Brothers Win $105,000 in O.C. Police Suit

A jury on Thursday awarded almost $105,000 to two brothers who said they were assaulted by three Huntington Beach Police officers in what the trial judge called an “unlawful” violation of the brothers’ constitutional rights.

The award came after Orange County Superior Court Judge Logan Moore took the unusual step of halting the jury trial and issuing a verdict in favor of Roberto Ayala Garcia, 38, and his brother Miguel, 30. The judge then asked jurors to decide how much money the Garcias should receive in damages.

The Garcias accused the officers of pointing pistols at them before handcuffing and assaulting them outside their apartment in 1988. The police had come to retrieve a woman’s belongings from the home, and the Garcias were not charged with a crime.

The jury’s foreman, Larry Hamlin, said Thursday most jurors considered the officers’ actions “absolutely outrageous.”

“This scares the hell out of me,” said Hamlin, a truck driver who lives in Orange. “They used Gestapo tactics against these guys. It is my personal feeling that they were treated that way because they were poor Mexican Americans. If it was in my white neighborhood, they would not have done that.”

Hamlin said he and some other jurors wanted to give the Garcias more money, but they could not get the group to agree. “If (the Garcias) were white like me, if it was like Larry Hamlin and my brother, it would have been one heck of a lot more than they got,” he said, adding that he wanted to give each $200,000.

Huntington Beach Mayor Linda Moulton-Patterson said she was “very surprised” by the award. She defended the officers involved, saying they had gone to assist in “a domestic violence situation where a woman was in danger.” The mayor said, “We have a fair police department, they are trained in sensitivity to this type of matter and they wouldn’t operate like that at all.”

She said the city will decide soon whether to appeal the verdict.

Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg did not return calls Thursday evening.

*

The brothers sued the city and Officers Thomas Trembley, Steven Overcast and Raymond Villescas after the 1988 incident at the Garcias’ apartment on Beach Boulevard.

According to the lawsuit, a woman identified as Laura Casto, who was romantically involved with Roberto Garcia, had moved out of the apartment a few days before, leaving behind some clothes.

The Garcias said they allowed Casto into the apartment on June 16, 1988, to retrieve her clothes, but later that day the woman called police to report that Roberto Garcia was “a big dope dealer, that he was always armed and that he had lots of guns in the apartment,” according to lawsuit.

At about 6:45 p.m., Casto met the three police officers outside the apartment. A police employee telephoned the Garcias and ordered the older brother to step outside. When Roberto Garcia went to the front door, he said, he saw the three officers pointing pistols at him. He was then handcuffed, searched and roughed up.

The officers asked him to call out his brother, Miguel, who was frisked and handcuffed. The Garcias said they were placed on the ground, still handcuffed, while the officers went inside their home with Laura Casto. The officers then searched the apartment and left after removing the brothers’ handcuffs.

No police report was filed and there was no subsequent investigation, according to court testimony.

“I kept asking them, ‘Why? Why are you doing this to me?’ ” Roberto Garcia, a truck driver, said Thursday. “There is no word to explain the feeling when I was down with my face on the ground. I wouldn’t treat my dog that way.”

Roberto Garcia complained to then-Huntington Beach Police Chief Grover (Bill) Payne about the officers’ conduct. Payne later wrote the Garcias that an internal investigation revealed that “police department regulation was violated by one of our employees, (resulting) in the imposition of disciplinary action.” The letter did not identify who was disciplined.

At the end of a three-day trial, Judge Moore ruled in favor of a motion by the Garcias’ attorney, Jerry L. Steering, for a directed verdict--a seldom-used procedure that effectively takes the case away from the jury and leaves it for the judge to decide.

In a statement read to the jurors, Moore said the officers unlawfully entered the Garcias’ apartment and illegally detained them.

“Accordingly, any and all of the force used by the police officers upon the plaintiffs was . . . unlawful and unreasonable,” said Moore, a retired Municipal Court judge on contract with the Superior Court.

Moore said his verdict “simply means that whether the version of the police officers is true, or whether the version of the plaintiff is true, I have determined that there was a constitutional violation.”

The jury deliberated on damages for two days, voting 10-2 on Thursday to give Roberto Garcia $43,600, and Miguel Garcia, $61,188. The younger brother received more compensatory damage because he said he was recuperating from a back injury when police arrested him and pushed him onto the ground, aggravating his injury.

In a civil trial, a majority of jurors must agree on an award, unlike criminal cases where the decision must be unanimous.

Some legal experts said it was uncommon for a judge to issue a directed verdict in such a case.

“I’m shocked,” said Ronald Talmo, a professor at Western State University College of Law’s Irvine campus. “This means there was simply no (sound) evidence for the defense. (They) had no case whatsoever and didn’t recognize it.”

Hamlin, the jury foreman, and others said that the jury, even the two people who voted against awarding any money to the Garcias, was relieved by Moore’s directed verdict.

“I thought the judge’s decision was rather helpful,” said Beverly Roberge, a 61-year-old Tustin Ranch resident and one of the two dissenting jurors.

Roberge said she voted against giving the brothers any money because “as a taxpayer, I don’t think it was worth any monetary award. The woman who caused the entire problem was the one who should have been on trial. The police just took her word.”

*

Hamlin, the jury foreman, said he and other jurors felt the incident could have been avoided if the officers had simply asked the Garcias to allow Casto to retrieve her belongings.

Attorney Michael Emling, who represented the city, described the officers as “three fine cops,” saying they reacted the way they did because it was a “fairly risky situation. When you have the dimension of guns and narcotics (in a report), police have a real problem on their hands.”

Trembley has since retired with a back injury. Overcast and Villescas are still with the department, Emling said.

“We fought the good fight and we lost,” Emling said. “It is way too big a jury verdict for this case.”

Steering, the Garcias’ attorney, said the brothers were never a threat to police.

Outside the courtroom Thursday, the brothers hugged their attorney and told him they were happy that the case was over.

“This should never have happened,” Miguel Garcia said. “I respect everyone. Why can’t they respect me the same way?”