Tension Marks Relations of Deputies, Community

Nose-to-nose with a car hood, or a dirt lot, or a snarling face--it’s not a view that inspires respect for law enforcement. Maybe that’s why 18-year-old Armando Marcello doesn’t trust the Riverside County sheriff’s deputies sworn to protect him.

Like many Latinos, he tells of uneasy encounters with deputies. And he could do so long before two of them were videotaped beating two suspected illegal immigrants.

But these days, “I told you so” is said with more sorrow than swagger.

While political leaders express strong confidence in the Sheriff’s Department’s integrity, community activists and ordinary citizens say they consider the deputies to be erratic at best--and at worst, outright brutal. They talk of deputies harassing teenagers: stopping them on the street, holding guns to their groins, shoving them up against squad cars. They talk, too, of racism and violence. And of fear.

“We’ve known for years this was going on,” said Alicia Deleon, a 30-year resident of the largely Latino neighborhood of Pedley. “Some of these officers have been a real terror. . . . It’s time we stand up to this.”

In fact, people have long sought to stand up to perceived abuse.

The group Police Watch, which monitors Southern California law enforcement, received 96 citizen complaints about misconduct in the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department last year--”a high number,” according to a spokesman.

Local attorney Francisco Suarez outlined his concern about the Riverside department specifically in a letter to the federal government’s top civil rights enforcer in October. “I wanted to alert you to the many problems that have been occurring in the Inland Empire area of Southern California,” he wrote to Assistant Atty. Gen. Deval Patrick. “My office has been deluged with calls of police misconduct.”

A Deputy’s Allegation

And one of the department’s own deputies said he tried to signal an alarm after watching two of his colleagues beat a handcuffed suspect lying face down in the dirt in March 1993. Too troubled to stay silent, Todd Lawrence said he told his supervisors that he had seen one deputy kick a suspected car thief in the head and between the legs, while another deputy lashed out with his hand.

His supervisors promised an investigation. But Lawrence said the only real follow-up came from his own colleagues, who he alleges harassed him relentlessly for snitching. Lawrence said he was frozen out of conversations and denied backup during traffic stops, and he finally quit the force.

“They were sending a distinct message: One, you can beat people and get away with it. Two, if you try to do something [to stop it], you’re going to pay,” Lawrence said. “It’s just a bunch of good old boys covering up for each other.”

Department spokesman Sgt. Mark Lohman said he had no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Lawrence’s departure but insisted that the department aggressively pursues allegations of misconduct, whether from deputies or the public.

Accusations of brutality and cover-ups sting the Riverside deputies. After all, they say, their department received just 31 misconduct complaints in 1995--fewer than half as many as Police Watch tallied--and only two of the cases were sustained as examples of genuine misbehavior.

Exploiting a 15-second video, deputies say bitterly, critics have swarmed forward to toss hateful lies at the department and shatter public confidence. It happened after the Rodney G. King beating video was played over and over on the national news. It happened after former Los Angeles Police Det. Mark Fuhrman spouted racist comments on tapes heard in the O. J. Simpson murder trial. Now, to their dismay, it’s happening again, to them.

“We feel that everyone is coming down on us,” said Deputy Rod Lumpkin, an officer in the Riverside County Sheriff’s Assn. “Everyone has been given a black eye. . . . The media makes it seem like we’re all a bunch of thugs.”

Another deputy, who works at the county jail, complained: “In all my years on the street I never once used my baton. But from now on I’ll be judged by what was shown on television.”

The intense backlash has surprised not only the deputies, but also the political leaders in Riverside County.

Law enforcement has long been respected, even revered, among most citizens in the fast-growing region.

Political candidates savor endorsements from law-enforcement groups, such as the deputies union, said Linda Burk, an aide to Supervisor Tom Mullen. “If you get verbal support [from them], that’s about all you need,” Burk said. “It’s something that seems to connect with voters.”

The public’s pro-police bent also shows up in court, where jurors are reluctant to slap big fines on law-enforcement officers.

“They just don’t pay out a lot,” said John C. Burton, a Pasadena attorney who has a wrongful-death suit pending against the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. “It’s so tough out there to persuade jurors to find liability against police.”

Against this backdrop of public support, county officials are portraying the videotaped beating as an unfortunate slip--something to be investigated, to be sure, but not an excuse to overhaul the entire department. Most deputies, they say, are honest, hard-working crime-fighters doing their best to keep peace in a land that swings from cowboy country to stolid suburbia and back again.

As Supervisor Kay Ceniceros put it: “I do think we have an outstanding record.”

