came in addition to a lawsuit in which Scanlan and a group of other deputies are accused of roughing up two young men outside a party held in 1991 at Scanlan’s Dana Point home. The lawsuit also alleges that the deputies conspired to file false reports and demonstrated a pattern of “racial bigotry.”

But lawyers for the deputies say the plaintiffs were gang members who challenged the officers and initiated the confrontation. Trial is set for February.

Thomas E. Beck, a Los Angeles lawyer who is representing the two plaintiffs, portrayed Scanlan in an interview Wednesday as one of the chief culprits.

“He turns out to be the heavy in the case,” Beck alleged. “He’s the guy that had the party, he’s the guy that did the most amount of beating, he’s the one that did the lying (in later police reports), he’s the one everyone’s covering for.”

Beck asserted that a “code of silence” in law enforcement encouraged deputies on the scene to cover up for one another, and he cautioned that Orange County prosecutors should not let such secrecy in the ranks taint the Robins investigation. “The easiest way (for deputies) to absent themselves as witnesses is to claim they weren’t there,” he said.

Scanlan is scheduled to give a deposition in Beck’s case next week.

Scanlan grew up in a family of cops, and he became interested in law enforcement as a child, said his older brother, Michael. His father, Dennis, was on the Long Beach police force in the 1960s, and Michael is now a sergeant there.

Scanlan, who is 6 foot 7 inches tall and weighs about 270 pounds, was a field-goal kicker on the varsity football team for two years at Millikan High School in Long Beach.

“He was a nice, even-headed guy,” said Robb Whitaker of Long Beach, who played tight end with Scanlan in high school. “He was a place kicker, so some of the guys thought he was kind of dorky, but I always liked him. He was just a nice guy.”

He kept kicking field goals even after high school, earning a write-up in the press in 1989 when his 45-yard field goal won a game for the Sheriff’s Department over the Santa Ana Police team.

He mainly kept to himself on the team, remembered Brent Giudice, a former deputy who played with Scanlan on the team. “He was kind of quiet, never really stood out in front or tried to be a team leader,” said Giudice, who now works as a marshal in Santa Ana.

Scanlan joined the U.S. Army after graduating from Millikan in 1979. After about four years in the military, he spent another year and a half in civilian jobs before attending training as a police officer and joining the Sheriff’s Department, Michael Scanlan said.

Family members said Scanlan and Robins were close friends who had each been with the Sheriff’s Department for eight years.

Scanlan and his first wife, Lyndy, divorced in 1986 after four years of marriage, but Scanlan told the court he could not pay $500 a month in support payments for his two children. Court records show the district attorney’s office sought to have the payments taken out of his paychecks after he had fallen $10,850 behind in payments.

About two months ago, Scanlan married a fellow sheriff’s deputy, Stacey Taylor.

Michael Scanlan said the shooting involving his brother just proves that good cops can make mistakes, even fatal ones. And while the risks of police work are familiar to the Scanlan family, Michael Scanlan said he never imagined a scenario like this one.

“You think about getting shot by a crook, you don’t really think about the accidental shooting,” he said.

Brian Scanlan is out of town until next week and has been advised by an attorney, as well as by the sheriff and the district attorney’s office, not to talk to the media, family members said. Even relatives have been told to keep quiet about what happened that Christmas afternoon in the theater lot.

“I’d like to help you out. I think if the public knew everything that was going on it would generate more sympathy for him,” Michael Scanlan said. “But I can’t.”

Times staff writers Jesse Katz and Greg Hernandez and correspondent Frank Messina contributed to this report.