Officers Deny Claims They Beat Suspects

Four Anaheim police officers, all of whom served on the force’s gang detail, took the witness stand Thursday to dispute former officer Steve Nolan’s claims that some of the detail’s members battered suspects.

Nolan, who served in the Anaheim Police Department for eight years, filed a lawsuit against the city alleging that his career was unfairly ended when he violated an unwritten “code of silence” by reporting two alleged incidents of police brutality.

Among those disputing Nolan’s version of the two alleged beatings were two of Nolan’s former partners, David Kussman and Michael Bustamante. The alleged beatings occurred in 1991 and 1992 while Nolan was an investigator on the gang detail.

Nolan’s attorney, John Lewis, pointed out that the statement Kussman made in court on Thursday contradicted sworn testimony he gave during earlier arbitration hearings.

Kussman had said that during one of the alleged batteries, he had observed the suspect’s face to be red and swollen. In testimony Thursday, Kussman said the suspect’s face may have appeared that way because the suspect was crying. But in earlier testimony, he said that he believed the suspect in custody, Jorge Alvarado, had “probably been hit” and that there were injuries to his face.

Nolan’s other former partner, Bustamante, called Nolan a troublemaker with a drinking problem. Nolan, he said, was outwardly hostile to many of his fellow officers, and the false accusations grew out of his increasingly unfriendly relationships with them.

Bustamante said his partner began using racial epithets when speaking to him, despite the fact they once had been roommates and that Nolan had been the best man at Bustamante’s wedding.

Testimony in the case in Orange County Superior Court will continue Monday.