Anti-LAPD Attorney to Question Mayor About Police Shootings

The polar extremes of Los Angeles’ legal community--the insider-deal-maker-mayor, Richard Riordan, and the outsider-anti-cop-street-fighter, Stephen Yagman--are scheduled to face off in sworn testimony Thursday, with Yagman gearing up to put the mayor through the mill over a long-running police shooting case.

Yagman got permission to grill Riordan as part of his case against the Los Angeles Police Department’s controversial Special Investigations Section, whose killings of suspects have long generated anxiety in the city’s civil rights community.

In the case--actually, five consolidated cases--Yagman is seeking to show not only that the officers acted wrongly, but also that the city’s responsibility for creating, sustaining and failing to control the unit makes city officials, including the mayor, liable for its alleged excesses.

Specifically, Yagman said he hoped to question Riordan about the mayor’s knowledge of the Police Department and his role, if any, in deciding whether city officials should cover the cost of punitive damage awards against police officers. A special master appointed by U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts will preside over the questioning.

The scheduled confrontation between Yagman and Riordan marks the first time the two have faced off under oath. It comes as Yagman battles the latest challenge to his law practice, a recommended suspension for allegedly mishandling his finances in a case. That recommendation from the State Bar Court of Review will not affect today’s proceedings.

Riordan conferred with aides and a lawyer Wednesday to prepare for the questioning by the attorney, whose treatment of uncooperative witnesses and others is the stuff of local legal lore.

There was the time that he referred to a federal judge as an anti-Semitic drunk. And the time he called Warren Christopher, an eminent figure in the city’s police reform movement, a “white-bread, establishment, uptown guy who doesn’t want to sully his mitts on police brutality except from his ivory tower.”

Leading city lawyers chortled over the thought of Yagman and Riordan duking it out.

“How to put this,” one mused. “I’d have to say they’re pretty likely to hate each other.”

Larry Feldman, a leading Los Angeles civil lawyer, struck a slightly softer tone, but agreed that the session probably would feature “plenty of objections.”

“The deposition,” Feldman said wryly, “will not be a pleasant experience for anyone.”

Yagman, however, predicted that the session would be civil, if only because the special master will be there to tamp down temper flare-ups.

Besides, Yagman said, “the mayor and I have common backgrounds. We’re both New Yorkers. He’s Catholic. I went to Catholic school. . . . He dresses nicely. So do I.”

Yagman added that although he has never met Riordan, the two stood close to each other at the recent funeral of Helen Bernstein, the mayor’s special advisor on education and Yagman’s friend. “We didn’t speak,” Yagman said.

Mayoral aides said Riordan would be accompanied by Skip Miller, another hard-nosed lawyer retained by the city to represent the officials being questioned as part of Yagman’s lawsuit. The mayor had no comment on the deposition, but aides said he intended to answer questions forthrightly and truthfully.

Privately, some aides acknowledged that the deposition has irritated the mayor’s staff, particularly when the judge originally demanded that Riordan and other top city officials troop over to the federal courthouse for a day of questioning. After officials complained, the rules for the interrogation were modified.

Instead, Yagman is conducting his depositions at a downtown law firm, where he is questioning not just the mayor, but also council members and police commissioners. In the case of Riordan, Yagman said he has “been led to believe that the mayor has no knowledge of the workings of the Police Department.”

“I want to determine whether or not those things said about the mayor in fact are true,” Yagman said.

Two of the cases stem from a June 26, 1995, Newbury Park holdup in which one robber was killed and another, Robert Cunningham, was seriously wounded. Cunningham is serving a lengthy prison sentence.

The other three cases stem from a Feb. 25, 1997, robbery at a Northridge bar in which three of the four occupants of the getaway car were killed. The fourth man was arrested.