CHP Officer, Expecting Praise, Faces Dismissal

When television cameras captured the sight of Riverside County sheriff’s deputies striking illegal immigrants at the end of a wild chase, cries of anger went up around the world, some directed at the immigrants, others at the cops.

Amid the uproar, one person seemed to emerge from the episode unscathed: California Highway Patrol officer Marco A. DeGennaro, 26, who joined the pursuit moments before it ended, who did his job without resorting to force and whose restraint won the CHP praise from law enforcement officers and critics alike.

“I was thinking I might get an ‘Attaboy,’ ” DeGennaro said in an interview with The Times.

But rather than pat its officer on the back, the CHP instead has moved to fire him, part of an intensive review that has stunned some people close to the case and potentially complicated the prospects for prosecuting the two sheriff’s deputies who delivered the videotaped blows.

What soured the CHP on DeGennaro? A microcassette tape recorder, a birthday present the officer received the day before the incident. He was testing it for the first time that afternoon. His tape emerged as important evidence, effectively serving as the audio counterpart to the video images of the beating.

Unfortunately for DeGennaro and his agency, however, the tape also contained the first signs of embarrassment for the CHP: At one point, a Highway Patrol officer can be heard describing the immigrants by using a racial epithet. Adding to the CHP’s chagrin, DeGennaro, when first questioned about the existence of a tape by the FBI, denied that he had one.

Within 24 hours of that meeting, DeGennaro took steps to undo the damage caused by his lie. But the initial failure by DeGennaro and CHP supervisors to book the tape into evidence, DeGennaro’s false statement about the tape and the inflammatory comments contained on it propelled the CHP into a sweeping internal probe that has damaged or ended at least three careers and created new problems for prosecutors weighing evidence against the deputies.

Thousands of pages of documents from confidential CHP files obtained by The Times shed new light on the actions of a rarely examined agency. Moreover, they reveal that the CHP tackled its investigation of the tape recording with vigor and with a zeal to protect the department’s reputation from harm. The investigative file notes with dismay, for instance, that the tape was obtained by news organizations.

“The release of the tape,” the investigation concluded, “brought embarrassment and discredit upon the department.”

CHP officials declined to comment on actions against any particular officers, citing the confidentiality of internal investigations. But they defended the overall inquiry.

“Our department took the action that we deemed reasonable,” said Sgt. Ernie Garcia, a spokesman for the CHP’s Los Angeles region. “We stand by our investigation.”

DeGennaro’s lawyer, by contrast, criticized both the investigation and the CHP itself.

“The CHP is a publicity-driven organization,” said Harland W. Braun, a noted criminal defense lawyer who is representing DeGennaro. “As this case shows, if you embarrass the CHP, they’re going to get you.”

Curiously, records and sources indicate that one CHP officer who has escaped serious discipline is the one who caused the agency the most public embarrassment. The investigation revealed that an officer named Jim Byers was the person who referred to the immigrants as a “bunch of wetbacks,” but he was praised for telling the truth about the remark.

“Officer Byers related he was extremely embarrassed and remorseful for any discredit brought upon the department,” the 118-page investigative report of the CHP internal affairs probe concluded. “Officer Byers related that had he known Officer DeGennaro was recording their conversation, he would have exercised more discretion while conversing with Officer DeGennaro.”

Byers, the report said, accepted responsibility for his actions. According to sources, he received a reprimand.

The Beating

For DeGennaro, the investigation has been far more protracted and the conclusion far more wrenching.

It started just after noon April 1, the day after DeGennaro had turned 26. Eager to try out his new tape recorder, DeGennaro flipped the switch when he heard that a pursuit was headed his way.

Seconds later, he pulled up behind the pickup, followed it to the side of the freeway and watched in amazement as more than a dozen people piled out. He threw open the door to his patrol car, dropping his baton in the process, and took off down the highway embankment in pursuit of the fleeing suspects.

“I realize this is very dangerous,” he said in an interview with The Times. “I don’t know if they have weapons or why they are running. I turn back up the hill. There’s a suspect running towards me. I yell at him to get down. He has his fists clenched. He turns, appears that he is going to run away. I push him to the ground.”

With that suspect on the ground between DeGennaro’s legs, the officer then looked up and saw one of the sheriff’s deputies, Tracy Watson, as he confronted a male suspect near the side of the truck.

