Less Than Rewarding

By SUE FOX

April 16, 1999 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

When a Panorama City principal reported that he had been beaten unconscious outside his school in February, the crime triggered a reaction that has become a near-reflex among local politicians: They offered a reward.

Within weeks of the assault, the Los Angeles City Council, the county Board of Supervisors and the school board had all posted $25,000 rewards for information leading to the attackers--one of the largest public purses offered in years.

Detectives have yet to arrest the two men who beat Principal Norman Bernstein as he arrived for work at Burton Street Elementary School. And if they ever do, odds are high that it won’t be because of a reward.

Despite the fanfare that often surrounds the announcement of rewards, these golden carrots rarely work. Typically offered in high-profile cases when investigators hit a dead end, they rely on the notion that someone out there knows something about a crime and will talk for a price. But after the television cameras click off and the spotlight fades, rewards sometimes create more problems than they solve by burying investigators under a hail of useless tips.

“What we’re dealing with when we deal with rewards is a two-edged sword,” said Lt. Frank Merriman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide unit. “They can be very helpful . . . but we’ve found over the years that for the most part they don’t have a lot of influence on a case.”

The city of Los Angeles put up more than $6.7 million in rewards over the past five years, according to city records. Only a small fraction of the money--about 5%--was ever paid. The county, meanwhile, offered $485,000 during the same period, with similarly spotty results. County records show that less than 12% was awarded.

Often Originate With Detectives

Rewards often originate with the detectives investigating a case. When leads run dry, police may ask City Council members or county supervisors to propose a reward. Reward motions are almost always approved without question.

“It’s just kind of automatic,” said an aide to City Council President John Ferraro. “I’ve never heard anybody quibble over them.”

Sometimes lawmakers approach police to suggest rewards in specific cases. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said he asked Los Angeles Police Department officers if a reward would help catch the men who beat up Bernstein, a white principal who said his attackers told him he was unwelcome at the mostly Latino school.

“What the reward does is, it raises the profile of a crime and connects it to a location,” Yaroslavsky said. “People hear about crimes on the radio and TV all the time, and they tune them out. But when a reward is offered--when the councilman or police chief goes to the neighborhood for a press conference--suddenly the people who live and work in the area start to think again, ‘Hey, maybe I was there. Maybe I heard something.’ ”

City rewards expire after 60 days unless the council extends them; county offers last 90 days. The city allows payment for tips that help identify and catch suspects, only requiring convictions in cases that involve attacks on police officers. County rules are stricter, requiring that the suspect be convicted before the informant gets paid.

When the city posts a reward, the money is set aside in a special fund until the council authorizes payment or the offer expires, said Joy Ory, an analyst in the city clerk’s office. Usually set at $25,000, the rewards are most often for help in solving murders.

County rewards are capped at $5,000, with each supervisor contributing $1,000 from his or her discretionary fund. By ordinance, the supervisors can increase the amount “in particularly heinous crimes or where it appears the community is at great risk.”

If all the reward money currently on the table were claimed at once, the city of Los Angeles would be out more than $300,000. The wanted list includes the killers of a Woodland Hills man kidnapped and placed in the trunk of his Bentley, a rapist who attacked a 12-year-old girl in a North Hollywood park, the murderer of a college student gunned down in Athens, and the killers of Howie Steindler, a well-known boxing promoter slain 22 years ago.

The reward in the Steindler case came in response to a request from his family and an LAPD investigator, who hope that the $25,000 offer will jar someone’s memory--or conscience.

Fixture in American Justice Since 1800s

Rewards have been a fixture of the American justice system since the 1800s, when wanted posters advertised rewards for the capture of cattle rustlers and other villains.

Although police acknowledge that modern-day rewards seldom bring positive results, they still view them as useful incentives. In difficult cases, some say, when the only sources of information are people close to the suspect or those who fear retribution, the promise of cash may be the only way to loosen lips.

“It’s one of the tools we use when we have a lot of people interested in a case and we’re not coming up with the information we want,” said Capt. Greg Meyer of the LAPD’s North Hollywood division. ‘You just never know what someone is going to see or hear that will inspire them to pick up the phone and call the detective with the tip that breaks the case.”

