Deputies in Beating May Have Violated Policies

As investigators probe Monday’s televised beating of Mexican citizens by Riverside County sheriff’s deputies, sources say they already have indications that the two deputies involved may have violated Sheriff’s Department policies for handling vehicle pursuits and for using batons.

According to sources close to the investigation, authorities are trying to determine whether Tracy Watson and Kurt Franklin escalated their use of force too rapidly, and whether they ignored orders to turn over the pursuit to California Highway Patrol officers. Either one would represent a violation of Riverside Sheriff’s Department policies, and evidence that policies were violated could strengthen any potential criminal case against the deputies by offering evidence that their intent was to hurt the suspects, not merely to arrest them.

Sources stress that neither of those matters has been completely investigated, but both are under review.

In other developments Friday:

* Enrique Funes Flores and his girlfriend, Alicia Sotero Vasquez--the man and woman who featured most prominently in the videotaped beating, being struck by the two deputies--were released from the hospital where they were treated for injuries. Funes’ right arm was fractured, and his lawyer, civil rights attorney Peter A. Schey, said his client still was in pain and shock. The couple are at an undisclosed location.

* More details emerged about the two besieged deputies. According to current and former Riverside sheriff’s officials, Watson, who delivered most of the blows captured on the videotape, once was associated with a group of deputies at the Lake Elsinore Station who called themselves the “Lake Town Bad Boys.” The group’s members were known as tough deputies who adopted a swaggering attitude in order to make it clear that they would not tolerate lawbreakers.

* Riverside sheriff’s officials said they have received new videotape footage in which the face of the truck’s driver can be clearly seen. The images, officials said, may help in locating the driver, who is wanted for his role in the dangerous high-speed chase.

* Tapes of dispatch calls and radio transmissions by the CHP during the pursuit reveal that there was confusion about who was participating in the 80-mile chase. CHP operators repeatedly referred to San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies as being in pursuit when in fact it was Riverside deputies. And in one transmission near the end of the chase, a CHP dispatcher said Highway Patrol assistance had been requested and granted--suggesting that the CHP believed it was responsible for the pursuit at that point.

* The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said it has formed a team of lawyers to consider any civil rights claims that Sotero may file. Attorney David Lynn Ross, who drew criticism from the state bar for practicing without a California license, said he will continue to represent Sotero in any immigration proceedings--federal administrative matters which he is allowed to pursue even without a California license.

* As demonstrators gathered in Tijuana for another protest, representatives of the AFL-CIO held a Los Angeles news conference to join the growing list of public officials denouncing Watson and Franklin. “The vast majority [of police officers] are doing a decent job. We have to get rid of rogue cops,” regional executive secretary Bill Robertson said. “These cops are bullies.”

Despite those comments, the uproar that erupted in the hours after the incident showed some signs of subsiding Friday. Riverside sheriff’s headquarters, which was overrun with reporters and ringed by demonstrators earlier this week, had returned to normal.

But the various investigations of the incident, launched within hours of the chase’s televised conclusion, were moving forward.

According to sources, investigators have been amassing tapes and interviewing witnesses. One important focus, the sources said, is Riverside Sheriff’s Department policies that may have been broken during the pursuit or at its termination.

Both those areas are at the center of Riverside Sheriff’s Department’s internal affairs probe. If the deputies are found to have violated department regulations, they could be suspended without pay or fired.

Outside the department, use-of-force issues, not the circumstances of the chase, are dominating the criminal inquiry, with FBI agents and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators focusing on the possibility of assault, excessive use of force and civil rights violations. Violations of department rules are not enough to demonstrate that criminal laws were broken, but they could strengthen any case against the deputies by giving authorities a way of suggesting that the officers’ intent was to punish the suspects, not merely to arrest them.

Under the department’s use-of-force policy, deputies are directed to use as little force as needed to control a situation.

“Members shall not use more force than is reasonably necessary in overcoming any resistance or force,” the policy states. If the deputies are charged with a crime, a jury would be asked to consider whether reasonable police officers, acting in violently charged situations, would react the way that Watson and Franklin did.

