Beatings Spur U.S. Investigation and a National Debate

Federal authorities Tuesday began investigating possible criminal charges against two Riverside County sheriff’s deputies captured on videotape clubbing two suspected illegal immigrants--while a national debate erupted about whom to blame more, the baton-wielding officers or the fleeing Mexicans.

The 15-second beating touched off a sort of national soul-searching. From the governor’s mansion to the White House, from radio talk shows to FBI conference rooms, emotional questions about institutional racism, police brutality, illegal immigration and high-speed chases coalesced into a passionate discussion.

“This is an international incident,” Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez said, noting that the tape has aired around the world. “It is our country’s image that’s at stake. It’s our country’s soul that is being judged.”

The two deputies involved in the incident--Kurt Franklin, a 20-year veteran of the force, and Tracy Watson, a five-year veteran--remained on paid administrative leave while the U.S. Justice Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigated their actions.

Franklin and Watson were captured on videotape Monday beating two occupants of a rusty blue pickup truck that had evaded a border checkpoint and led law enforcement officials on a wild 80-mile chase. The video, shot by hovering television news helicopters, showed other passengers bolting from the truck and dashing for cover in a nearby plant nursery.

Law enforcement officials captured 19 of the runaways, including the two beating victims. But they acknowledged Tuesday that they may not have found everyone. Trees near the Peck Road offramp in South El Monte, where the chase ended, may have shielded some of the escapees.

“We got most of them, but not all of them,” said Rosemary Melville, deputy director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Los Angeles district. “We’re not even sure we have the driver in our custody.”

Watson, who cracked his baton first on a cringing man and then on a woman crawling out of the truck window, was investigated last July after shooting and seriously wounding a suspected car thief in the city of Corona. In that case, Watson opened fire after warning the alleged thief several times to put up his hands or be shot, Corona Police Sgt. Jim Raasveld said. Witnesses said the suspect appeared to reach down to grab something just before Watson began shooting. Riverside County prosecutors investigated the shooting and found it justified.

Longtime deputy Franklin--who struck the woman once as she lay on the ground--has a reputation in the largely Latino neighborhood he patrols as a heavy-handed officer, several local activists said.

“He’s known for roughing up Mexican Americans and harassing the hell out of them,” said Gilbert Chavez, director of the Centro de Aztlan.

Media Criticized

Franklin’s attorney expressed outrage at the community’s “rush to judgment.” John D. Barnett, who represented one of the Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King five years ago, blasted the press and public officials for assuming guilt before the investigation has begun.

“It’s just shocking that so many people would fail freshman civics and be so willing to be so certain of an opinion which is based on incomplete evidence,” Barnett said.

The evidence that trickled in Tuesday included sometimes-conflicting reports from the INS, the Mexican Consulate, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and private lawyers working with the immigrants. Most of the 19 detainees were being held in the Los Angeles Federal Building as potential witnesses.

Leticia Gonzalez Gonzalez, 32, was treated at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital for a contusion apparently caused by the beating and also for an underlying disease, believed to be cancer, Melville said. Her attorney, David Ross, said Gonzalez told him she felt that “someone was trying to kill her” after she clambered out the truck window, apparently because the passenger-side door was stuck.

“She was beaten so badly she has practically been in shock,” Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, the consul general of Mexico, told a press conference after Gonzalez was released from custody.

Gonzalez’s companion, Enrique Funes, was clubbed when he tried to come to her aid as she struggled with the door. Even as the other men fled from the pickup, Funes scrambled around the side, where Watson met him with the baton. The deputy struck Funes about the back and shoulders. Funes hunched as though to shield himself, then fell to the ground as the blows continued. He was briefly treated for unspecified injuries.

As the video spooled over and over on television sets everywhere, public outrage bounced from fury at the illegal immigrants to outrage at the beatings to fear about an upsurge in racism. The incident tugged into a single, vexing whole the issues that have preoccupied Californians for years, and that now top agendas in Congress as well.

“Our law enforcement agencies need to get the message they don’t have a license to use excessive force on defenseless people,” Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre said.

