Police Probe of Officer’s Death Faulted

The aggressive interrogation techniques used by Garden Grove detectives investigating the murder of one of their own officers went too far and may have helped undermine their case, according to law enforcement officials and legal experts.

The tactics--which included threatening uncooperative witnesses and their family members with police action--are a mainstay of television police dramas but often prove ineffective in real life, experts said.

The interrogations became a key factor in a preliminary hearing for the man accused of killing Garden Grove Police Officer Howard E. Dallies Jr.--a hearing that ended abruptly Wednesday when prosecutors dropped all charges against the defendant.

The district attorney’s office made the decision two days after an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled that detectives improperly coerced a key witness during interviews and that a second witness lacked credibility.

Garden Grove police defended their handling of the case, the most expensive and complex in the city’s history. Investigators said they needed to lean hard on some witnesses who were criminals and appeared to be withholding information about the killing.

But police and attorneys from outside Orange County described the tactics as at best counterproductive and in some cases improper. In one instance widely questioned by experts, police told a suspect soon after the killing that they would arrest his mother unless he cooperated, court records show.

In another interview, detectives threatened to send a female witness’ children away to Orangewood Children’s Home, which houses abused and neglected youngsters. Investigators also refused to allow defendant John J.C. Stephens--then a suspect in the case--an attorney despite his repeated requests for one, according to interview transcripts.

“There’s a perception throughout the country that police always browbeat people and coerce confessions. I don’t think that’s true, but it’s cases like this that feed that perception,” said Fresno Police Lt. Duayne Johnson, who has worked for more than a decade as an investigator for Fresno police and the FBI.

Sgt. Gary Haigh, a homicide detective with the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, said such heavy-handed tactics rarely produce effective evidence in court. Uncooperative suspects, he said, are most likely to be swayed by a softer touch.

The dismissal of charges against Stephens earlier this week highlights how carefully detectives must tread when trying to pressure witnesses into cooperating. Striking a suspect or witness is always deemed to be coercive. But verbal intimidation is not as clear cut, and many lawyers and investigators differ on where acceptable interrogation ends and coercion begins.

Dallies was gunned down while on routine overnight patrol on March 9, 1993. It took four years of intense investigation until police felt confident enough to arrest Stephens on suspicion of committing the murder. On Wednesday, the Buena Park man was released after spending more than two years in Orange County Jail awaiting trial.

Given how little evidence the murder provided, the credibility of statements implicating Stephens as the killer was essential to the case. With no witnesses and no forensic evidence pointing to a suspect, detectives leaned on known drug abusers who hung around bars that Dallies patrolled and who might have information about the murder.

In squad briefings, investigators were encouraged to come down hard on people who may have had information about the killing, according to court records.

Judge John J. Ryan ruled earlier this week that detectives went beyond acceptable interview practices when they tried to get Patricia McFarland to cooperate. McFarland, who has cerebral palsy and is dyslexic, twice implicated Stephens as the killer in police interviews.

But under oath last week, she insisted that she had fabricated the tale because she had felt frightened of police. Raiding McFarland’s home and telling her she could be charged with murder for withholding information was more than enough to “put her over the edge,” Ryan ruled.

Prosecutors dropped charges against Stephens before the judge could rule on whether other interrogations amounted to coercion. But several experts said they believe that detectives pressed too hard during interviews.

“To make the kind of threats that they did is terrible, frankly,” said David Dusenbury, a former deputy chief for the Long Beach Police Department who works as a police and security consultant.

It might be acceptable to warn witnesses that they could go to jail for giving false statements or covering up for the killer, but making threats against family members is not, said former San Jose Police Chief Joseph D. McNamara, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“If you give a false statement to police, that’s a crime,” McNamara said. “[But] it would seem to be that threatening his mother would be clearly questionable.”

Garden Grove police officials maintain that they never coerced people into providing false statements. Indeed, interview transcripts show that detectives repeatedly insisted that possible witnesses tell the truth.

“I think the detectives were aggressive and focused and used some harsh words with people,” said Garden Grove Police Capt. Dave Abrecht. “I think it’s something that detectives have to do sometimes to get information.”

Investigators said they turned to more forceful interrogations after discovering that some witnesses lied to them.