Judges Back Black Men Who Sued Officer

Decrying what it called an example of common police practice, a federal appeals court on Monday upheld a judgment against a Santa Monica police officer who arrested two black men at gunpoint because they bore a resemblance to armed robbery suspects.

The lack of probable cause illustrated how police throughout the Los Angeles area routinely violate the constitutional rights of blacks, the three-judge panel said in a unanimous ruling.

It noted that several well-known African Americans have been detained without proper cause in recent years. In this case, the victims--a magazine editor and a computer program analyst--were stopped while in Southern California on vacation from New York.

Police watchdog groups on Monday praised the court’s unusually broad assertion about police treatment of blacks.

“Generally speaking, police tend to suspect African Americans and Latinos far more readily than they would white individuals,” said Hugh Manes, a co-founder of Police Watch, an organization that helps individuals fight cases of alleged police misconduct.

A Santa Monica Police Department spokesman denied that officers are biased in their traffic stops.

U.S. Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who wrote the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion, moved beyond the scope of the Santa Monica case. Reinhardt, an avowed liberal, argued that the arrest went to the heart of long-standing claims made by African Americans that they are routinely stopped by police only because they are black.

“We do not know exactly how often this happens to African American men and women who are not celebrities and whose brushes with the police are not deemed newsworthy,” he wrote in a footnote to the opinion. “It is clear, however, that African Americans are stopped by the police in disproportionate numbers.”

The appeals court upheld a 1993 ruling by U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp, who found Santa Monica Police Officer Skystone-Eagle Lambert liable for violating the 4th Amendment rights of two African Americans when he stopped the pair in an underground garage of their Santa Monica hotel after a Dodgers game.

A year later, a federal court jury awarded each man $10,000.

The two men--George Washington, a photo editor for Sports Illustrated magazine, and Darryl Hicks, a senior computer program analyst for the Bank of New York--were stopped late on a June night in 1991.

Lambert argued in court papers that the “investigatory stop” was justified because Washington and Hicks matched a general description of two men who had committed 19 armed robberies in the Los Angeles area, though none in Santa Monica.

But the appeals court agreed with Hupp that the incident went far beyond a simple traffic stop and qualified as an unjustifiable arrest because of the overwhelming police response.

The appeals court noted that lead officer Lambert conceded in court that he lacked probable cause to make an arrest.

According to the appeals court ruling, the incident unfolded this way:

Lambert saw the pair at a fast-food restaurant and followed them to their hotel. He called for backup, and several officers responded, including a canine unit.

The officers shined spotlights and pointed guns at the men as Lambert ordered them to get out of their car and face a garage wall with their hands behind their heads.

Lambert handcuffed their hands behind their backs, patted the two down and placed them in separate police cars.

Neither man resisted and a background check on their rental car showed that it was not stolen. They were then released. This conduct in effect turned a traffic stop into an arrest, the appeals court said.

The court added that the description of the robbery suspects was vague at best and that neither Washington nor Hicks matched the few physical details that accompanied it.

Reached at his office in New York, Washington, now 36, said, “I felt all along that I was in the right and that the police clearly overreacted,” he said. “It’s good to see that justice is finally being handled.” Lambert, a 10-year veteran who works patrol, could not be reached for comment. A Police Department spokesman declined to comment on the decision because the city had not yet been notified of the ruling.

Deputy City Atty. Jeanette Schachtner defended Lambert, who she said is half African American and half Native American.

The traffic stop, Schachtner said, “was not racially motivated. He stopped them specifically because they matched a description of two armed robbery suspects. . . . We’re talking about a detention that lasted no more than five to 10 minutes.”

The lawsuit mirrors a similar case in Beverly Hills, where eight African Americans have sued the city and its top officials, charging that the police force targets minorities. The case is now pending in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Torrance, police have for years been accused of trying to keep minorities out of the predominantly white South Bay city. In 1993, the U.S. Justice Department sued the city, alleging racist police tactics as well as racism within the police and fire departments. But the city has prevailed in two of the three phases of the government’s suit.

Said Police Watch co-founder Manes: “The assumption is that there is more crime committed by minority persons, and therefore many police operate on what we call the ‘hunch theory.’ They pull them over with the expectation that they will find something.”

Santa Monica police and other local law enforcement officials disputed such characterizations.

“We treat everyone equally and everyone has rights that are given to them under the Constitution,” said Sgt. Frank Fabrega, a spokesman for the Santa Monica Police Department. “We base our stops on reasonable suspicion and base our arrests on probable cause. We have to follow guidelines. We just don’t stop anybody.”

In its ruling, the appeals court cited numerous newspaper stories about motorists being stopped allegedly because they are black, noting that baseball star Joe Morgan was “unlawfully detained” by Los Angeles police at Los Angeles International Airport and that Los Angeles police “erroneously stopped” and handcuffed former Lakers player Jamaal Wilkes.

Reinhardt’s two colleagues on the appeals panel--U.S. Circuit Judges Michael Daly Hawkins and Alex Kozinski--concurred with the opinion. But Kozinski, in a one-paragraph comment, said he believed the opinion should have strictly focused on the Santa Monica case without including what he termed the “sociological disquisition on the racial prejudices of police officers.”