Couple Tell of Fear During Police Stop

For Neil and Kim Skipwith, the future had never been brighter.

They had just bought a small restaurant. They had just purchased a white Cadillac sports utility vehicle. They had just moved into their first home, an Oxnard triplex, where they could live in one unit and rent out the other two.

“We were really, really happy,” said Neil Skipwith, 37, a jewelry store manager who recently became the first black member of the San Buenaventura Masonic Lodge. “We’re Christian. I’m the pianist for my church. And we were going to Sunday brunch to celebrate.”

Instead, Skipwith ended up face down on hot pavement on Aug. 6 of last year, a knee in his back and his wrists cuffed together, screaming frantically for a 12-man squadron of officers to lower their guns.

“If it was just me by myself I would have been terrified,” Skipwith said recently. “But I have a handicapped son. He was confused. I was afraid he’d run right at the police. Then what would have happened?”

As it was, a hysterical Kim Skipwith covered her son’s eyes as the deaf and mentally handicapped 15-year-old signaled wildly for an explanation.

In a federal lawsuit filed last month, the Skipwiths contend that Oxnard police pulled them over, kneed Skipwith in the back, dragged him to a police car and searched their vehicle solely because they are African American. Three days later, after a top police official called to apologize, plainclothes officers allegedly showed up at the Skipwiths’ home and questioned Kim Skipwith again.

“That was harassment,” Neil Skipwith said. “What they did was dead wrong. They went too far this time.”

Alan Wisotsky, attorney for Oxnard police in excessive-force cases, said officers followed department procedure in stopping the Skipwiths, since at a morning meeting officers had been instructed to keep alert for a stolen white Cadillac Escalade SUV still so new it had paper license plates.

“The officers followed the protocol for felony stops,” the lawyer said. “It has no bearing on whether they’re black or brown or white. Police are killed by being casual in approaching automobiles under these circumstances.”

Skipwith knows he is a law-abiding citizen, Wisotsky said. “But my clients don’t know that. They only know this vehicle matches one that was on their hot sheet. This is a perfect example of people who simply don’t understand police work.”

Wisotsky does not dispute the Skipwiths’ basic version of what happened after an officer spotted the couple’s Cadillac and called for backup.

“An officer gave the driver the standard instructions in this type of felony stop: to get out, turn his back, raise his hands and walk backward toward the officer,” Wisotsky said. “Mr. Skipwith immediately became belligerent and hostile.

“It escalated a bit. The shouting continued and got even more intense and guns were pointed at Mr. Skipwith. He took objection to that because of family members in the car.”

Ultimately, Wisotsky said, Skipwith followed directions and got down on the pavement. Within five or 10 minutes, officers determined the Skipwiths owned the Cadillac. Finally, a supervising officer was called to try to calm Skipwith and explain why he was stopped.

But the Skipwiths insist there is more to the situation. They say officers apologized right away and that Cmdr. Joe Munoz called the next day to apologize again. Munoz said the officers were young, overreacted and would be disciplined for their actions, Neil Skipwith said.

Wisotsky said Munoz did “extend the apologies of the department” to the Skipwiths “for any inconvenience or embarrassment the situation may have caused, and explained the need and reasons for this particular type of encounter. . . . He tried to do his best to comfort him.” Munoz said he did not recall saying to Skipwith that Oxnard officers acted inappropriately, Wisotsky said.

“But a complaint was filed,” Wisotsky said. “So here we go again.”

Neil Skipwith said he is most troubled that the officers didn’t use what he considers common sense in approaching a family on a slow Sunday drive--that they pulled him over, surrounded him with guns drawn, and communicated through a bullhorn. And they shouted him down with screams of “shut up, shut up,” every time he tried to tell them about his handicapped son.

Kim Skipwith said she received a glimpse of at what was going through the officers minds when a patrolman approached her while her husband was being questioned and asked if she knew why her family had been pulled over.

“He said, ‘You know I can’t even afford a vehicle like this,’ ” she said. “We worked very hard to afford the things that we have.”

“He was sort of apologizing and sort of explaining. He said, ‘I hope we didn’t traumatize you too much.’ I told him that they did.”

Wisotsky said he recently won a similar case in which a white driver sued the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department for using force when pulling him over in Camarillo in what was mistakenly reported as a stolen rental car.

“Avis made the mistake,” he said, “but the officers thought they were dealing with a felon.”

Wisotsky cited a 1995 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in which a Los Angeles County police agency prevailed against an innocent black motorist who was detained at gunpoint for about an hour.

“There is no question that every innocent citizen would resent and feel wronged by the actions of the police officers in this case, who obviously made a mistake,” the ruling states. “ . . . The officers, however, in diligently pursuing their duties in good faith should not have to fear harassing litigation or monetary damages as long as their conduct is objectively reasonable under the circumstances.”