Disgrace to the badge

Newly released grand jury transcripts provide terrifying insight into life inside Orange County jails. There is the shocking admission by one deputy that “inmates do run the jail system.” There is the callous indifference of deputies watching television and text-messaging while inmates ran amok, of deputies so committed to evading their responsibilities that they devised a code to alert one another when supervisors were coming. There is the haunting realization that while those deputies snickered and ducked their duties, an inmate was sodomized and beaten to death. And then, as has so often been the case when there is disgrace in Orange County, there are the actions of its fallen sheriff, Michael S. Carona.

Carona’s first offense was to treat the inmate’s killing as an internal matter and to fend off outside investigation. Then the Sheriff’s Department, continuing its emphasis on secrecy over safety, fought media requests for copies of the grand jury transcripts -- a natural if abhorrent impulse, given that members of the department lied to the panel and tampered with witnesses, among other offenses. But it was only this week, after a judge overruled the department, that the full extent of Carona’s misuse of his office became apparent.

As the transcripts reveal, on Jan. 15, Carona was summoned to the grand jury and asked to testify about the death of John Derek Chamberlain, who was brutalized and killed while deputies ignored his cries. At that session, Carona, who earlier had resigned, agreed to spell his name and to tell the truth. But when asked whether he would cooperate, Corona responded: “On advice of counsel, I respectfully wish to rely on my 5th Amendment right and decline to answer this question.” He was asked nine more times, and Corona invoked his right in each instance. Finally, he was dismissed.

Carona has every right not to give evidence against himself, but the spectacle of a law enforcement officer using that right to thwart a public inquiry serves to remind that Carona long ago put his own interests above those of his duty and his agency. Indeed, the details of his testimony resurrect one of Southern California’s most depressing police moments, the day when former Los Angeles Police Department Det. Mark Fuhrman took the stand in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial and invoked the 5th rather than say whether he’d ever used the word “nigger.” He had, of course. Fuhrman’s testimony deflated his colleagues and undermined his department’s case against Simpson.

If anything, Carona’s invocation of the right is even more dispiriting, as he used it to impede an investigation of a department he had headed. Carona’s successor, acting Sheriff Jack Anderson, already has suspended some of the deputies involved in this sordid case and has pledged to investigate it aggressively. That’s a welcome step and a happy break from the selfish, obstructionist and possibly criminal acts of Mike Carona.