Slaying Brings Troubling Scrutiny to El Monte Police : Law enforcement: Tough city attributes low crime rate to department. But critics say it has too much power.

In gritty El Monte, the Police Department is one of the few objects of civic pride, occupying the place in the municipal psyche usually reserved for winning high school football teams.

Rather than a championship, El Monte’s men and women in blue have brought home another kind of trophy: They have made one of Los Angeles County’s poorest communities one of the safest cities of its size in the nation. After FBI crime statistics ranked the city the 10th safest in its category two years ago, El Monte lined its streets with banners, celebrating the department’s winning record.

El Monte officers have their own trading cards, a state-of-the-art helicopter, an assault vehicle called the “peacekeeper” and a five-disc CD changer in the chief’s car. With its political clout, the officers union has unseated two mayors.

But now, after the department’s shooting of an unarmed grandfather during a narcotics raid in Compton last month, the agency is in the unfamiliar position of being criticized and investigated from the outside.

Not only is the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigating the death of Mario Paz, who was shot twice in the back, but the FBI has opened a civil rights probe and activists have sharply criticized El Monte’s tactics.

Authorities say officers believed that Paz was armed or arming himself--a contention his family disputes.

It’s not the first time that El Monte officers have found themselves in potential trouble. But past misdeeds have not always resulted in severe repercussions. In the past several years two officers shot out lights at a city storage yard but were allowed to remain on the force. Another was convicted of soliciting a prostitute but kept his job. A federal court of appeals in 1992 found that the agency adopted a “custom of complacency” toward allegations of officer misconduct.

The Paz shooting also has raised the issue of the agency’s use of seized drug proceeds to fund its operations.

Over the past 10 years, the department received about $4.5 million in such money, which it can seize under federal law.

It used those proceeds to buy a wide range of equipment, including the guns used by the SWAT team that stormed into Paz’s house, more than a dozen miles from the El Monte city limits.

Forfeited Money Used for Programs

Police downplay their use of forfeiture money to fund their $15-million annual operation, but other city leaders praise the program.

Last week, Assistant El Monte Police Chief Bill Ankeny said that although police had already arrested their narcotics suspect, they went to Paz’s home “to further the investigation . . . to find further evidence and proceeds.”

Police had already seized $75,000 in cash from a house linked to the suspect and 400 pounds of marijuana from his La Puente home. Investigators found Paz’s address on the suspect’s driver’s license.

During the raid, police seized $10,000 that the Paz family says was their life savings. Police, who acknowledge that they have no evidence linking Paz to drug dealing, say that if the money is unconnected to narcotics it will be returned.

Upon advice of the city attorney, El Monte police aren’t saying any more about the Paz shooting. The department declined to release details on citizens’ complaints or on prior officer-involved shootings. The agency has had five fatal shootings in the past five years, according to the Sheriff’s Department, though it is unclear whether that is an unusual rate for a department of its size.

In a city where the last two public figures to criticize the department were either arrested or voted out of office, elected officials say they still back their police.

“I support our El Monte police,” said newly elected Mayor Rachel Montes, who ousted the incumbent mayor--a strong police critic--with the aggressive backing of the police union. “They work very hard in our community,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything else.” She then hung up.

Councilwoman Bonnie Jimenez said the department enjoys broad community support. This is in part because of its unusually active and much-praised community policing program in which officers help troubled youths find jobs and even coach a local baseball team.

But there are critics who have long said the El Monte police must be reined in.

“They run City Hall. Nobody has control over the police. They can do as they damn well please,” said former Mayor Pat Wallach, the unsuccessful candidate opposed by the police union in the March election. “They have a helicopter, a tank. They have carte blanche.”

Indeed, a decision in a 1992 brutality case by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sharply criticized the department.

“Chief [Wayne] Clayton, as a policymaker, acquiesced in a custom of complacency, if not hostility, toward allegations of misconduct by the department’s officers,” the court concluded. Police say many of the procedures criticized by the court have since changed.

The Paz shooting could not have come at a worse time for local leaders, who are trying to rev up a publicity machine to buff the blue-collar town’s image. The City Council recently approved hiring a public relations officer for the city, and council members say they are poised to launch a major campaign.

“El Monte is on the move right now,” said Councilman Tony Fellow.

An amoeba-shaped, 10-square-mile patch bisected by the San Bernardino Freeway and dotted with apartments and modest single-family homes, El Monte lies about 10 miles east of downtown Los Angeles and has a population of 115,000. The city’s primary claim to fame is Longo Toyota, the nation’s largest car dealership.