“The deputy hit him,” DeGennaro said, pausing to recall details. “It appeared that he paused, yelled at him to get down, then he hit him to get him down.”

When the man fell to the ground, DeGennaro added, Watson struck him two or three more times. Up to that point, DeGennaro said he was not aware of the other deputy, Kurtis Franklin, but then he saw Franklin approach a female suspect as she got out of the truck. Franklin moved toward the truck, DeGennaro recalled: “I saw that he struck the female and threw her up against the truck.”

Once the beating was over, DeGennaro walked back over to his patrol car and there ran into a CHP sergeant. “Those S.O.’s [sheriff’s officers] were whaling on those guys,” DeGennaro memorably told him.

The sergeant’s response: “Were there cameras?”

“There were cameras,” DeGennaro said. “But . . . nothing happened on CHP side.”

In interviews with authorities after the beating and in his remarks to The Times, DeGennaro stressed that he could not be sure if either of the deputies saw anything that might have caused them to believe that the suspects posed a threat to them. Because of that, DeGennaro refused to say that the deputies’ actions were improper or illegal.

As for his description of them “whaling” on the suspects, DeGennaro told The Times that he meant that harmlessly. “As a police officer or a citizen, you see somebody getting hit by a baton, by a pipe, it’s traumatic,” he said. “To hear the sound, to see it, it’s traumatic.”

All he meant by “whaling,” the officer said, was that the force was intense, not that it was necessarily wrong.

But DeGennaro’s account contains elements that could hurt the deputies in court. His description of Watson striking a suspect to force him to the ground raises questions about whether Watson really was trying to arrest the man or just beating him into submission. Significantly, DeGennaro also emphasized that nothing any of the suspects did caused him to feel threatened with harm.

And his actions at the scene made it clear that a reasonable police officer under those circumstances could make an arrest without resorting to force. Those observations, backed up by the tape recorder in DeGennaro’s pocket, made him a potentially valuable witness for the prosecution, should Watson and Franklin be charged with a crime in either state or federal court.

Now that the CHP has branded him a liar and moved to fire him, however, prosecutors may have trouble vouching for DeGennaro’s credibility in front of a jury.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI are conducting a joint investigation, and forwarding their findings to local and federal prosecutors. A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records in the case as part of the ongoing investigation.

“He is a critical witness in either a civil or a criminal case,” said Peter Schey, a lawyer representing one of the immigrants in state and federal lawsuits. “Terminating him from the Highway Patrol clearly will make the prosecution of the deputies more difficult.”

The Tape

DeGennaro’s fortunes started to decline soon after the beating.

Within hours of the incident, DeGennaro had told a number of colleagues and supervisors that he made a tape. He played portions of it for some fellow officers and for his girlfriend, fast-forwarding to a section that recorded the sound of him chasing down a fleeing suspect on foot.

“I was playing the tape for everyone,” he said. “The thing I thought was good about the tape was that it had my foot pursuit. You could hear my feet booking.”

What exactly DeGennaro was told to do with the tape is unclear. Some supervisors say they asked him repeatedly for it, and that he promised he would turn it in but did not. DeGennaro says a sergeant told him that it was his personal property and to treat it as such. The files of the case make clear that CHP investigators doubted DeGennaro’s story in many respects, but accepted other parts of it, including his contention that his sergeant did not initially direct him to turn it over.

So DeGennaro held onto the tape, neither destroying it nor booking it into evidence. Then, on April 4, he made a grave error: At the end of a long interview with Los Angeles sheriff’s investigators and agents from the FBI, he was asked whether he had recorded the incident. DeGennaro said he had not. That was a lie.

Why did DeGennaro try to deceive the FBI?

The tape, after all, did not do much to discredit him. It called into question some of his specific recollections--he told investigators that he believed the sheriff’s deputies had ordered the suspects to the ground in Spanish when the tape showed their commands at that point were only in English--but it generally supported the notion that his own conduct was capable. It featured one potentially embarrassing exchange in which Byers used the racial epithet and DeGennaro seemed to assent to it, but DeGennaro himself said nothing offensive.

