Jury Award Does Little to Ease the Pain in Police Beating Case

Ruben Gallegos, his wife, Rebecca, and four friends and family members ought to be happy. Or at least relieved. They’re $315,000 richer. A Los Angeles Superior Court jury last month ordered the city of Montebello to compensate them for the excessive force that Montebello policemen used four years ago in breaking up a family dinner party.

It was neither a Rodney G. King-like beating nor a Rodney G. King-like award. But the bruises inside, the ones you can’t measure, will not go away.

And so there is no laughter and little relief in the Gallegos household, which has become two separate households because of the tension that has eaten away at Ruben and Rebecca. Nothing seems to make them whole.

It wasn’t just the shock of being beaten and pushed by police who ruined their farewell dinner before a Mexican vacation. It was being thrown in jail, treated like criminals, when they believed they had done nothing wrong. It was missing work for court days and eventually getting fired. It was being kicked out of their apartment by a manager who grew tired of reporters. It was seeing their marriage evaporate simply because neither spouse felt the same way--about themselves or each other.

“It was crazy,” says Ruben Gallegos, 36, a card club chef. “Like any other couples we have our problems; nobody’s perfect. But after this incident the whole thing just became bad luck. My temper--I changed and my attitude was just different.

“We couldn’t sleep anymore, couldn’t even make nothing in bed,” he says. “I would always think to myself, ‘This is where I got beat up and I am sleeping here?’ It would be 2 o’clock in the morning and I am still thinking, seeing these officers here in my bedroom.”

For Rebecca, 32, who now works as a payroll clerk, the pain and lasting effects of the beating on the marriage were also too much to endure.

“We just split; I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said, shaking her head. “I feel like four years of my life was wasted. We didn’t go anywhere; our lives just stopped and went down. And even though we were found not guilty and we won the case, we still feel anger. And every time you hear about somebody getting beat up, you remember the whole thing. There’s no end to it.”

The couple say their separation was largely a result of stress from the beating incident and its aftermath. Montebello, which contends that the Gallegoses lied in making their case, is seeking a new trial on behalf of the Police Department and two officers who were named as defendants.

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It happened at a farewell dinner in the Gallegoses’ apartment in a usually quiet, working-class Latino neighborhood in July, 1990. Family and friends, including three small children, had gathered. Ruben and Rebecca were heading to Guadalajara the next morning for a 10-day vacation.

Police were called to the apartment about 11 p.m. after complaints from neighbors of loud music. When Ruben Gallegos opened the front door, he said in an interview, the two officers named in the lawsuit--William Wise and Julio Calleros--forced their way in. The officers testified that, through the kitchen window, they had seen Ruben and his brothers fighting in the kitchen. However, court documents would later show that a wall completely blocked visibility of the kitchen from the outside.

Lupe Padilla, Rebecca’s sister, who works as a secretary in Los Angeles Superior Court, emerged from the back bedroom and accused the officers of breaking the law.

“I asked them about a search warrant to enter the house, and that’s when Officer Wise pushed me,” Padilla said. She said she then was pushed to the ground and grabbed by the arms by the officer. Wise testified that Padilla pushed him first and that he then tried to arrest her. Padilla said she managed to break free from him and hid in a bedroom closet.

Ruben Gallegos said he was angry about the behavior of the officers but still tried to stay calm.

“I told them that they were not supposed to be inside, you need a search warrant, and they became very upset and said, ‘We don’t need no search warrant, just get out of the way.’ ”

Ruben’s younger brother, Enrique, said he intervened in the dispute and told his brother to go into a back bedroom and calm down. After realizing that the officers were steadfast in wanting to search the apartment, Enrique said, he pulled out a camera in hopes of scaring them into stopping. He said one of the officers pushed the camera into his face, knocking him down.

The Gallegoses said the officers put Enrique in a chokehold and arrested him on suspicion of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. Meanwhile, Ruben, who was still in the bedroom, emerged, worried about the commotion he heard.

Ruben said in an interview that he was confronted by Calleros in the hallway and that Calleros hit him in the face. He said other officers ran into the room, began to pummel him with batons and threw him on the floor, while his 9-month-old baby wailed in a crib next to him. Photos taken by the family days after the incident show dark bruises on the arms and head of Ruben, Enrique and another brother, Sergio.

“It was just embarrassing, because we were in the last apartment way in the back and all the other apartments were in the front,” Rebecca Gallegos said. “Everybody was out there looking at us coming out in handcuffs.”

Montebello City Atty. Robert Chavez said the city supports the officers. “If I thought the officers had done anything wrong, I would have settled” the lawsuit without a trial, he said. “But based on the testimony and the evidence, I think the verdict was unjust.”

Wise and Calleros declined to talk about the verdict until the appeal process is over. Their supervisor, Capt. Michael Kight, stood by them.

“We did an internal investigation of the incident, and our investigation found that (the Gallegoses’) allegations were unfounded,” Kight said. Both officers still work for the Police Department.

Padilla and Rebecca Gallegos spent a night in jail. Ruben, Enrique and Sergio Gallegos and a friend of Ruben’s were in Los Angeles County Jail for four days.

The Gallegoses said they didn’t want to lose all the money they had already spent on their Mexico trip, so they decided to use the tickets. But Ruben, still battered from the incident, ended up being hospitalized in Mexico. They returned home only to battle medical and legal bills.

It was two years before the dinner party celebrants were acquitted of criminal charges, in mid-1992, but not before they separated. Life together, they said, had become just too difficult.

Their civil suit--filed on behalf of Rebecca, Ruben and his two brothers, Padilla and Ruben’s friend, Ernesto Victorin--finally went to trial in February. After two weeks of testimony, the jury ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor.

Ruben received the most, $83,000, while Rebecca got $55,000. They and the other four plaintiffs are grateful for the money--which they will receive only when Montebello’s appeals run out--but say it cannot buy peace.

“It’s like a Vietnam syndrome,” said their attorney, Leon Gilbert, who specializes in civil rights cases. “You’re in your house, maybe with your family or whoever you’re with, and then all of a sudden it’s like the Gestapo breaking down your door, coming in your house for no reason, no search warrant. You feel abused and humiliated and you don’t forget it. It’s locked in the brain, and every time you see a police officer, you get a knee-jerk reaction.”