Family of Police Shooting Victim Still Out $11,000 : Probe: El Monte officers seized the cash the night Mario Paz was killed. Relatives want it back, but police say source must be cleared.

El Monte Police Department officials are reportedly demanding an interview with the widow of Mario Paz--a grandfather of 14 who was shot to death in his Compton bedroom by an El Monte officer during a SWAT team raid--before police will return up to $11,000 seized as suspected drug proceeds, lawyers for the family said Wednesday.

Attorneys for the survivors of Mario Paz said El Monte police want Maria Luisa Paz, 51, to recount her version of the night in August that an El Monte SWAT team shot the locks off the doors of her home, burst into the bedroom and shot her husband to death in front of her. Police said the officer, who shot Paz twice in the back, feared for his life.

Attorney Cameron Stewart, who is filing a claim for damages--the legal prelude to a lawsuit--against the cities of El Monte and Compton on behalf of the Paz family, said the police demand for access to Paz “borders on blackmail.”

Stewart said an El Monte investigator said “the only way we’re going to release the money is if Maria Paz submits to an interview.”

Armando Paz, 35, one of the seven Paz children, was livid.

“My mother has nothing to explain to anyone,” he said. “[The police] are the ones who owe us an explanation.”

El Monte Assistant Police Chief Bill Ankeny said the interview is “not necessarily” a condition of returning the money. But El Monte police investigators do want to speak to Paz’s widow as part of their investigation into the money’s legitimacy and do not want to return the money until they complete their investigation, Ankeny said.

“Her attorney knows that it’s not a condition that she submit to an interview,” Ankeny said. “Whenever we take money from somebody, we take it to investigate its legitimacy. There’s a number of avenues that we can take, and this is just one of them. [The Paz lawyers] have their methods they can go through, we have our methods of investigation,” he said.

“If it’s their money, they will get it back--if the money is legitimate,” Ankeny said.

Maria Luisa Paz and six others were sleeping at home the night of the Aug. 9 raid, which was mounted in pursuit of a drug case against a man who had lived next door years ago.

The family submitted to hours of police interrogations, without lawyers present, after the incident.

There were no arrests or charges in the raid, which was part of an ongoing narcotics investigation against a suspect, Marcos Beltran Lizarraga, who had bailed out of jail that morning. Police found no drugs at the Paz home but seized several weapons that the family said were for personal protection.

Police were led to the Paz home when its address came up on Beltran’s cell phone bill and DMV registration. The Paz family denies links to Beltran and says their former neighbor took advantage of Mario Paz by occasionally using his address.

Atty. Stewart said her law firm offered to give the El Monte police copies of receipts showing that the cash found in the Paz home was withdrawn from a Tijuana bank the day of the raid. The family says the money is their life savings and part of a settlement from on-the-job injuries Mario Paz sustained when he fell off a cement mixer in the 1980s. The family has extensive paperwork on the claim.

“They have no information that ties this money to any criminal wrongdoing, so they should return it immediately,” Stewart said.

Stewart said the request for an interview with Paz’s widow came from El Monte Police Officer George Mendoza, a narcotics detective who obtained the “high-risk” nighttime search warrant of the Paz home after El Monte police found $75,000 Aug. 7 at a Chino home where Beltran was and 400 pounds of marijuana and three loaded assault rifles in a subsequent search of the home of Paul Lizarraga, a warrant affidavit said. The affidavit said police believed Beltran was using the Paz address to store marijuana and cash.

Stewart said David Lynn, the law firm’s chief investigator on the case, asked for the return of the Paz money a month ago and was told by Mendoza that “the only way we’re going to release the money is if Maria Paz submits to an interview.”

Lynn asked Mendoza to put it in writing, but on Monday, Mendoza declined, saying he had been instructed not to by the El Monte city attorney’s office, Stewart said.

Mendoza said he could not comment and referred a reporter to El Monte Assistant Police Chief Ankeny.

Said Maria Derain, the adult daughter of Mario Paz: “This is like extortion. But they’ve taken more than that from us already, something we can’t replace.”

There are other problems associated with the cash, which was seized as suspected drug money, though the raid has still failed to yield any arrests or charges.

The police declaration of the seizure lists $10,000 in cash. The family says it was more--just over $11,000--and attorneys say they will present evidence of that sum in their demand for its return.

El Monte contract City Atty. Jimmy Gutierrez said he was not ready to comment.

“We’re still fact-gathering,” Gutierrez said. “There are legal consequences to what we might say. We’re not stonewalling.”