In the interview with The Times, DeGennaro said he lied because he felt confused and alone. Others had told him the tape was his personal property--not evidence--and he said he worried that his department would be angry if he disclosed its existence to the FBI. He was with a lawyer at the fateful interview, but that lawyer represented the CHP, not him personally, and DeGennaro said he did not know whether it was safe to confide in him.

In any case, he lied, and admits he was wrong to do so. But soon after the meeting ended, DeGennaro said, he tried to make amends.

He called a well-placed CHP official and told him of the tape. He called a lawyer, Braun, who set up a meeting with the FBI on the following Monday so that the tape could be provided to federal investigators.

“Yeah, I made a mistake,” DeGennaro said last week, his hands suddenly tight on the blue notebook that he uses to chronicle the complicated tale. “I lied. But I’m making up for it. I corrected it as soon as I thought I could.”

The Fallout

Within hours of the tape’s delivery to local, state and federal investigators, the tape and DeGennaro were national news. Lawyers preparing to sue the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of the immigrants said it favored their position, as did lawyers for the two deputies. Legal experts said it could become a key piece of evidence in a criminal prosecution, and the CHP was faced with a complicated public relations problem: On one hand, the tape reinforced the praise given to DeGennaro; on the other hand, it revealed that another member of the agency had used a racist epithet.

Publicly, the agency backed DeGennaro and promised a thorough effort to identify and punish the other officer.

“We will take quick and decisive action,” promised Highway Patrol Chief Edward W. Gomez, who commands the Los Angeles region, adding that he hoped the racist remark would not overshadow DeGennaro’s conduct.

Behind the scenes, however, the CHP was gearing up against DeGennaro and some of his supervisors. More than a dozen officers were interviewed. Scores of memos and other documents were assembled. Thousands of pages of investigative material were produced, and investigators accused DeGennaro of being evasive as their inquiry unfolded.

Sgt. Brian Henry, one of DeGennaro’s supervisors, was accused of not doing enough to secure the tape. Same for Lt. Jeff D. Paige. Each denied wrongdoing and then was accused of lying to cover up his failings.

As acting area commander of DeGennaro’s station at the time of the incident, Paige came in for especially sharp criticism. “The overwhelming evidence in this case clearly established the fact that Lt. Paige has conjured up several lies for ‘self preservation’ and to avoid accepting responsibility,” the investigative report said.

Ultimately, Henry was suspended; neither he nor CHP officials will discuss the case, but sources say he was taken off the payroll for 20 to 30 days. Paige retired.

DeGennaro was flat-out fired.

“Your actions during the incident are not in question,” the CHP asserted last week in its notice terminating DeGennaro, effective Sept. 7. “However, your misconduct afterwards was unacceptable and ultimately brought discredit and extreme embarrassment to you and the department.”

Four months later, stripped of his badge and gun and uncertain of what to do with his life, DeGennaro is devastated. He still yearns to be a cop, but if his firing is upheld he almost certainly will never work in law enforcement again. All for a lie he admittedly told and for a tape that he thought was most memorable for the sounds of him running down a fleeing suspect and taking him into custody without harm.

“I tried my best that day,” DeGennaro said. “The tape shows that. And the tape got me fired.”

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The Fallout

On April 1, two deputies from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department were videotaped striking at least two illegal immigrants after a high-speed chase. CHP Officer Marco A. DeGennaro tape-recorded the entire incident. Prosecutors from Los Angeles County and the U.S. attorney’s office are considering criminal charges against the deputies, and a federal grand jury has subpoenaed some records, but no charges have been filed so far. An update on the figures in the case:

CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL

* Officer Marco A. DeGennaro: Has been notified of firing for lying to investigators and “bringing discredit” to the CHP.

* Lt. Jeff D. Paige: Retired rather than accept demotion or discipline for mishandling the audiotape.

* Sgt. Brian Henry: Suspended without pay for 20 to 30 days for mishandling the audiotape.

* Officer Jim Byers: Reprimanded for referring to illegal immigrants as a “bunch of wetbacks.”

RIVERSIDE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPT.

* Deputy Kurtis Franklin: Suspended without pay for 20 days, he has returned to work with another unit.

* Deputy Tracy Watson: He is appealing the department’s effort to fire him.

THE IMMIGRANTS

* Alicia Sotero Vasquez and Enrique Funes Flores: Seen on the videotape being struck with batons by the deputies, they have filed separate lawsuits against the deputies and Riverside County.