Ex-Officers Handle Firings Differently

Two police officers fired in the aftermath of the Tyisha Miller shooting are speaking out for the first time. The two have dealt with the past five years in opposite ways: One wrote a recently released book about the incident, while the other has sought anonymity.

But both said they longed for their former lives as policemen.

“I loved working here. I loved this town,” said former Sgt. Gregory Preece.

Preece has written “Justice for None,” a book coauthored by Bill G. Burnett, former chairman of the grand jury that investigated the shooting.

Preece documents the night that Miller was killed. The book concludes that he and the four white officers who shot Miller, who was black, were blameless and the scapegoats of police and city leaders trying to please civil rights activists and the black community.

“It’s so divisive. The truth has never come out,” he said. “That’s why I wrote this book. I wrote it out of frustration.”

Chani Beeman, chairwoman of the city’s Human Relations Commission, said she has read excerpts and has heard descriptions of its findings. “It’s one perspective,” she said. “Frankly, I think it reinforces some of the reasons why we need ... [police] reforms. I love it when some of these folks speak out -- they make our points exactly.”

On Dec. 28, 1998, police received a 911 call of a young woman passed out in her locked car with a loaded gun on her lap in a gas station parking lot. Police at the scene determined that she needed medical attention, but said they needed to remove the weapon. Officers smashed her car window and said Miller moved toward her gun. The officers fired 24 shots; Miller was hit 12 times.

Outrage swept through Riverside, with members of the black community accusing the four white officers of executing a young black woman and celebrating afterward.

Preece, who arrived on the scene less than a minute before Miller was killed, was not one of the officers who opened fire. Afterward, he remarked to another officer that the shooting would ruin the victim’s sobbing relatives’ Kwanzaa. His comment helped fuel protests in Riverside’s black community, and leaders called for the officers to be prosecuted.

Preece has conceded that his Kwanzaa remark was insensitive, saying it was an attempt at “gallows humor.” But he said he should not have been fired for it.

Preece was dismissed in September 1999 for failing to stop the shooting and for the his Kwanzaa remark. He successfully contested his dismissal through arbitration. The arbitrator concluded that Preece was wrongly fired because of the public outcry and that he should have been demoted and suspended for 30 days without pay. Instead, the city settled with him, giving him a disability retirement -- half of his salary tax-free for life.

Preece said he moved to the Inland Empire for the same reason as most newcomers: exploding housing prices in surrounding communities. Working as a police officer in Huntington Beach, Preece bought a house in the Murrieta area in 1994 because he could get “more bang for the buck.” The commute began to wear, so Preece decided to join the Riverside department.

“Riverside was a great police department. Tactically, they were good,” he said.

State and local officials paint a picture of a department that lacked training and supervision and had a “dysfunctional relationship” with the community. The state imposed a reform plan that included improved training, monitoring and supervision.

Preece, who now works as a security consultant and lives in Los Angeles, received $100,000 plus a disability retirement.

Wayne Stewart was one of the officers who shot Miller. The four were all dismissed in July 1999 for forming and executing a needlessly dangerous plan that risked the lives of Miller and other officers.

Stewart appealed, and an arbitrator ruled he was wrongly fired and should be reinstated. The arbitrator also called then-Chief Jerry Carroll’s decision to fire him an “abuse of administrative discretion.”

The city appealed to Superior Court, lost, appealed to appellate court, but negotiated a settlement before there was a ruling, saying it was time for closure.

Stewart said that race was never an issue in the shooting.

“The only color we saw that night was silver because that was the color of the gun she had,” he said. “For people to make it into a racial issue is absurd.”

Stewart, who now works in construction and lives in Riverside County, said that the last five years have been challenging. “It’s humiliating to be fired, but to be fired on the front page of every newspaper -- it goes without saying how humiliating that can be,” he said. “It dominates every conversation I have been in for the last five years.”

Stewart, 30, said that it also affected his personal life. He said that his wife had a miscarriage days after he learned he was going to be fired, and that he didn’t want to discuss his family life.

“I would rather fade off into the night, never to be heard from again. I would have rather remained in anonymity. We’ve moved on.”

He had one parting statement to those who believe he benefited from the tragedy: “People say, ‘Congrats.’ I would say, ‘Why?’ I got screwed. Even though I won every legal battle possible, it still kept me from the job that I wanted.”

Stewart, the son of a 25-year veteran of the Corona Police Department, dreamed of carrying a badge since he was a boy. “Police work is what I always wanted to get into. I did. It lasted 4 1/2 years,” he said. “It was all I really wanted to do. That was tough.”

Attempts to reach the other officers involved in the shooting were unsuccessful.