Officer Criticized Over 1992 Drug Raid Still Wants Vindication

Maybe Gary Spencer just doesn’t know when to call it quits.

Publicly rebuked for a drug raid that left a Ventura County rancher dead, thwarted in his court battle to clear his name and now bankrupted by legal fees, the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy is still seeking vindication.

The problem is, nobody seems to be listening.

“I speak to anybody that’s willing to listen, but unfortunately people are ready to go on to other things,” Spencer said.

Spencer, though, can’t get past his anger at Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, who criticized the deputy after the 1992 raid and now is insisting that Spencer pay $50,000 in legal fees for a failed libel suit.

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That bitterness runs beyond Spencer, creating a rift between Bradbury and Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block.

Spencer also can’t forget what happened that warm October morning in 1992, the day he shot and killed millionaire rancher Donald P. Scott during a fruitless drug raid just over the Ventura County line near Malibu.

Afterward, the Ventura County prosecutor’s office conducted a probe of the shooting and the investigation leading up to the raid.

The report issued in March 1993 aimed its harshest criticism at Spencer and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department investigation.

The deputy contends that the report and subsequent statements made by Bradbury amounted to libel.

Although the March 1993 report cleared Spencer of any criminal wrongdoing--saying that he shot Scott only after the rancher pointed a gun in his direction--it also concluded that Spencer may have lied to obtain the search warrant and that the raid was, in part, motivated by a desire to seize the $5-million ranch under federal drug forfeiture laws.

No drugs were ever found on the ranch.

“The search warrant,” Bradbury’s report says, “became Donald Scott’s death warrant.” And in comments to reporters, Bradbury said Spencer had “lost his moral compass.”

Spencer is quick to defend the drug raid that has occupied his thoughts for the last five years.

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“Sometimes people get warned and we don’t find anything, so I don’t consider it botched,” he said. “I wouldn’t call it botched because that would say that it was a mistake to have gone there in the first place, and I don’t believe that.”

Spencer said he regrets that Scott died.

“Sometimes I think if I could have had a few more seconds to converse with Mr. Scott I could have convinced him to put his gun down,” he said. “But it was too late. The gun was already pointed in my direction, and I had told him to put the gun down. . . . Sometimes I feel guilty that I took too long and put myself and my partner in danger.”

The raid became a rallying point for those who wanted to reform drug forfeiture laws, and it garnered national media attention.

“I was made out to be this callous, reckless, Dirty Harry kind of guy, and I wasn’t able to say anything about it,” said Spencer, who has worked for the Sheriff’s Department since 1984.

Co-workers said much of his life since the shooting has been taken up with the case and its aftermath.

“He kind of has this case on the brain,” said Capt. Bill McSweeney, Spencer’s friend and commanding officer. “You got to understand Gary’s lived with this for a very long time and suffered an awful lot of grief. He’s gone through it in his mind night after night and he can sometimes get bogged down in the details.”

What Spencer wants is to “unring the bell,” McSweeney said. Spencer wants statements made by Bradbury about the case to be taken back.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” said Glen M. Reiser, Bradbury’s attorney. The district attorney would not comment for this story.

The former undercover narcotics detective who now works on the bomb squad said he developed a twitch from the emotional stress he endured during the period.

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He said his son, who was in high school at the time, was often forced to defend his father.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Block ordered his department to reopen the investigation into the raid.

Block’s department issued its own report five months later that rebutted Bradbury on almost every point. Block also defended Spencer and was sharply critical of Bradbury, asking that state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren censure the prosecutor.

Lungren’s two-month review of the case essentially cleared Spencer and said Bradbury’s conclusions were inappropriate and gratuitous.

Bradbury still stands by his statements and the conclusions of the report, his attorney said.

Even after reports from Block and Lungren, Spencer said he still did not feel vindicated. He wanted more. He wanted Bradbury to take back what he said.

So Spencer sued the district attorney and four of his top prosecutors accusing them of defamation, libel, slander and violation of his civil rights.

“I decided to sue . . . I wanted to force the truth,” Spencer said.

But Spencer lost his court battle.

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A state Court of Appeal threw out the case last year saying that Bradbury was within his 1st Amendment rights when he gave his opinion of the raid.

Then in May, Spencer was ordered to pay the county for a portion of Bradbury’s legal expenses.

The bill, which with interest has grown to about $50,000, was too high, Spencer argued, and he asked the county last month to accept $10,000.

“If required to pay the full amount of the award, I will be driven into bankruptcy and the County of Ventura will recover nothing,” Spencer said in a letter to the board.

“In the event that I am driven into bankruptcy, the media will undoubtedly stir the emotions of citizens standing on both sides of me and Mr. Bradbury, and further polarize the loyalties of Ventura County police officers and prosecutors.”

The Board of Supervisors rejected the offer, and Spencer filed for bankruptcy at the end of October.

Despite his warnings, the decision has drawn little response from the public or from local law enforcement officers. Although Bradbury’s report created the rift with Sheriff Block, authorities said there was no long-term damage between the two law enforcement agencies.

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Bradbury’s attorney Reiser said he would still attempt to recover the money from Spencer, regardless of his decision to declare bankruptcy.

“We have a judgment against Spencer and we will collect,” Reiser said.

And the saga is not likely to end there.

Stephen Yagman, an attorney representing the estate of Donald Scott in a civil suit against Los Angeles County over the raid, said his case is still pending.

And Yagman plans to use the Bradbury report extensively, calling it “the most thorough, candid and alarming investigation into government that I’ve ever read. His doing that report will cause me to admire him for the rest of my life. He’s a real American.”