The town has an average household income of $28,000, the second-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the state, and a tired downtown strip to which business leaders failed to lure an International House of Pancakes.

Over the past several years, the town has been embarrassed by mishaps involving some police officers--not only the prostitution and gun cases, but one in which an off-duty officer is charged with brandishing his gun at a motorist, and another in which an officer fired her gun in the air outside a bar.

Such incidents are inevitable in any police agency, but there are no definitive figures. Still, Southern California law enforcement officials privately say the El Monte pattern is troublesome.

El Monte police defend their officers.

“We certainly have had a few problems in the last few years. But we have a big department,” Ankeny said. “But we have a lot of very good officers. We perceive all our officers as heroes.”

Leadership Role for Police

The combination of tough policing and tough love is the brainchild of Chief Clayton, a graduate of El Monte High School and a 42-year department veteran. He has been chief for the last 22 years, and department critics say he is responsible for making the agency a dominating force in town.

The avuncular chief breakfasts regularly with city power brokers at the Happy Cafe, just down the road from City Hall.

In a telephone interview, Clayton said that he is a longtime presence in the city but that he is far from the sole power in town. “I’m just the police chief of this city,” he said. “I know my role.” He would not comment further.

But city leaders say it is only natural that Clayton and his department have taken a leadership role.

“The Police Department’s done a good job in our city,” said Councilman Fellow, “and perhaps the most leadership that’s been shown in our city is by the police chief.”

In the 1970s, whites fled the town as it became a magnet for new immigrants, and gang battles racked the city. The police began to find jobs for troubled youth and saw the crime rate drop. When Clayton took over the department in 1977 he continued this early trend toward community-based policing, one that remains today.

Today, six officers work out of a storefront at the west end of El Monte’s pedestrian mall, finding jobs for at-risk youth and working closely with community agencies. Officers visit 400 classrooms in their spare time to preach clean living to schoolchildren.

In a town where it seems like the outside world long ago gave up and left, the Police Department has integrated itself into the daily fabric of life.

But to some in town the police have a less benevolent side, one exhibited when a friend of Clayton’s saw City Treasurer Henry Velasco enter the Elks Lodge one night this spring, according to court documents.

That friend called the chief at home, according to court testimony. Clayton ordered officers to stake out the bar and wait for Velasco, who had clashed with Clayton before. When the treasurer emerged more than three hours later and drove away, El Monte police arrested him on suspicion of drunk driving after finding his blood-alcohol level at twice the legal limit for motorists, according to records.

Velasco declined to comment. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and his court case is pending. Police say they simply wanted to keep a drunk driver off the streets. But Ankeny said he cannot cite a single other instance in which officers staked out a driver--especially for more than three hours.

The department’s rank and file has flexed its political muscle through the El Monte Police Officers Assn.--which is supported by the chief, who contributes to its political action fund. In the last election the union outspent all candidates, using more than $40,000 to help unseat Mayor Wallach, a department critic.

In 1984, then-Mayor Tom Keiser opposed the police union on a liability coverage issue. Keiser’s image was burned in effigy at the station, he said, and he was voted out of office. “That’s El Monte politics,” Keiser said, “or at least it has been for the last 20 years.”

Police officials dismiss such charges as political rhetoric. Ankeny says many of the department’s critics are just “sour losers.”

Union leaders downplay their political power, saying the department has traditionally been low-paid and understaffed. Its ratio of officers to residents is well below the national average of 23 per 10,000 residents. Clayton’s $104,000 annual salary is lower than those of chiefs of similar agencies.

Yet El Monte is one of the better-equipped mid-size police agencies in the county. Many agencies of comparable size have helicopters, and some even have assault vehicles like El Monte’s $66,000 military surplus peacekeeper, complete with bulletproof screens and a gun turret.

But when El Monte purchased a new helicopter in October, it became the first in the nation to arm itself with the $380,000 Robinson R-44, which is capable of traveling 150 mph. Likewise, in December the department became the first in the region to purchase a digital radio system for $1.75 million.

The department’s budget has doubled in the past 10 years while the city budget has increased by less than 10%, records show.

Still, federal statistics show that the El Monte police have a lower budget than most comparable agencies.

“We have the lowest income per capita in the San Gabriel Valley,” Ankeny said, “but we do a lot with what we have.”