El Monte Officer Is Exonerated in Fatal Drug Raid

Federal and Los Angeles County officials have decided not to prosecute an El Monte police officer who fatally shot a 65-year-old man in the back during a 1999 narcotics raid in Compton.

Federal prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence that Sgt. George Hopkins violated Mario Paz’s civil rights when he shot him as he was kneeling beside his bed, according to a U.S. Department of Justice letter released by El Monte officials this week.

A county prosecutor, in a separate report, went further, stating that Hopkins “acted lawfully in self-defense” during the nighttime raid. Deputy Dist Atty. Susan Chasworth wrote that Hopkins was justified in using deadly force because he believed Paz was trying to grab a weapon and because his wife grabbed the officer’s leg. Moreover, Hopkins had been warned during a pre-raid briefing that he could face armed suspects at the house.

Paz, a grandfather of 14, was shot to death Aug. 9, 1999, as an El Monte special weapons team served a search warrant on a house where they expected to find associates of an alleged drug dealer, who had used the home’s mailing address. They found no drugs, just a family sleeping. There were, however, several guns in the house.

A wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the Paz family could go to trial soon. El Monte attorneys have urged the judge to issue a judgment in their favor, essentially asking him to dismiss the case.

Paz’s window, Maria Luisa Paz, has adamantly denied her husband reached for a gun. Several were nearby. The suit alleges Paz, dressed in just underwear, was kneeling with his hands resting on the bed grasping for money, thinking the commotion was a robbery.

Eugene P. Ramirez, the city’s lawyer, said the local and federal findings bolster the city’s position that the shooting was justified.

“People, once they see these reports, will understand El Monte police did not screw up as some have tried to suggest,” he said. “A police officer does not need to wait to see a gun to defend themselves.”

Cameron Stewart, the Paz family’s attorney, said, however, that the findings reflect a troubling pattern of government agencies finding police shootings justified.

“It forces us to rely on civil courts to do what the criminal system is unwilling to do with police,” she said. “The evidence in the civil case demonstrates the shooting was unjustified and the officer used excessive force.”

Stewart said no better proof of that exists than the actions of the officer who was next to Hopkins during the raid. He never felt the need to shoot, she said.

But Albert N. Moskowitz, chief of the criminal section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division, viewed the matter as closed.

In a one-page letter June 27 to El Monte’s police chief, he said the FBI concluded there was not enough evidence of criminal conduct. The 24-page report by county prosecutor Chasworth, written in February, arrived at the same conclusion. Based on a probe by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, it provides the most detailed official account of events yet.

It started with an investigation by El Monte police of Marcos Beltran Lizarraga, an alleged drug dealer with ties to El Monte and various cities. On Aug. 7, 1999, in Chino, El Monte police arrested Lizarraga and recovered $75,000 and documents for houses in La Puente and Compton. The Compton address, for a tiny house on West 131st Street, appeared on Lizarraga’s driver’s license, a cell phone bill and the vehicle registration for a pickup truck.

At the La Puente address, police found 400 pounds of marijuana and four assault rifles. El Monte Det. George Mendoza told sheriff’s detectives that he considered the Paz home a risk because of the weapons found in La Puente. He enlisted the department’s special weapons team to serve the warrant Aug. 9.

An hour before midnight, 13 members of the team were poised to enter the home when, some officers say, Paz and his wife looked out and saw them outside.

Hopkins, the team leader, told investigators he yelled at the woman: “Keep your hands up where I can see them! El Monte police!” The woman, officers say, closed the curtain and then Mario Paz opened the window and stuck his head out. Hopkins repeated the warning, but the man disappeared.

Under Hopkins’ orders, officers detonated flash-bang devices in the backyard and fired “ultra-bright devices” into the house to light the way for officers. Officers clad in goggles, helmets and green fatigues marked “police” scrambled inside. Jorge Paz, Mario’s son, told investigators he recognized them as police and they yelled, “Search warrant! This is the police!”

The son’s comment, Chasworth wrote, favors the conclusion that Mario Paz was sufficiently warned police were present.

According to the report, Hopkins headed to the southwest bedroom and saw Paz to the left of a bed. Hopkins told investigators the man was digging through a box on the floor and he ordered Paz in English and Spanish to put up his hands.

According to Hopkins, Paz reached under the bedding with his right arm and seemed to find something. Then, Hopkins told investigators, he felt Maria Paz grab his right leg--where he kept his sidearm--and he glanced down at her. When he looked back, Paz was pulling his arm from underneath the mattress and Hopkins said he saw something shiny. Fearing it was a gun, Hopkins said, he fired a burst from his MP-5 submachine gun.

Neither physical evidence nor statements of others, Chasworth concluded, contradict Hopkins’ version of events. Officer Jeff Girgle, who followed Hopkins, indicated he could see Mario Paz’s arm in the bedding and one on the floor, and he demanded in Spanish to see his hands. Lt. Craig Sperry told investigators that when he entered the room he saw Paz wounded on the floor, his left hand inside a dresser drawer that contained a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun, concealed by clothes.

Investigators found a .40-caliber unloaded handgun in the same drawer, another pistol in the dresser and a rifle in the corner of the room. Maria Paz told police that $10,000 found in the room belonged to a man associated with “El Central,” which investigators say is an auto wrecking yard.

Chasworth said it is significant that Maria Paz grabbed Hopkins. She wrote: “. . . the understandable reaction of a law enforcement officer to having his leg grabbed by a potentially hostile subject during the course of an adversarial contact would be a heightened sense of danger leading to some countermeasure, such as deadly use of force.”

She concluded: “The death of Mario Paz is a tragedy, however, it cannot be said to be the result of criminal conduct by Sergeant Hopkins.”