But many critics had little sympathy for the immigrants, who apparently sneaked across the border Friday night looking for work in California’s agricultural fields. Indeed, they blamed the Mexicans for breaking the law, ignoring the police and endangering lives by swerving down the freeways in a rickety truck at speeds of up to 75 mph.

“[Their pickup] was a rolling death trap, crammed with people and speeding down the freeway in a reckless manner,” said Ira Mehlman, a Los Angeles spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Riverside County sheriff’s deputies said that the overcrowded pickup tried to ram two cars and that the immigrants tossed beer cans at them during the pursuit. The pickup’s camper shell flew off during the chase, which started on Interstate 15 and moved onto the Pomona Freeway.

Fled From Checkpoint

Border Patrol officers tried three times to stop the pickup truck near the Temecula checkpoint. But the driver, who has not been identified, defiantly kept going. So the Border Patrol called on the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to pursue the pickup. Border Patrol officers stopped chasing suspected illegal immigrants after a 1992 pursuit ended in tragedy when a van carrying illegal immigrants crashed near a Temecula school, killing six people.

Citing the potential for such fatal crashes, critics have long called for police agencies to be very selective in using high-speed chases. Monday’s beating provided new fodder for that debate, as the American Civil Liberties Union’s Southern California chapter called for law enforcement agencies nationwide to design new training and implementation policies to make high-speed pursuits safer.

Far too often, spokesman Allan Parachini said, an adrenaline rush pumps up officers so high that “literally, the cops can’t stop when the chase does.” Instead, they continue their aggressive pursuit with nightsticks or gun butts after they have collared their suspects, Parachini said.

“That may explain why the [deputies] were inexplicably oblivious to the fact that two helicopters were hovering above them” during the brief beating, Parachini added.

The powerful emotional punch of the videos shot from the helicopters--both the deputies’ blows and the other immigrants’ flight--ricocheted across the country, and over the border as well.

President Clinton called the Justice Department to express his concern over the incident. Gov. Pete Wilson issued a statement urging Californians not to let the beating damage their trust in law enforcement.

Callers to radio station KLSX--who tend to be upscale white men in their 20s and early 30s--agreed with the disc jockeys that drivers should pull over when police signal, program manager Perry Michael Simon said. “If you choose to hit the accelerator rather than the brakes, then you should pretty much expect whatever happens next.”

But rock station KPWR racked up calls from listeners who emphasized that the immigrants were frightened human beings who deserved humane treatment. Host Corie Esquivel read one fax that said: “Regardless of what they had done . . . they didn’t deserve to be treated like that.”

In Mexico City, many agreed, watching the violent video with disgust and sorrow. One taxi driver called it typical of the anti-Mexican sentiment in America known as “Mexico bashing.” Mexico’s government filed a formal protest with Washington, expressing indignation at the treatment of its citizens.

An official statement from Mexico’s foreign ministry warned that the incident could crank up international tensions. “The obvious abuse of authority demonstrated in this case confirms the urgent need to take firm action to eradicate discriminatory attitudes that lead to institutional violence,” it added.

Yet to some critics, “obvious abuse” was committed not only by the deputies but also by the smuggler who piled at least 19 people into his rickety pickup, then thumbed his nose at authorities.

“Whether you’re legal or illegal, these were still human beings who should not be treated as caged parrots,” said Harold Ezell, former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for the western U.S.

“The Mexican government should be saying from the housetops that smugglers are mistreating the citizens of [their] nation, not saying that these two deputies are mistreating all the Mexican citizens who come here illegally,” Ezell said.

The federal investigation launched Tuesday began when FBI officials picked up a copy of the videotape. Federal officials said they will work with Los Angeles County investigators in the probe.

“It is important that the public have confidence that any rights which may have been violated--state, federal or local--be vindicated,” U.S. Atty. Nora Manella said.

Long before investigators have decided whether to file any charges against the Riverside deputies, many commentators have already drawn parallels between the King case and Monday’s beating.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who represents the east San Fernando Valley district where four LAPD officers were taped beating and kicking King in 1991, said Monday’s video “stirred the cup of coffee again,” piquing the same feelings of shock and trauma that emerged after the King case.

