Ex-Deputy Denies Lying About Blows

In a battle to regain his job, fired Sheriff’s Deputy Donald Rodarte told a civil service commission Monday that he never lied about striking an already fatally injured man because he doesn’t remember the blows ever happening.

But a county attorney attacked Rodarte’s lapse of memory about hitting 21-year-old Nicholas Dowey of Ojai in the head with a pepper spray can during a struggle to subdue the wounded man.

“He basically had an amazing lack of memory with anything concerning his pepper spray canister,” said Assistant County Counsel Leroy Smith, who said Rodarte, 29, was fired for “deception.”

The testimony came during the first day of Rodarte’s Civil Service Commission hearing, in which he is appealing his September 1998 termination from the Sheriff’s Department.

The hearing comes three months after Rodarte and four other deputies were cleared in a civil trial in which they were accused of using excessive force the night they responded to a rowdy party in Meiners Oaks in September 1997.

Dowey’s parents filed the suit, alleging that a struggle with deputies contributed to the death of their son, who had been struck in the head with a bat or steering-wheel locking device in an attack earlier that evening. No one has been arrested in that attack.

Dowey, bleeding profusely from the head, vigorously fought off Rodarte and his partner, Darin Yanover, as they tried to help him. During the scuffle, Dowey was struck in the head at least once with a cylindrical object, party-goers said.

Dowey, a former high school wrestler and Cal State Northridge student, died hours later from extensive head wounds left by a heavier blunt instrument, such as a bat, according to a medical examiner’s report.

The report also said a small, cylinder bruise appeared on Dowey’s head. The bruise, determined to be a superficial wound, matched the circumference of a pepper spray can, the report said.

Although an internal Sheriff’s Department investigation concluded Rodarte and the other deputies did not use excessive force, Rodarte was terminated for denying that he ever struck the man with the spray canister. Authorities also said Rodarte never mentioned the blows in his report on the incident.

Rodarte repeatedly told the assistant county counsel and Civil Service Commissioner Bill Mehrens on Monday that he did not remember hitting Dowey with the canister.

“I don’t believe I did,” Rodarte told Smith during questioning. “If I did, it wasn’t intentional. And if it had been intentional, then I’d remember doing that and I would put that in my report.”

Smith told the commissioner that hours after the struggle, Rodarte told other deputies and a department service technician that he struck Dowey with the can, which snapped in two, even showing his broken canister pieces to one deputy.

But Rodarte countered that he did not recall making such statements to his co-workers or even picking up his pepper spray canister, which fell to the ground during the altercation.

Smith challenged Rodarte’s inability to remember retrieving the canister.

“You didn’t pick it up or you don’t remember,” Smith said. “You know the difference, right? If someone said I went to the moon, and I know I didn’t, that’s different than I just don’t remember going to the moon.”

“No, I just don’t remember,” Rodarte answered. “I don’t recall picking it up.”

Rodarte’s attorney, William Hadden, argued that any blow from the pepper spray canister was probably inadvertent, something that happened accidentally during the violent struggle between Rodarte and Dowey. He called the case one of perception.

“Ultimately, the facts will show Deputy Rodarte hasn’t been deceptive with the Sheriff’s Department at all,” Hadden told Mehrens. “This case will show he was what he has always been--a good deputy.”

Testimony continues today, and the hearing is expected to last through the week at the county administration building.