Concern Over Suits Leads to Review of Sheriff’s Use-of-Force Policy

Spurred by the jailhouse death of a 33-year-old transient who suffered from mental illness and cerebral palsy, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider new steps today--including the hiring of outside experts--to reduce the number of excessive-force cases against the Sheriff’s Department.

The proposal, written by Supervisor Gloria Molina, comes two weeks after the board agreed to pay $600,000 to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the sisters of Kevin Lamar Evans. The 5-foot-4, 150-pound Evans died a day after he was arrested in Palmdale in 1999 with a stolen shopping cart. Evans suffered heart failure at the Twin Towers jail after being restrained by as many as seven deputies when he tried to retrieve a sandwich that was taken away by a deputy.

“Beside the continued excessive payouts that we have had, I really worry about our department,” Molina said Monday. “We are just one video camera away from a new Rodney King situation.”

Also on Monday, Molina and other supervisors met in closed session to interview the three finalists to head the newly created office of independent review, which Sheriff Lee Baca has formed to oversee the department’s internal affairs cases and make recommendations on investigations and discipline. County sources say the three attorneys contending for the post are Michael Gennaco, head of the U.S. attorney’s civil rights division in Los Angeles; Richard Rosenthal, a deputy district attorney on the Rampart special prosecution team; and Hermez Moreno of Marina del Rey, who handles civil police misconduct cases.

Molina said she became concerned about the department’s use-of-force policies after viewing a department videotape showing, among other things, a deputy with his knee on Evans’ neck or chest and another straddling his lower body minutes before his death. The tapes have not been made public.

“When I saw the tape . . . it was extremely sad to watch the handling of this man, the manhandling,” Molina said. “It was rough, it was harsh. . . . There was nothing in it that said there was any . . . reasonable reason as to why they were using so much force on this poor man.”

Baca said he supports Molina’s efforts to review the case. “My management philosophy has consistently been that we have nothing to hide,” he said.

But Baca added in an interview that he sees nothing wrong with the manner in which deputies treated Evans. He called it “a rather subdued form of moving a patient from a wheelchair to a four-point restraint. . . . In my opinion, the force was appropriate.’

Any problems in the case, he said, stemmed from the conduct of the sheriff’s medical staff. One nurse who was at the scene has left the department as a result of its review of the case, he noted.

Molina’s motion calls for Merrick Bobb, the attorney who monitors the Sheriff’s Department for the board, to review the case along with outside experts of his choosing. It also directs the county counsel to issue monthly reports on the status of all pending cases alleging excessive force.

In 2000, the Sheriff’s Department paid out more than $8.5 million in settlements and judgments, including about $6.5 million in excessive-force cases. (The bulk of those payouts, $4 million, came in the settlement of a case brought by the survivors of chemical fortune heir Donald P. Scott, who was shot to death by deputies during a controversial 1992 drug raid at his Malibu-area ranch.) The department said it has paid about $3.5 million since last July in settlements and judgments, including $2.3 million in force cases.

Bobb said he has viewed the videotape of Evans but is withholding judgment pending further review.

In his most recent report to the supervisors, Bobb said he found potentially troubling signs that use-of-force cases are increasing in the department despite a drop in shootings by deputies.

In Evans’ case, records and interviews show he was stopped by sheriff’s deputies as he pushed a shopping cart. “This gentleman . . . was picked up for nothing but stealing a shopping cart on a sting operation because some grocer out there was concerned about losing his carts,” Molina said.

During questioning of Evans, deputies discovered an outstanding warrant for having failed to appear on a drug possession case. They took him into custody.

The day after his arrest, Evans was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after he was found mumbling in court. He was taken to the Twin Towers jail.

In a report last April, the coroner’s office outlined what happened next, based in large part on the sheriff’s videotape:

Evans was sitting passively in a wheelchair, holding a sandwich, when a deputy wheeled him into a room and placed him on a bed. As deputies prepared to put padded leather restraints on Evans’ wrists and ankles, one of them grabbed his sandwich. When Evans tried to grab it back, six or seven deputies converged on him.

Evans was heard making hoarse, throaty sounds and it appeared to take several minutes before he was placed in a “four-point restraint,” with his arms and legs held to render them immobile.

One deputy removed from Evans’ face a so-called spit bag--used to prevent inmates from spitting on deputies--felt for Evans’ pulse and said something inaudible on the tape to another deputy. The report states that the deputy said, “Get the nurse in here.”

Finally, the deputy shouts, twice: “Kill the camera!”

Assistant County Counsel Louis Aguilar said in an interview that a “complete internal investigation” found no evidence of misconduct by any of the deputies.

The coroner’s report also raises questions about the timeliness of medical efforts to revive Evans.

For example, medical personnel reported that a Sheriff’s Department nurse entered the room after Evans grabbed for the sandwich and gave him a shot of a sedative. Five minutes later, according to those records, the nurse returned, found Evans unresponsive and began efforts to revive him.

But the autopsy report says that paramedics and the first doctor to arrive both stated that no cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts were going on when they arrived. About 15 minutes had elapsed from when the nurse attempted resuscitation to when paramedics arrived.

While saying that Evans died despite all lifesaving efforts, Aguilar’s report says a judge or jury “could conclude that excessive force was used and/or that additional medical treatment should have been provided.”

Attorney Cameron Stewart, who filed the claim on behalf of Evans’ sisters, said the case was an avoidable tragedy.

“I think it illustrates there is a lack of training for the deputies in these types of situations because we have seen this happen time and time again,” she said.

Evans’ sister, Anntanaea Lambey, said Monday that she is still haunted by the fact the mental illness that led her brother to talk to himself played a part in his death.

“A lot of people would think he was crazy, but that was something he could not help,” Lambey said.