Taking a Stand for Witnesses

For two nights, he struggled. Struggled with two pieces of terrible knowledge.

He knew who had murdered a young garment worker in Santa Ana. Yet he knew this as well: If he told police, he too could end up with a bullet in his chest.

That was the code of the streets, his streets. You snitch, you die. Simple.

Still, he kept thinking of the young man who had been killed, shot down while chasing a purse snatcher.

So he told the police who did it. Then the threats began. He picked up the phone and heard a gunshot. He caught two thugs on his balcony. “They wanted me,” he said.

But prosecutors wanted him, too--alive and able to testify about the 1996 killing. So they hustled the 40-year-old father to a new home in secret. “Without their help,” he said, “I’d be dead.”

Instead, he is applying for computer courses from his hide-out --and watching with satisfaction as an ambitious new state effort protects other witnesses.

Launched in January, the California Witness Protection Program helps relocate endangered witnesses, some of whom are also victims. Many counties had offered piecemeal protection, like that provided to the 40-year-old father, but the state program allows prosecutors everywhere to help those in danger without draining local budgets.

The program can pay rent in state or out. It can cover grocery bills, medical costs and even psychological counseling. Witnesses can get armed escorts when they go to court to testify or, when warranted, periodic police surveillance of their homes.

Critics contend that the program gives county prosecutors too much discretion about what services to offer with state money. And it’s nowhere near as extensive as the federal witness protection program, which fashions identity make-overs for ex-mobsters and the like.

Still, California’s fledgling program is one of the most comprehensive offered by any state and is being cited as a national model.

“When we ask a witness to come into the game, we need to protect him,” said Sergio Robleto, a former Los Angeles police commander who helped draft the program. “If we don’t commit to that principle, we’re as bad as the bad guys.”

It’s hard to say just how many people the new program might serve, because witness intimidation is impossible to tally. After all, if people are too scared to report what they know about a murder, they are unlikely to tell police they have been bullied into silence.

Attempting to quantify the problem, officials estimated in the early 1990s that 40% of gang killings in Los Angeles County go unsolved because witnesses are afraid to talk. Last year, before state reimbursement was available, the county spent $260,000 to relocate 185 witnesses who did speak up--and then feared for their lives.

The intimidation they face can be as subtle as a drive-by glare or as brazen as a firebomb--or as final as a bullet. Robleto once saw 10 witnesses killed in a single year just in his South Bureau division.

“Society has to be educated as to what’s going on here,” said victims advocate LaWanda Hawkins, her voice hard and her eyes pained. “It’s worse than anyone could imagine.”

Hawkins’ teenage son was slain two years ago, and the killer has never been caught. Hawkins is sure one neighbor knows who did it. But the neighbor will not come forward. And mad as she is, Hawkins understands. “Witnesses,” she said, “don’t trust the police” to keep them safe.

The state program aims to rebuild that trust.

It has paid for 26 protection efforts in the past three months. Analysts expect the pace to pick up as more prosecutors realize they can tap the state fund for cases ranging from organized crime to domestic violence.

Despite the program’s broad scope, law enforcement officials have noted some limitations.

For one, the program will not establish fresh identities. So witnesses such as Michael Cotrich can never feel completely safe.

Cotrich, 32, said he believes that gang members have tracked him from one neighborhood to the next for two years, ever since he identified them to police as the thugs who beat him unconscious one night in Panorama City. Los Angeles police detectives declined to discuss the case.

Cotrich agreed to be quoted by name because his pursuers already know who he is. “There’s no way for me to get out of this,” he said, “unless they change my name and ID.”

The best the state can do, however, is refer him and others to the federal government. Local prosecutors are frustrated that the state has not yet set up a promised liaison with the federal witness program.

Critics also complain that the state is trying to micro-manage witnesses. The grocery allowance, for instance, cannot be used on items the state considers frills--including dog food, beer, cigarettes, cat litter and hardcover books.

Then there’s the problem of witnesses who own homes. Renters are relatively easy to move: The state will pay a few months’ rent and a security deposit in a new apartment. But what about the witness with a mortgage and equity? A state spokesman said the program may help with home sales or mortgage payments in dire cases. However, there is no formal protocol--and that, one prosecutor said, “is a problem.”

Such difficulties aside, most law enforcement officials praise the program--which is stocked with $3 million for its first six months--as being long overdue.

With state funds available to relocate witnesses, Ventura County sheriff’s deputies should be able to hire movers instead of loading U-Hauls themselves. Fresno County officials should be able to offer witnesses more than a bus ticket out of town.

And Riverside County prosecutors should be able to avoid the clumsy ritual of petitioning the Board of Supervisors every time they need money for witness protection.

Because the state role is limited to doling out money, it’s up to local prosecutors to decide which witnesses to protect and how to do so.

