Calls Taped for Political Gain, Prosecutor Says

A prosecutor said Thursday that a longtime Oxnard school district employee suspected of illegally recording the telephone calls of trustee Jim Suter was apparently motivated by political gain.

Outside of a hearing to seal portions of the transcript on the grand jury’s probe into the matter, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Schwartz said he suspects that employee Pedro R. Placencia was “gathering intelligence” on Suter’s effort to gain support for a controversial decision to name the district’s newest campus after a former superintendent.

Placencia, who headed the elementary district’s migrant education program, was indicted by the grand jury last month on six felony counts of illegally tape-recording Suter’s telephone conversations this summer.

He has pleaded not guilty and is free on bail.

“This goes beyond just a snoopy neighbor who likes to hear a friend’s gossip,” said Schwartz, explaining why the charges were filed as felonies.

“You have a school district employee spying on a school trustee,” he added. “You’ve got eavesdropping on an elected official and interference with the political process.”

But Placencia’s attorney, Victor Salas Jr., said even if it were true that his client made the tapes, prosecutors have no basis to charge that the recordings were made for political purposes.

“These tapes are so trivial and they are so mundane that there is no way they rise to the level of political motivation,” Salas said. “If you listen to the tapes, that is the only conclusion you can reach.”

For now, only the attorneys will be able to listen to the 18 conversations recorded on the two 90-minute cassette tapes seized by district attorney investigators this summer.

Superior Court Judge Ken Riley on Thursday ordered that the tapes, and transcripts of their contents, be kept under seal because the investigation is still underway.

In addition, Riley granted a request to blot out certain names on the transcripts chronicling the Ventura County Grand Jury’s investigation. Those transcripts are not yet publicly available.

Riley did make public an affidavit in support of search warrants served this summer on Placencia’s Oxnard home and the home of elementary school trustee Mary Barreto. Barreto had been a target of the initial investigation, but the grand jury found insufficient evidence to support an indictment.

The affidavit, filed by district attorney investigator Glen Kitzmann, provides the clearest picture yet of the events leading up to the investigation.

According to that document, it was a June meeting between Barreto and fellow trustee Arthur Joe Lopez that brought the issue to a head. In that meeting, Barreto told Lopez that she had the tapes and even played one for him.

Lopez said he recognized a voice at the start of the tape as Placencia’s, according to the affidavit.

One of the recorded conversations was between Suter and Oxnard Supt. Bernard Korenstein. The topic was an upcoming school board meeting at which trustees would take up the controversial issue of naming the district’s newest school after former Supt. Norman R. Brekke.

Lopez said he asked Barreto how the recordings were made. According to the affidavit, Lopez said Barreto told him that Placencia had used a radio scanner to pick up and record Suter’s cordless telephone calls.

In mid-July, Lopez alerted alerted school district administrators, who turned around and called the Ventura office of the FBI. FBI agents turned the case over to the district attorney’s investigators, who found enough evidence to issue search warrants.

According to authorities, investigators seized the two tapes from Barreto’s home, while confiscating a radio scanner and tape recorder from Placencia’s.

Barreto, who testified before the grand jury, later told authorities the taped phone calls were anonymously left on her doorstep. She also said she told Lopez about the cassettes because she was concerned that confidential board business was being discussed between Suter and district employees.

Barreto’s attorney, Tim Quinn, would not comment on the search warrant affidavit. But he was quick to point out that prosecutors failed to return an indictment against his client.

“I honestly think that [she] had the board’s best interest at heart in bringing this forward,” he said. “The district attorney and the grand jury have thoroughly investigated this . . . and have determined that she doesn’t have any criminal liability.”

For his part, Lopez said he did not feel comfortable discussing his role in the case. But he did say that the affidavit was a fair reflection of the events that launched the investigation.

“As far as I’m concerned, I acted responsibly,” he said. “Clearly, I thought about the ramifications of this. But I really didn’t want any of this to tarnish the effort of the board in trying to get the best education for the kids in our district.”