Cesar Quintero, a 20-year-old mechanic from Northridge, is a rarity in the erratic world of rewards. Last year, the City Council offered 57 rewards worth more than $1.4 million. But so far, only Quintero has taken one home.

LAPD Det. Ron Vega investigated the murder case that Quintero helped solve, the 1998 stabbing of Steven Cory Redden at a Valley Village hot dog stand. But Vega isn’t thanking the city’s $25,000 reward for cracking the case. Instead, he attributes the break to “divine intervention.”

Witnesses saw two suspects flee in a red Pontiac Fiero, so Vega began tracking down Fiero owners in the area. The search led him to Quintero, whose car and profile matched the killer’s. Quintero insisted he was innocent, and as the investigation closed in on him and his cousin, a bizarre twist of fate guided Quintero to the man who was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder.

Quintero worked in a lube shop in Canoga Park, and by chance the suspect--a look-alike who drove a red Fiero--brought his car in to be serviced.

“He looked just like me, he had the same car and everything,” Quintero said. “Right then and there, I knew it was him. At the same time you feel mad at the person, you feel sad because you know that person is going to jail. But what can you do? You can’t have them blaming you for something you didn’t even do.”

The reward in this case was incidental to unraveling the murder. Quintero didn’t have to be coaxed forward with a nugget of information--he acted to clear his own name.

Cosby Case Spurred Flurry of Offers

With no firm criteria for judging which crimes deserve rewards, the offers are sometimes swayed by political winds. When comedian Bill Cosby’s son Ennis was shot to death two years ago on a freeway offramp near Bel-Air, the flurry of public money offered to solve the crime angered critics, who said the killing was being given more attention than murders of ordinary people.

Through a quirk of timing, the Cosby case was symbolically linked to another murder that happened the same day: the shooting of Corie Williams, a 17-year-old student caught in gang cross-fire in South-Central Los Angeles as she rode a public bus home from school.

That case, too, garnered a reward offer--but not because the detectives lacked clues.

Sgt. Val Valenti, who investigated the Williams murder as a detective in the LAPD’s South Bureau, said he already had “pretty solid leads” when council aides approached police to suggest a reward.

“We just accepted them putting forth a motion,” Valenti recalled. “I think part of it was it was the same day that Ennis Cosby was killed. There was such an uproar in the community because people thought that Ennis Cosby was going to get all the attention.”

The Williams rewards, posted by both the city and county, eventually paid off. Valenti said two people who knew the gunman provided information that led to his conviction last December.

Media coverage also plays an important role in prompting rewards, both by focusing public attention on a crime and by publicizing the reward.

“By definition, these rewards only come into being when there is sufficient attention being paid to a crime,” said W. Garrett Capune, chairman of the criminal justice department at Cal State Fullerton. “It’s really quite fickle.”

Capune, who has researched the impact of rewards, said that they reassure people that “something is being done.” Reward offers also give politicians a moment in the limelight, he said.

“When journalists come to focus on the $10,000 that’s being offered up, that camera is also focusing on the politician who is proposing the reward,” Capune said. “It’s a self-serving gesture, to be sure, but that doesn’t take away from its meaning.”

The precarious politics of rewards keep some cities from using them. The city of Long Beach does not generally offer rewards unless a police officer is murdered, said City Atty. Robert Shannon. “The argument against rewards is that, in offering a reward in one case, you’re placing a greater value on one human life than another,” Shannon said. “It’s basically been a political decision not to offer them.”

Despite the occasional controversies and low success rate of rewards, many politicians, detectives and families of victims agree that the few that do pay off are worth the effort.

“It doesn’t cost us anything if we don’t pay out, and it gets the public’s attention,” said Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. “If it gets somebody off the street who would otherwise be on the street, then it’s successful.”

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Promises and Payouts

In the past four years, the city of Los Angeles has put up more than $6.7 million dollars in rewards for tips on high-profile crimes. About 5% of the amount was paid. The county offered $485,000 during the same period; about 12% of that was awarded.

City of Los Angeles

Offered:

1994: $1,385,000

1995: $1,125,000

1996: $1,520,000

1997: $1,330,000

1998: $1,425,000

Paid:

1994: $100,000

1995: $100,000

1996: $100,000

1997: $25,000