Payout Ignores Issue of Responsibility

* How many Orange County bankruptcies before we hold elected officials responsible for discretionary spending of millions of tax dollars? From the story, “Amount of Settlement, Gates’ Role Questioned,” (Dec. 6) we find supervisors automatically pass decisions like this to staff.

The right thing is being done in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. With their patrol car’s video unaccountably aimed [in] another direction, then-Sheriff’s Deputy Brian P. Scanlan shot his partner, Deputy Darryn Leroy Robins, at point blank range on Christmas Day 1993. He is the “field training officer” who killed with a loaded unauthorized gun in what he claimed was an impromptu “exercise” behind a Lake Forest movie theater. Scanlan’s action cost Rosemary Robins, her husband; Melissa Robins, her father; and Mildred Fisher, her son.

The millions of dollars is monetary acknowledgment of those losses, but the award says nothing about responsibility. The sheriff, the district attorney and their lap dog county grand jury absolved the shooter and themselves of even a penny’s responsibility to say nothing of millions of dollars’ worth.

The millions of dollars do not ding the sheriff’s ample budget, but it crashes into payment of claims to county bankruptcy creditors and victims. And no elected official--sheriff, district attorney or supervisor--has to lift a finger, justify the expenditure or explain to the taxpayer if any steps will be taken to lessen the chance of such awards in the future.

One would think the county grand jury--so full of lessons--would find some to draw for our millions of dollars. The current panel is too busy trying to keep up with the district attorney’s finger-pointing about who did what, when [and] where--if at all--in the county bankruptcy. By next month, the district attorney will tell the new jurors that it is all ancient history. He has a stake in that view. We hope they won’t believe him.

AMIN DAVID

Chair

Los Amigos of Orange County

Anaheim