Riordan Signs $3.5-Million Award to Felon

Telling the latest crop of Los Angeles Police Academy graduates that it made him sick to do so, Mayor Richard Riordan on Friday grudgingly signed a $3.5-million award to a convicted felon who was paralyzed by a police officer’s bullet after waving a gun at the officers through an automobile sun roof.

“It’s a travesty of justice, an embarrassment and an affront to every Angeleno,” Riordan said of the case, in which a jury in December voted to give Clarence Watson $4.9 million. The City Council last week agreed to pay $3.5 million rather than appeal the verdict. “I have no choice,” Riordan said. “My hands are handcuffed.”

Even as he signed the unpopular settlement, Riordan pledged to fight “until his dying day” a proposal to pay $75,000 to a man who was shot in the face in a separate 1990 incident in which Sgt. Steve Richards was also wounded. By day’s end Friday, City Atty. James K. Hahn also vowed to oppose the settlement--which was recommended by Hahn’s own deputies--and urge the City Council to take that case to court.

Hahn said he typically leaves decisions about settlements of less than $100,000 to Deputy City Atty. Dan Woodard, who recently told a judge he would suggest the $75,000 payout. But after Richards heard of the proposed settlement, he met with Hahn and apparently persuaded him to fight.

“Every case needs to be judged on its merits,” Hahn said in an interview Friday. “This officer impressed me. . . . He was very convinced that there was absolutely no mistake about the fact that he was shooting at someone who was shooting at him.”

At the academy Friday morning, Riordan took the unusual tack of discussing an unpopular city decision with the fresh-faced recruits rather than offering the typical feel-good graduation message.

“They have said, in essence, that crime pays,” the mayor said of the jury in the Watson case, as 85 recruits sat silently in a horseshoe, white-gloved hands holding stiff caps in their laps. “They have shown a failure to understand what happens in the split second when an officer’s life is threatened and they make a life or death decision.”

The Watson case could have been settled for $750,000 before trial, but Hahn advised fighting it because Watson, a convicted drug dealer, had pointed a gun at officers and led them on a foot pursuit. LAPD Officer Clifford Bernard shot Watson five times--knocking him to the ground and the gun from his hand with the first two and later striking Watson twice in the back--and the jury found for the paralyzed man rather than the city.

“It’s absolutely the wrong message to send to the men and women in blue,” Riordan told reporters Friday, after the recruits had left the room in military-style procession. “It made me angry, and really sick. Three and a half million dollars can go to put more police officers on the street. It can go to fix roads. It is a total travesty of justice.”

City Council members Laura Chick and Nate Holden--who sit on the Public Safety Committee--joined Riordan at the podium, but declined to speak of the huge settlement they had voted for last week.

Instead, Chick vowed to the recruits to produce a fair contract on time this year, and to back up officers with the resources they need. Holden spoke of his days as a military police officer, and told the graduates he had always wanted to join the LAPD himself.

“It’s one of the most challenging and difficult times to be a member of the LAPD,” Chick said. “Standing next to you, standing behind you, when you turn around, you have the support of the elected officials in this city.”