“I don’t know of anything at this point that warrants” talk of major reforms, agreed Mullen, a former Riverside County Sheriff’s Department sergeant. “Absolutely, I see [Monday’s incident] as an aberration.”

Probe Sought

Such statements astound and infuriate community activists. They are stepping up calls for a full-fledged investigation--possibly even a blue-ribbon panel like the Christopher Commission that ripped into the Los Angeles Police Department after the King beating.

When the county spokesman says proudly that “this is not a county that sweeps issues under the rug,” local activists groan. They worry that all the high-level talk about “aberrations” and “isolated incidents” will translate into quick discipline for the two officers caught on tape and a call to stop dwelling on the episode.

“I told [county leaders], ‘You’re not going to solve it by firing those two guys,’ ” said Gilberto Esquivel, general manager of the Spanish-format radio station KDIF. “They can sugar-coat it all they want; the element is still there.”

That element--which Esquivel defines as power-tripping, super-macho policing--has long been evident to Romelio Ruiz, a leader of the group Hispanos Unidos. He said it showed up most strongly during a student march in the fall of 1994 to protest Proposition 187, the ballot initiative to deny social services to illegal immigrants. Ruiz was walking along with the students.

Suddenly, he said, deputies moved in and started swinging.

“They were hitting the students with their batons, with their hands, with whatever they had,” Ruiz recalled. He said he saw deputies squirt pepper spray in the protesters’ eyes. “The students were running,” Ruiz added, still furious. “They were scared.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Lohman said the department received no formal complaints stemming from the incident. School officials who witnessed the demonstration said they saw no one manhandling their students.

“Yes, students were restrained and brought in as truants, and there were some complaints . . . but I didn’t see any rough treatment,” said Don Stabler, assistant superintendent for business services at the Moreno Valley Unified School District. He characterized relations between the Sheriff’s Department and the schools as “excellent.”

Unlike officials in some other counties, the Riverside supervisors do not receive regular reports summarizing complaints against their sheriff’s deputies. Nor do they keep a running total of tax-dollar payouts to victims of officer misconduct.

Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Ceniceros said she could recall only a few monetary settlements involving officer misconduct during her 16 years in office. “They were for minor things,” she said.

Yet just two years ago, the Sheriff’s Department settled a federal civil rights lawsuit by paying Richard and Sandra Sears a total of $420,000 for injuries they suffered during a botched narcotics raid. Richard Sears had alleged that sheriff’s deputies in SWAT uniforms and masks stormed into his house in the middle of the night and smashed his face with a rifle butt, according to his attorney, Stephen Yagman.

County officials later acknowledged they had the wrong house.

Yagman’s office recently filed another brutality suit against the Sheriff’s Department. He 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.

“Like most of the police in Southern California, with very few exceptions, [Riverside deputies] are inclined to be brutal because they are never punished criminally,” Yagman said.

Brutality Claimed

Local activists also see a pattern of brutality--but they blame the cozy relationship between the Sheriff’s Department and top elected officials. “They endorse each other for campaigns and they are all friends,” complained Victoria Baca of the Mexican American Political Assn.

“The problem is there--it’s very evident to members of the Latino community,” agreed Rudy Chavez, a community activist and owner of a local auto parts store. “But [the Sheriff’s Department] has a pretty good record of getting out from under it.”

In his letter asking for help from the U.S. Justice Department, lawyer Suarez said he had received many complaints about “police officers taking advantage of male Hispanic minors” by labeling them gang members and harassing them.

In one case, Suarez said a teenager claimed that sheriff’s deputies kicked him, taunted him and reached into his pocket to grab his testicles while he was face-down on the ground. Later, Suarez said, deputies intimidated the teenager’s family. “The house is constantly under surveillance and has been entered without a proper search warrant,” Suarez wrote. “The mother and family are scared.”

Suarez sued two officers for misconduct stemming from that August 1994 incident. One was Tracy Watson, the five-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department who was videotaped clubbing a man and a woman after a high-speed chase ended Monday afternoon. Through his attorney, Watson denied any wrongdoing, and Suarez ended up dropping his lawsuit.

The sheriff’s spokesman said Watson is “the subject of civil litigation” but would not elaborate.

Deputy Kurt Franklin, the other officer taped during the beating, was also sued at least once, in 1984. A woman accused him of smashing into her car while he was driving at up to 85 mph en route back to the station. In court papers, she accused him of “malice and a willful disregard for [her] rights and safety.” A judge dismissed the case in 1988.

This report was written by Times staff writer Stephanie Simon.