Alleged Victim Testifies That Officer Beat Him With Flashlight

Stealing a few nervous glances at Oxnard Police Officer Robert Flinn, a 30-year-old former drug addict testified Monday that Flinn knocked him unconscious with a heavy metal police flashlight after a foot chase last year.

Juan Lopez described the officer swinging the foot-long flashlight just as Lopez was surrendering after a brief chase over fences and through several backyards in the La Colonia neighborhood of Oxnard.

“[Flinn] just came up and not even saying a word he just hit me, and I blacked out,” Lopez said. “I saw stars and felt like a hot tingling on the left side of my face and the houses they all disappeared and I went down. I was going down and he kept hitting me.”

Lopez admitted that he had just broken into the garage of a friend of his and stolen two battery chargers. The recovering heroin addict said he was under the influence of the drug at the time.

“I was kind of strung out and I was hoping that my friend could front me some money,” he said.

In the fourth day of testimony against the 29-year-old Flinn, prosecutor Michael Frawley showed the jury enlarged photographs taken of Lopez after the alleged beating. In the courtroom were nearly a dozen of Flinn’s supporters, including his wife and several Oxnard police officers in plain clothes.

The graphic color photographs showed abrasions to the right side of Lopez’s face, a gash over his left eye closed with about eight to 10 stitches, and a swollen lip.

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A five-year veteran of the force and member of the department’s SWAT team, Flinn is charged with beating Lopez on Jan. 27, 1996, and another Oxnard man, Victor Aguiar, in December 1995.

During testimony last week, Aguiar said he could not positively identify Flinn as the person who allegedly kicked him in the face. But on Monday, Lopez said he clearly remembered Flinn as the person who struck him in the head with a flashlight several times and then hit him in the face with his knee.

A lawyer for Lopez, Los Angeles-based civil rights attorney Samuel Paz, said he planned to file a lawsuit against the Oxnard Police Department because of the alleged beating. Paz said Lopez has been lying low since the incident because he was afraid of retribution from Oxnard police officers.

On the stand Monday, Lopez said that he still has headaches and bumps on the back of his head and that his lip remains disfigured.

Defense attorney William Hadden, who had about 30 minutes Monday afternoon to question Lopez, immediately attacked his credibility, saying Lopez had repeatedly lied to police about the incident.

“Didn’t you tell the police that you were not committing a burglary?” Hadden asked Lopez.

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Lopez admitted that he had lied right after he was arrested.

“How many times did you lie to police?” Hadden asked.

Then the lawyer asked Lopez whether prosecutors had made some sort of deal with him to persuade him to testify against Flinn.

“Did they say: ‘We’re not going to prosecute you for the burglary if you help us go after the police officer?’ ” Hadden asked.

“That’s not the way it was,” Lopez responded, without elaborating.

During the continuation of Lopez’s cross-examination, which is scheduled for this morning, Hadden is expected to bring up a second allegation of abuse that Lopez made in December.

The defense contends that the second allegation against two other Oxnard police officers was clearly a false one and intends to use the report to impeach Lopez’s testimony, undermining his credibility with the jury.

Flinn’s lawyers may also introduce evidence that Lopez said he expected to “be sitting on easy street” because of the incident involving Flinn and hoped to win more than $200,000 through his lawsuit against the department.