Federal Case Puts Recovering Drug Addict in the Spotlight

Until two years ago, Juan Lopez attracted little attention from anyone but his doting mother, drug dealers and probation officer.

Unemployed and addicted to heroin, his life differed little from other petty criminals whose cases clutter the county courthouse.

But everything changed on Jan. 27, 1996. That was the day he took some battery chargers from a neighbor’s garage and ran--with Oxnard Police Officer Robert Flinn chasing after him.

It ended when Flinn knocked him unconscious with a metal flashlight, Lopez said.

“Everything went black with little stars and my face was warm from all that blood,” Lopez, 31, said this week in an interview at his mother’s apartment. “I ran, but he didn’t have the right to beat me up. I got bumps on my head that will never go away.

“I ain’t the same man. In his heart, he knows what he done to me.”

This week, a federal grand jury indicted Flinn on charges of beating Lopez and filing a false police report accusing Lopez of provoking the attack.

The indictment--the first federal civil rights prosecution of a Ventura County police officer--comes after a failed attempt last year by the Ventura County district attorney’s office to put Flinn behind bars.

In that case, Flinn was accused of beating Lopez and another man in a separate incident. Flinn, 30, was acquitted on two counts. The jury deadlocked on two other charges.

The federal charges reopen a case that not only changed the lives of Flinn and Lopez. It also opened a deep rift between the Oxnard Police Department and a district attorney’s office that accused police of maintaining a “code of silence” to protect Flinn, a seven-year department veteran.

With Flinn set to be arraigned in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, his attorney, William Hadden, suggested Flinn will mount a similar defense.

Colleagues continue to support the officer, whom they call a good cop who would never break the law.

Meanwhile, Lopez’s long record of petty criminal convictions--as well as his admission that he was on heroin when Flinn chased him down--is fair game for the defense.

“There’s not any way you can clean up Lopez,” Hadden said. “I don’t think anyone is going to put a whole lot of credibility into what a heroin addict has to say.”

But Lopez’s criminal background does not excuse the beating he suffered, prosecutors argue.

“I can’t address the specifics of this case,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Jonathan S. Shapiro said Thursday. “But I can tell you, the constitution protects everyone and doesn’t make value judgments about victims of crime.”

A Lifetime of Trouble

Slumped on his mother’s couch, Lopez acknowledged his troubles with the law began at an early age. When he was a teenager, he said, he was caught burglarizing a garage and spent time in Juvenile Hall. All he wanted, he said, was to buy some flashy clothes.

“I wanted to look nice, so I could go skating with the girls,” he said. “I like to dress nice, you know.”

But until he got hooked on heroin a few years ago, Lopez said, he was no different than other young men in La Colonia, a poor neighborhood in Oxnard’s northeast end.

The youngest of seven children, Lopez was raised by his mother in a public housing project after she moved the family from Texas. Even today, Lopez and his mother are very close. Without a place of his own, he spends much of his time at his mother’s small apartment.

Both receive disability pay, they said.

Lopez is 5 feet 5 but his chest and arms are muscular and thick. As a boy, he was a natural athlete. He proudly recalls trying out for the Channel Islands High School football team and making it through “hell week,” the tough preseason practices meant to weed out weaklings. He played linebacker.

But he was not a good student. He dropped out of high school in 10th grade. “I couldn’t really spell and I was embarrassed in class,” said Lopez in a soft voice.

After he dropped out, his mother got him a job in the packinghouse where she worked. They drove to work together and packed broccoli in freezers.

“He’s my baby,” said Lola Sanchez. “I was 27 when I had Juan, and he’s the last baby I had.”

She grows furious when discussing the brutality case--and even keeps an enlarged photo taken after Lopez was arrested. It shows him with his head turned to reveal an eye swollen and purple.

“This family is still having stress,” she said. “There’s still memories, you know. . . . A lot of people have tried to tell me, ‘Move out of Oxnard.’ Why should I?”

Lopez married and fathered two children, ages 8 and 5. The couple’s marriage unraveled a few years ago when Lopez began shooting heroin and they divorced, he said.

Case Concerns Local Activists

The addiction landed him in court constantly. At least five times since 1994, Lopez has been convicted of using drugs and has been chronically absent for court dates. He served three months in County Jail last year.

Also last year, he settled a civil suit against the city of Oxnard and Flinn for $20,000.

Lopez said he is clean now. Jail was not pleasant, he said.

“It ain’t no fun, them telling you what to eat, what time to get up every day.”

He spent the settlement money on presents for his children, who live with their mother, and some jewelry for himself, he said.

During last year’s trial, Hadden maintained that Flinn felt threatened because Lopez had looked at his gun during the encounter. But Lopez maintains he did nothing to provoke the beating, other than take back some battery chargers he had given to a friend as “collateral” in a loan deal. He was never charged with burglary in that case.

The case has triggered concern among local activists. No one has suggested the incident was racially motivated, but the allegations have no doubt eroded public confidence in local law enforcement, said Francisco Dominguez, director of Latino advocacy group El Concilio.

With former Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt now Phoenix’s police chief, Oxnard has reached a crucial point, Dominguez said. Hurtt was credited with restoring confidence in police among minorities. Dominguez and other local leaders will meet with police next month to talk about the future.

“If there’s distrust, then there’s a gap to bridge,” Dominguez said. “This puts the edge on again. The issue now is to restore confidence, and if there is police brutality, address it.”

Times staff writer Daryl Kelley contributed to this story.