Jury gets May Day melee case

One minute, Patti Ballaz’s video camera was focused on police officers in riot gear hitting demonstrators with batons and knocking them to the ground. The next moment, the image abruptly jolted past a line of palm trees and panned to an overcast sky.

Ballaz, then a 31-year veteran camerawoman for Fox’s KTTV-TV Channel 11, had been knocked to the ground and her camera flung from her shoulder in a confrontation with LAPD officers attempting to clear the crowd gathered in MacArthur park for a May 1, 2007, immigration rally.

On Wednesday, an attorney for Ballaz repeatedly played the footage for a Los Angeles jury deciding a lawsuit filed by Ballaz and two reporters, who contend that police used excessive force on journalists who wore credentials and posed no threat. The confrontations left the three women -- Ballaz, Fox 11 reporter Christina Gonzalez and KPCC-FM (89.3) reporter Patricia Nazario -- with physical and psychological injuries that led to lasting pain and post-traumatic stress disorder, attorneys said.

“That day the media were targets, the media became the receivers of batons and baseball bats,” said Browne Greene, a lawyer representing Ballaz, in closing arguments. Greene said the police violated the journalists’ civil rights as free press, saying that in the case of Gonzalez, police spun her around “like a rag doll.”

Attorneys for the city, however, offered a completely different account of the same confrontation. Assistant City Atty. Jessica Brown told jurors the journalists interfered with police despite repeated admonitions to get out of the way, and that the force used by officers was no more than a shove. The women challenged and fought the police, and Gonzalez at one point reached for an officer’s gun, Brown said.

“Just because they were at the park that day doesn’t mean they get to write the check and go cash it at the city ATM,” Brown said. “These three women took risks on their own, they got in the skirmish line.”

The city also contended that the journalists’ claims of PTSD that would last the rest of their lives was greatly exaggerated, telling jurors the women shouldn’t be allowed to treat the incident “like Powerball or retirement.” The city’s attorneys said many of the injuries for which the women were seeking compensation were from preexisting conditions.

The case was submitted to the jury for deliberation Wednesday afternoon.

The journalists’ case is the first trial ensuing from LAPD’s botched crackdown at the May Day rally, images of which were broadcast around the country to widespread criticism of the department. City and police leaders have publicly apologized and instituted sweeping reforms in the department’s crowd control tactics.

The city has previously agreed to pay about $13 million to settle class action claims brought by about 300 demonstrators, bystanders and some journalists who were injured or mistreated that day. Last month, the City Council also approved an additional payout of $450,000 to five journalists who were caught up in the day’s scuffle.

victoria.kim@latimes.com