Rights Suit Involving Police Photos Is Settled : Law enforcement: ACLU, Garden Grove department OK new policy concerning suspicion of gang activity.

In a federal case followed closely by law enforcement agencies statewide, the Garden Grove Police Department has agreed to settle a lawsuit by a group of young Asian Americans who contended their civil rights were violated when officers photographed them as suspected gang members based merely on their ethnicity and attire.

In addition to paying the plaintiffs $85,000, the department agreed that, without written consent, officers will no longer photograph persons they detain temporarily unless there is “reasonable suspicion” that the detainees were engaged in a “criminal activity.”

Under new police policies being adopted as part of the settlement, officers also will be required to provide a written narrative of the facts giving rise to their reasonable suspicion, and must provide information on why they believe the detainee was involved in a crime or suspicious incident.

The class-action lawsuit was brought on behalf of young Vietnamese Americans residing in Orange County’s Little Saigon, after two high school honor students complained that police snapped their pictures, then falsely accused them of being gang members, solely because of their ancestry and their fondness for baggy pants and tight-fitting blouses.

Under a comprehensive settlement between the police and the American Civil Liberties Union, the Garden Grove department also will allow persons who have had their pictures taken involuntarily to challenge the police action and have their pictures purged from police files if circumstances warrant. If a challenge is denied by the police chief, it is automatically forwarded to a three-member panel that will review the decision.

Although both sides have agreed to the terms of the settlement, U.S. District Judge William D. Keller in Los Angeles on Monday delayed its final approval, saying he wanted the parties to submit briefs about his role in approving the agreement’s provisions.

Attorneys for both the ACLU and the Police Department praised the new procedures, saying they would protect people’s constitutional rights while allowing police to continue their efforts to suppress violent street gangs.

“Before this settlement, innocent people were being caught in the net,” said Mark Silverstein, an ACLU lawyer who helped craft the agreement ending the suit. “The new procedures will instead focus the attention on the people who are actually committing gang-related crimes.”

The agreement could have broader implications for police departments trying to balance individual civil rights and community safety.

Bruce Praet, a lawyer who represented the Garden Grove department, said the lawsuit was closely monitored by police agencies throughout California. “A lot of other police departments in the state can now use this settlement to tailor their policies,” said Praet, who represents about three dozen police departments across California.

“The fact that the ACLU has looked at Garden Grove and determined its procedures pass muster is somewhat reassuring that police can continue our practice without fear of litigation.”

Police departments across the nation for decades have photographed people they regard with suspicion, but the practice of stopping suspected gang members and taking their pictures has become more widespread as the gang population has mushroomed.

Police officers have long been required to have some “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity before taking someone’s photograph, but the Garden Grove settlement adds the further requirement that they provide a contemporaneous written explanation why.

Monday’s settlement involved a lawsuit filed on behalf of Minh Tram Tran and Quyen Pham, who were both 15 years old in July 1993 when they had their pictures taken by police outside a Garden Grove shopping strip where they were waiting for a ride.

The girls said investigators accused them of wanting to cause trouble and ordered them to stand against a wall where they were each photographed with a Polaroid camera. The police, they said, took down information on their age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, home addresses and schools they attended. Neither of the girls was ever charged with a crime or cited in connection with the stop.

The girls took their case to the ACLU, which--with the backing of groups such as the Alliance for Children’s Rights and law firms from Los Angeles and Philadelphia--decided to challenge the Police Department’s practices. Three other youths also were brought into the lawsuit as plaintiffs.

Under the settlement agreement, the five will receive letters from Garden Grove Police Chief Stanley L. Knee apologizing for “any misunderstanding or inconvenience your contact with our department might have caused.”

The five also will share in the $85,000 that the Police Department agreed to pay.

Knee referred calls for comment to Praet, the Police Department’s attorney, who said the department’s decision to settle was “purely [a question of] economics.”

Praet said ACLU lawyers in the case had put thousands of documents relating to police stops by Garden Grove officers “under a microscope.”

“With this as a potential class-action suit, if a jury had at some point decided that even 1% of these cases did not meet the reasonable suspicion standard [to justify a stop], then we could be facing some damages,” he said.