In addition to general principles such as that one, however, Riverside Sheriff Larry Smith said the county department teaches deputies not to use their batons until after first attempting to use chemical agents such as pepper spray and after displaying their batons to suspects as a warning.

On the 15-second videotape of the incident, neither deputy can be seen discharging pepper spray, and neither appears to display his baton as a warning to the suspects before beginning to strike them. Current and former deputies said the failure of their colleagues to take those steps was troubling.

“We’re supposed to use verbal judo, to try and talk them down, then try a control hold, then use pepper spray,” said one former Riverside deputy. “And if that doesn’t work, then you’re supposed to pull your baton.”

Before the department-issue baton is swung, deputies are supposed to hold it aloft, and then use it to control someone before striking them with it, the former deputy added.

Moreover, most law enforcement agencies prohibit their officers from using batons on suspects for merely refusing to obey an order. The Los Angeles Police Department’s use-of-force handbook, for instance, explicitly bars such behavior.

“The baton shall not be used in a striking movement to gain compliance to verbal commands absent combative or aggressive actions by the suspect,” the LAPD handbook states.

Also at issue, sources say, are what commands Watson and Franklin gave to the suspects before beginning to hit them.

Michael P. Stone, who represents Watson, said the suspects were told in English and Spanish to get on the ground and put their hands behind their back. Seeking to hear from the other side, FBI agents and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies interviewed one beating victim in the hospital Thursday and were conducting more interviews Friday.

Although the circumstances surrounding the use of force at the conclusion of the pursuit are the most crucial questions for criminal investigators, the deputies’ conduct during the chase could also become relevant. If authorities establish that the two deputies were ordered off the chase but stayed with it anyway, it could bolster the contention that they were determined to see the pursuit through so they could exact vengeance on the suspects, who had allegedly tried to pelt their cars with debris.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, whose deputies are participating in the investigation of the beating, said his agency never was asked to take over the pursuit and did not join it. But he said he could not speak for the Highway Patrol.

The CHP dispatch tapes and radio calls do not clearly establish that the deputies were ordered out of the chase, but they do suggest that Highway Patrol officers were asked to provide assistance and were doing so.

As the suspect vehicle--followed by Franklin and Watson--was crossing into Los Angeles County, a CHP dispatcher told Highway Patrol units: “That’s affirmative on the request for CHP assistance. At this time, it looks like we could have one Santa Fe Springs sergeant and one unit in the pursuit,” apparently referring to officers from the CHP’s Santa Fe Springs station, one of whom can be seen on the video.

Friday, a Highway Patrol official said requests for assistance generally are accompanied by insistence that the requesting agency relinquish its role in the chase. In Riverside, however, Sheriff’s Sgt. Mark Lohman said his agency never asked the CHP to take over this chase.

“It was our pursuit,” he said, adding that he did not know whether anyone else had requested CHP assistance.

Wrestling with the troubling possibility that Watson and Franklin ignored orders to break off the chase, a top Riverside County official confirmed that government leaders there were investigating those allegations.

“We’ve not seen any tapes or transcripts,” the official said. “We’ve just heard verbal renditions from reliable people that their own sergeant called them off, and they went ahead. We don’t know if they heard that and just went ahead or not.”

Riverside sheriff’s officials have not released copies of the tapes that recorded radio traffic between their dispatchers and vehicles, but Lohman said he expected transcripts to be made available Monday. Meanwhile, Riverside officials have confirmed that authorities are investigating whether Watson and Franklin were ordered off the chase and, if so, whether they might not have heard that order because they had traveled out of radio range.

After five days of grinding scrutiny on his department, Riverside Sheriff Smith tried to calm the waters by releasing a personal message to the 1,200-member force. Smith’s message, distributed to all Riverside stations on videotape, features the sheriff addressing his employees and then replaying 12 minutes of his comments from a news conference Wednesday.

During that session, Smith sharply criticized the actions of Watson and Franklin but praised the department in general and complained that its overall work was being distorted by the focus on Monday’s incident.

Times staff writers Josh Meyer, Stephanie Simon and George Ramos contributed to this story.