Frustration, Relief Mark End of O.C. Probe

There were sighs of relief, expressions of frustration and a call for healing.

The Orange County Grand Jury’s decision not to indict sheriff’s deputy Brian P. Scanlan for the fatal shooting of a fellow officer brought a mixed reaction Thursday.

Scanlan and his family could not be reached for comment, and his attorney declined to say anything. But black community leaders who had sought more information about the fatal shooting of Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Darryn Leroy Robins expressed dissatisfaction with the decision reached by the grand jury behind closed doors.

The Dec. 25 shooting death rallied black community activists who had said the lack of information about the shooting of Robins, who was black, by a white colleague, was suspicious in its own right. Now they fear their questions will remain unanswered.

“I am not satisfied, and I believe that many in the community will feel the same way,” said Eugene Wheeler, a health-care administrator who heads a business and civic group called 100 Black Men of Orange County. “We’ve got no official explanation as to what evidence (the grand jury) considered, so it’s hard for us to know.

“We believe that it was not a just decision. They have not released any real information about what happened, and they may never do that. It’s not satisfactory because it’s short in coming and it’s slow in coming.”

Sheriff Brad Gates said he would not second-guess the grand jury. “We’ve all been waiting for this decision to occur,” Gates said, “so we can try to heal the wounds that have occurred because of this tragedy. It’s time for that now.”

A representative of rank-and-file deputies said the grand jury decision puts a painful issue to rest.

“I’m relieved, as I’m sure the vast majority of the Sheriff’s Department will be,” said Robert MacLeod, general manager for the Orange County Deputy Sheriff’s Assn. “This was a great tragedy, not only for the Robins family, but for every member of this department.

“The thought that this portion of the case is concluded and some emotional healing can begin, is very comforting,” he said.

One 19-year veteran sheriff’s deputy, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said the department has been grieving both for the loss of Robins and the emotional devastation Scanlan has suffered.

“Darryn Robins is dead, and that is horrible, but Brian Scanlan’s life will never be the same again,” he said. “Two lives have been ruined.

“This was something that never should have happened, but by no means was this something that was planned, or something that was done as a result of somebody being black, or somebody being Asian, or somebody being anything. This was a training situation that went bad,” he said.

“It’s so distasteful when people try to make this into something that it’s not so they can get attention, so they can have a forum to speak about other problems.”

Garden Grove Police Chief Stanley L. Knee said he was glad to see the case finally resolved. He said that a “lack of information” on the case had fueled concerns among the public, and the decision may help resolve some of those worries.

“Any time there is a police officer involved in a shooting, it’s a tragic situation, so I think there’ll be many people who’ll be relieved that it’s finally over,” Knee said.

Knee said he couldn’t comment on the grand jury decision itself, because there aren’t “more than a handful” of people who know enough about what happened at the parking lot that day. But, he said, “I trust the system, and I feel the grand jury, from its past history, has looked at this case fairly and reached a decision based on what was in their heart and what the law allows.”

Wheeler and others critical of the way the investigation was handled were careful not to pin their anger on members of the grand jury. But, they said, the grand jury’s racial makeup--predominantly white--and the fact that it takes instructions from the district attorney’s office, may have clouded its ability to properly examine the facts in the case.

“The person who advises the grand jury is a (prosecutor) from the D.A.’s office,” Wheeler said. “He has a great influence on that jury, so is that independent?

“The D.A.’s office is the one that investigated the case. They didn’t need the grand jury to investigate the case,” Wheeler said. “If they wanted an indictment, why didn’t they (charge) him?”

In announcing the grand jury’s decision, Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi noted that his office had recommended that Scanlan be indicted for involuntary manslaughter.

“We wanted to see if 19 citizens (on the grand jury) would agree with our evaluation,” he said in a statement. “The grand jury did not, and we respect their collective wisdom.”

Capizzi was unavailable for further comment.

Wheeler said he met with members of the grand jury’s criminal committee about a month ago and came away feeling that some of them thought his concerns about possible racial undertones in the shooting--and what he felt was a cover-up of the facts surrounding the case--were “paranoid.”

“I did not come out of that meeting feeling comfortable that we would get anything out of it, but I dismissed those feelings as my own personal bias,” Wheeler said. “But today it hit me in the face.”

Jim Colquitt, president of the Orange County chapter of the NAACP, said, “The NAACP’s position was, ‘Somebody did something wrong.’ We don’t know whether it was policy, but somebody doing something wrong caused the incident, and when I say incident, I mean it wasn’t an accident.

“The way it was handled made it look like there was something wrong, whether there was or not. We can only hope that the grand jury got everything that they needed.”

Several black community leaders said they hoped the grand jury would take a broader look at whether institutionalized problems with the Sheriff’s Department’s training procedures contributed to the shooting, and whether broader problems exist within the district attorney’s office and Sheriff’s Department that inhibited the investigation.

Randall Jordan, the publisher the Black Orange, a publication for Orange County’s African American community, who had called for an independent investigation into the shooting, said he plans to canvass the community in the coming days and decide whether to take further action.

“I assume that the grand jury followed the letter of the law, and that with what they were presented they came up with a legally binding decision that Brian Scanlan was not criminally or grossly negligent,” Jordan said. “But I don’t understand their conclusion. I am disappointed.”

According to political consultants, the grand jury’s decision should create little if any political fallout for the reelection campaigns of Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates or Capizzi.

“This is a tragedy, and everyone feels bad about it, but I don’t think everyone believes that (the shooting) was done purposely,” said political consultant Harvey Englander. “Certainly, there was a violation of procedures, and the deputy who did it will probably be punished severely, if not taken off the force.”

Another political consultant, Mark Q. Thompson, said that most voters will ask themselves if any justice would have been served by an indictment.

“It’s not the typical drug creep or rapist who maliciously did something,” Thompson said. “I don’t think anyone is going to be outraged.”

Colquitt, of the NAACP, said he has an envelope full of letters and telephone messages from people who contend there was more to the case than publicly revealed. He said he is convinced that neither Gates nor Capizzi pushed the investigation to its fullest extent.

But Colquitt said he is equally convinced that it will not matter to Orange County voters.

“I don’t think they went against the old (political) custom in Orange County. . . . I don’t think there will be any backlash,” Colquitt said. “(Scanlan) has committed a gross error by taking another person’s life. It cannot be innocence.”

NEXT STEP

The grand jury’s decision not to indict Sheriff’s Deputy Brian P. Scanlan in the Dec. 25 shooting death of fellow Deputy Darryn Leroy Robins closed one key chapter in the case, but several steps still remain:

* Scanlan’s job status: Scanlan remains on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a Sheriff’s Department inquiry into the case to determine what if any disciplinary action should be taken against him.

Sheriff’s officials have already acknowledged that Scanlan appeared to have violated department policy by using a loaded weapon during a training exercise, and they say they have begun “reinforcing” existing regulations in the minds of their officers.

* Litigation: Members of Robins’ family said in December, just days after the shooting, that they did not intend to pursue a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department or anyone else over the shooting. But family members have refused to discuss the case in recent weeks.

* State or federal investigations: A coalition of minority leaders in Orange County, unsatisfied by the handing of the investigation by local authorities, have called repeatedly for a separate and independent investigation into the shooting.

Their efforts have been rebuffed to date, but officials at both the state attorney general’s office and the U.S. Justice Department have held out the possibility that they might review the case once local authorities had completed their work.