“It’s like deja vu all over again,” Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson said. “We were naive to think the Rodney King case would solve the problem of police abuse. It’s a much bigger problem than one case. . . . You have to take these issues very seriously. The federal involvement sends a strong message to the community that this will be taken care of and not whitewashed.”

But Levenson also pointed out that the Riverside deputies might have a stronger defense than the LAPD officers found guilty of violating King’s civil rights. Not only was the beating shorter, it was also less violent. King was shot twice with a Taser stun gun and suffered a concussion and broken bones. In contrast, Monday’s victims required only brief medical treatment, although the full extent of their injuries was not disclosed.

Furthermore, Levenson said, the Riverside deputies had few backups around when they approached the two suspected illegal immigrants. “The fewer the officers, the stronger the defense argument that they had a reasonable belief they had to resort to force because they didn’t have the manpower to handle the situation differently,” Levenson said.

While reserving judgment pending the investigation, Dan Swift, president of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Assn., said Tuesday: “We are 100% behind our deputies. The department is expected to investigate allegations of force, but so far the facts aren’t in. All we have is 15 seconds of videotape and a whole lot of excitement.”

Like Franklin, Watson has hired an attorney who defended one of the LAPD officers involved with the King case: Michael P. Stone.

As in the King case, concerns about racism have swirled around the Riverside incident.

Dozens of Latinos demonstrated outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning, declaring the beating an example of “institutional violence against the Latino community.”

And a group representing 15 civil rights groups blamed the incident on anti-immigrant sentiment that has exploded across the nation. Roberto Lovato, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, said Gov. Wilson “and all others who promote and fan the flames of anti-immigrant sentiment . . . are ultimately responsible for this.”

“This is what gave these officers permission in their minds . . . to do what they did with impunity,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of MultiCultural Collaborative.

But Riverside County Assistant Dist. Atty. Randy Tamagi insisted that the taped clubbing “is not a racial issue. It is an incident that arose from a stressful situation.”

The ACLU has criticized the Sheriff’s Department for “woefully deficient” efforts to diversify its force. Only 13% of its sworn officers are Latino, according to a 2-year-old ACLU survey, in a county where more than 25% of the population is Latino.

Yet some community leaders praised the department for reaching out to minority communities. Sheriff Larry Smith routinely meets with neighborhood groups to hear their concerns, and will confer with residents of the heavily Latino Home Gardens area today in a session scheduled long before Monday’s beating incident.

Debate on Racism

“What we see is two individuals out of control, not a department out of control,” agreed Robert Nava, a member of the Riverside Unified School District board. “We do not have institutionalized racism in Riverside County.”

Yet attorneys who track police brutality and racism do not give the Riverside department such glowing reviews. Echoing several civil rights activists, San Bernardino lawyer Carlos Juarez wondered aloud what kind of beatings go on, unpublicized and unpunished, when no video cameras are around.

“What happened is not an uncommon occurence, unfortunately,” Juarez said. “Many [victims] do not file complaints . . . in many instances, there are no witnesses, so it’s their word against the officer’s and they don’t pursue it.”

Attorney Stephen Yagman’s office recently filed a brutality suit against Riverside deputies in federal court.

Yagman alleges that deputies violated Edward A. Luers’ civil rights by fatally shooting him during a domestic disturbance call, when Luers was acting strangely but not threateningly. “In our office, they have a reputation for brutality,” Yagman said.

“If anyone other than a cop had gone out and beaten these people like that, they would be in custody now, and the only question would be if they could get bail,” said Yagman, who has made a living pursuing police brutality cases. “A nightstick wielded at someone’s head is always considered deadly force. It was attempted murder.”

Malnic reported from Riverside, Goldman and Weinstein from Los Angeles. Contributing were Times staff writers Rich Connell, Miles Corwin and Robert J. Lopez in Riverside, Mark Fineman in Mexico City and Edward J. Boyer, Kenneth Chang, Don Lee, Emi Endo, Larry Gordon, Jean Merl, Stephanie Simon, Eric Slater and Peter Y. Hong in Los Angeles. Times correspondent John Cox also contributed.