Sometimes, the call is easy.

In the 1996 killing of the Santa Ana garment worker, dubbed the “good Samaritan case,” prosecutors knew right away that their star witness was in danger. Informing on a gangbanger would have been risky enough. But the 40-year-old father had another strike against him: The killer’s homeboys knew him.

He had to get out. But he had no money to move.

So the Orange County district attorney’s office put up the money to relocate him. When the gangbangers found his hide-out--and drove by sneering fresh warnings--officials moved him again. All told, the county spent $3,000, tapping its own budget because the state money was not yet available.

It paid off too. The killer is now in prison, serving 38 years to life.

Law enforcement officials caution that protection efforts rarely work out as neatly as they did in the good Samaritan homicide. The witness in that case was a good candidate for protection because he agreed to go into exile.

In most cases, however, witnesses have deeper ties to their communities. Their children attend local schools. Their relatives live nearby. They belong to a neighborhood church or softball league.

They may not want to move, no matter how much financial aid is promised--and thus no protection program, no matter how vigorous, can ever persuade them to talk. As Los Angeles Police Det. Jesse Alvarado said with frustration: “They keep their mouths shut.”

Bernard and Juanita Lopez know only too well how tough it can be to pry open those mouths.

Their teenage son, B.J.--Little League all-star, homecoming prince, aspiring probation officer--was shot to death in their front yard in June as he walked two friends to their cars. At first, the Lopezes had no doubt the killers would be caught. After all, theirs was a close-knit neighborhood, a friendly working-class tract in Orange County. They had lived there for 20 years. So had most of their neighbors. Everyone knew B.J.

Surely, they thought, anyone who knew anything about the murder would tell police at once.

But no one came forward.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department does not believe that any witness in the case has been silenced by intimidation. B.J.’s parents are not so sure.

They have heard rumors that people know who killed their son. Know, and are afraid. Know, and won’t tell, because if they told, they would have to flee a neighborhood they love.

Aching and anguished, the couple have circulated a poster that they hope will inspire--or shame--any witnesses into finding the courage to talk. Under a photo of their scrubbed and smiling B.J., the poster reads: “Someone murdered our son. Someone knows. Someone saw.” Then, the gut punch: “Someone will kill again.”

So far, they have heard nothing.

Often, the only hope for solving a case like B.J.’s murder, detectives say, is for an accomplice to confess--and then duck into hiding, fast. Any witness with legal status as a California resident is eligible under the state’s new program, including criminal suspects.

Lest onetime criminals take advantage of the program to create mayhem incognito, prosecutors must alert local authorities before moving a witness to a new city.

Witnesses who break the law while under protection can be booted from the program. In practice, however, prosecutors say they are reluctant to abandon witnesses except in the most egregious cases.

Any time a prosecutor makes a deal for a witness--or provides him with any benefits, from meal money to a hotel room--it must be reported to defense attorneys, who can use the information to argue that the witness is a prosecution stooge. Protection programs often give the defense plenty of ammunition for such attacks.

In San Francisco, Police Sgt. Rich Moses has co-signed apartment applications for witnesses with poor credit. He has arranged for the removal of gang tattoos. Once, he even persuaded his department to pay $1,400 to remove a witness’ impacted wisdom teeth.

Such expenses may now be reimbursed under the state program.

Concerned that prosecutors have too much leeway in spending state money, California Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill warned recently that the state has no way “to ensure that funds are properly spent . . . and accounted for.”

Gov. Pete Wilson has requested an additional $5 million to fund the program in the upcoming budget year that begins in July. Hill, however, has urged legislators to allocate $3 million for the next year--and to impose tighter controls, including annual audits.

Prosecutors around the state vow to fight any bid to cut the funds.

“We’re trying to resurrect the faith of the community,” L.A. gang prosecutor Jennifer Snyder said. “If we can make snitches into heroes, then we will succeed.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Cost of Staying Safe

California’s new witness protection program helps local authorities relocate endangered witnesses and cover their expenses. Here’s what’s involved:

* Witness obligations: To enroll in the protection program, a witness must sign a pledge agreeing to testify in court, cooperate with law enforcement, obey all laws, stay away from old haunts.

* Available benefits: Temporary relocation is designed to hide a witness for no more than 30 days, usually in a hotel during a trial. If the danger lasts longer, the witness may be relocated more permanently to an apartment or house.

* Temporary protection rates:

Lodging, witness only, $79 a night; witness and spouse, $119 a night; witness, spouse and child, $135 a night.

Food, witness only, $30 a day; witness and spouse, $60 a day; witness, spouse and child, $80 a day.

* Permanent protection rates:

Lodging, witness and family, maximum $950 a month.

Food, witness only, $250 a month; spouse, additional $100 a month; children, additional $75 a month each.

Source: California attorney general’s office