Fair End in Key Police Abuse Case

From El Monte to Torrance to the LAPD’s Rampart Division, police are increasingly being held to account for abuses of their considerable powers. This development has many roots, and one surely is the 1992 slaying of Donald P. Scott, killed when Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies raided his Ventura County ranch.

News that Los Angeles County and the federal government have tentatively agreed to pay $5 million to Scott’s survivors brings vindication to those who insisted from the start that the raid should never have taken place.

Early that October morning, 27 law enforcement agents, allegedly acting on a tip that up to 4,000 marijuana plants were growing there, raided the reclusive millionaire’s Trail’s End Ranch, just across the Ventura County line from Malibu. Scott, 61, brandishing a handgun after being startled awake, was shot fatally by the deputy in charge. The shooting was held to be justifiable, but no marijuana was found.

Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury concluded that police used false information to secure the search warrant. “There was no marijuana on that place,” Bradbury told The Times this week. “Clearly one of the primary purposes was a land grab by the Sheriff’s Department.”

Scott believed that the National Park Service wanted his land to add to the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area. Had marijuana been found, the ranch could have been seized and sold--potentially benefiting both the Sheriff Department’s budget and the Park Service. California’s criminal asset forfeiture law was changed partly because of the Scott case.

Los Angeles County officials maintain that deputies did nothing wrong and say they opted to settle rather than take the matter to a jury because of concerns about fallout from the L.A. Police Department’s Rampart scandal. In that case, a former LAPD officer facing sentencing on cocaine theft has told investigators that he and police colleagues framed and sometimes shot innocent people.

Donald Scott’s story, however, had its own message: that those who are empowered by the law must follow it themselves.