O.C. Sheriff’s Officials Sat In on D.A.’s Probe

Despite Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates’ assurances that his department would step aside during the criminal inquiry into one deputy’s Christmas Day slaying of another, documents reveal that Gates’ investigators sat in on virtually all of the interrogations conducted by the district attorney.

Local black leaders said the disclosure bolstered their claims, until now largely speculative, that the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office worked too closely together to allow local prosecutors to thoroughly investigate the case.

And several legal experts questioned whether the presence of sheriff’s investigators at the interviews might have influenced the statements given by colleagues under questioning.

In many cases, the district attorney’s office questioned deputies about the shooting while a fellow sheriff’s employee looked on a few feet away and often asked questions of his own, according to newly disclosed documents.

“You don’t have to be an Einstein to figure out that candor may be compromised in that situation,” maintained Jennifer Keller, an Orange County defense attorney who serves on a California State Bar panel on criminal law.

“Deputies are rather protective of their colleagues anyway, but having an investigator from your department there (taking part in an interview) means that a deputy who might be willing to talk about certain things won’t do that,” she said.

Gates, however, said in an interview Thursday that he did not believe his investigators’ presence while people were being questioned compromised the district attorney’s investigation in any way. “I don’t believe there’s any conflict with the process that takes place,” he said.

Deputy Brian P. Scanlan shot Deputy Darryn Leroy Robins to death Dec. 25 as they were running through a mock car-stop exercise designed to highlight methods that Los Angeles gang members reportedly use to get the drop on police.

The district attorney’s office says that it recommended to the Orange County Grand Jury earlier this month that Scanlan be indicted for involuntary manslaughter for his “gross negligence” in using a loaded weapon during the exercise, but the grand jury refused. Scanlan remains on paid leave from the Sheriff’s Department pending an internal review.

From the outset, the case has loomed as a potential trouble spot for Gates politically, as he prepared for a reelection campaign for sheriff later this year and flirted briefly with the idea of running for lieutenant governor.

Municipal leaders in Lake Forest demanded to know why deputies were training with a loaded weapon at the parking lot of a public shopping plaza. And minority leaders, questioning whether race may have played a part in the handling of the case, repeatedly called for an independent state or federal investigation. Robins was black, while Scanlan is white.

Gates has sought to avoid the spotlight in the controversy, saying throughout the last three months that his office would play no part in the district attorney’s independent investigation into the case.

In a two-hour January interview with The Times, for instance, Gates pointed out repeatedly that he did not know details of the case, in part because he and his office had little to do with the investigation. Any tips from the public on the investigation were being forwarded to the district attorney, he said, and sheriff’s officials had not even viewed their deputies’ patrol-car videos around the time of the shooting before turning them over to prosecutors.

Gates said sheriff’s officials were anxious to see the district attorney conclude its investigation so that they themselves could get more answers in the case and begin their own internal review.

“We have to wait for the D.A. to finish their work. I don’t know how long that is going to take. We have asked him to move as rapidly as they possibly can,” Gates said at the time.

“We are not the ones doing the investigation,” he added.

And in a press release issued Feb. 17, the Sheriff’s Department said: “The Orange County Sheriff’s Department will continue to remain removed from the investigative process being conducted by the district attorney and the grand jury panel.”

Documents released to the media this week, however, showed that a sheriff’s investigator took part in all 36 interviews that the district attorney’s office conducted with sheriff’s employees on the case to discuss the events of Dec. 25 and broader issues of training and procedure.

A sheriff’s investigator also took part in an interview with a Lake Forest resident who thought she heard a gunshot that day. Of the remaining interviews, a district attorney’s investigator spoke alone with three employees of Saddleback Memorial Medical Center, where Robins was declared dead. Prosecutors did not release transcripts of several other interviews.

In the bulk of these interrogations, three people were present: the person being interviewed, the district attorney’s investigator and the sheriff’s investigator.

The district attorney’s office led the questioning in each case, but the sheriff’s investigator often joined in the questioning.

In the critical interview of Scanlan just hours after the shooting, for instance, sheriff’s investigator Leo Vandor took over the questioning at the interrogation room for several minutes as district attorney’s investigator Mike Major left the room, and he questioned Scanlan at some length about his work history, his gun and his training methods.

Assistant Dist. Atty. John Conley said that having a sheriff’s investigator at an interview helps to provide technical guidance on department matters and should also “promote candor on the part of the (sheriff’s) officer because they’re at ease with a person they know.”

Conley said this arrangement was part of what was considered a “joint investigation” between the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney.

But Gates disputed this characterization, saying the district attorney conducted an “independent” investigation.

Gates said his investigators took part in the interviews in accordance with the terms of a 1985 county policy on the investigation of officer-involved shootings. His department’s investigators reported back to their supervisors, Gates said, but not to him.

But that explanation did not sit well with Eugene Wheeler, who heads a group called 100 Black Men of Orange County and who has helped lead the call for an independent investigation.

“It does bother me, and it verifies our claim that it’s difficult for the two of them (the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office) to separate from one another. This is a recognition of their dilemma--it’s hard to separate Siamese twins,” Wheeler said.

Keller, the defense attorney, said that other counties around the state have recognized the potential “chilling effect” when a police department’s representative is allowed to sit in on an interview with one of its own people, and they have adopted reforms to ensure a “truly independent” probe into alleged wrongdoing.

But Orange County, she said, “has lagged behind in how these things are handled. . . . It’s hard to say in an individual case whether the truth came out, but it sure affects my confidence level.”

And Gregory C. Brown, assistant professor of criminal justice at Chapman University, said the Sheriff’s Department’s role in the investigation presents “a problematic situation” that challenges the independence of the district attorney.

For sheriff’s officials to help interview their own deputies in the Scanlan case, he said, “is like you asking me a question (about my job) and my boss was standing right over your shoulder. It would have to influence me. . . .

“It flies in the face of everything the sheriff has said wasn’t happening, and it really corroborates the arguments the blacks in Orange County have been making all along,” he said.