Praet said the department also did not object to the ACLU randomly monitoring its gang suppression unit because “we have nothing to hide.”

Said Praet: “We have not given up the right to take photographs in the field or to maintain photographs and gang files. We’ve retained the right to aggressively suppress violent gangs.”

Police departments say the maintenance of files on gangs is an important tool in their gang-suppression efforts. Some photos in these files have been used later to solve crimes, they say.

Police routinely follow a mental checklist to determine whether a person is a gang member. The list includes an admission of gang membership, residence in an area populated by gangs and dress that includes gang clothes or tattoos. Police also rely on tips from informants to identify someone as a gang member.

But civil libertarians challenge those standards, questioning who determines the changing fashion of gang wear and what happens if an ex-gang member is stuck with the former gang’s tattoo.

The 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana weighed in on the matter two years ago when it criticized a photo stop of a young Latino man by the Orange Police Department. The photo was later used to identify the detainee, Mynor Arnold Rodriguez, as the gunman in the shooting death of a Corona man.

Rodriguez’s murder conviction could have been threatened because of the unconstitutional stop, but the court found that he had also been identified by other means.

“The guarantees of the 4th Amendment do not allow stopping and demanding identification from an individual without any specific basis for believing he is involved in criminal activity,” the three-judge appeals panel wrote. “Mere membership in a street gang is not a crime.”

Last year, the case involving the Asian teens rallied Asian leaders who formed a watchdog group called Copwatch to monitor police activities countywide.

On Monday, several community leaders praised the decision to settle.

Kenneth Inouye, a Huntington Beach resident who heads the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said he and other Asian parents were relieved on learning about some of the new procedures.

“Now there will be a disincentive for police to stop innocent people,” Inouye said. “But we’re still a little saddened by the fact that it took a lawsuit for reasonable people to come together and understand that all residents should enjoy the protections of the law.”

Activists in the Vietnamese community said they too were pleased with the settlement.

“At least now [Garden Grove police] know that they cannot just discriminate against Asian youths,” said Kim Ha of the Alliance Working for Asian Rights Empowerment. “What they did--pull innocent teenagers over for no reason and take their pictures--is not right. This is a strong message to the police: ‘You cannot use the color of authority to threaten people, especially minority groups,’ ” she said.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this story.

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Suit Settlement

The ACLU and Garden Grove police have agreed to settle a lawsuit challenging the police practice of stopping suspected gang members and taking their photographs for files and mug books. Some key aspects of the settlement:

* Detainees must knowingly and voluntarily consent in writing.

* Photograph must serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

* Knowledge/suspicion of gang membership or affiliation, without more information, is insufficient justification for uncontested photograph; there must be factual indication detainee was involved in criminal conduct.

* If reasonable suspicion of criminal activity has been dispelled, no photograph may be taken without consent, and no detention shall be made for sole purpose of taking a photograph.

* In collecting information for its “field interview” cards, which are placed in gang-related files, officers must now:

Enter time the stop was initiated and time it ended.

Describe detainee’s clothing and name of affiliated gang; if gang affiliation is denied, officers cannot make further inquiry on that subject.

State facts that gave rise to reasonable suspicion in a new five-line narrative.

Provide information relating detainee to a particular type of crime or incident; all field interview cards must be approved by supervisors.

Provide citizens opportunity to file a request with police chief to have their field interviews and photographs purged from police files. If chief declines, three-member panel of chief’s volunteers forum will review decision.

* In addition to revising procedures, the Police Department will:

Pay $85,000 to five Asian youths who brought the lawsuit and their attorneys.

Purge plaintiffs’ photos and negatives from files.

Destroy all field photographs taken before Dec. 21, 1993, except those connected to a specific criminal case.

Train all officers in new procedures within next six months.

Make available details of review process to public secondary schools within Garden Grove.

Allow ACLU to randomly review information taken about suspected gang members.

Not ask juveniles to produce immigration documents such as green cards.

Observe revised rules on wallet searches: If officer has cause to search suspect’s wallet, officers may not examine photographs of detainee’s friends or personal writing on photo backs.

Source: U.S. District Court, Los Angeles

Researched by DAVAN MAHARAJ / Los Angeles Times