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Connecting the present to the past or the past to the present

From – Los Angeles Herald Examiner (March 20, 1987)

By: Rodolfo F. Acuña

Title – “Police brutality still alive and threatening.”

American cities are unsafe places. Crime rates remain high, bus travel can be dangerous
and gang warfare frequently counts passers-by among its victims. Fear has created such a public
outcry for more and more police protection that questions about the consequences of supporting
your local cop – right or wrong – go unheard.
Only occasionally do the media report on police abuse; even rarer is the politicians who
criticizes law-enforcement agencies. It’s just not good politics to be perceived as soft on crime.
The reluctance to check police abuse not only means that innocent victims continue to
suffer. The people as a whole also are victimized, because prosecuting those who abuse
governmental power is that much more difficult. No matter how much we want to ignore it,
police brutality is as potent an issue today as it was in 1970, when Los Angeles officers, in a case
of mistaken identity, shot and killed Gillermo and Beltran Sanchez in their apartment and when
newsman Ruben Salazar was accidentally, though recklessly, killed while covering a Chicano
protest of the Vietnam War.
What is different today is that the media are far more inclined to ignore or play down
such police abuses, and politicians are even more reluctant to defend the interests of their
constituents when they are threatened by police brutality. What has survived from the old days is
the Los Angeles district attorney’s refusal to prosecute officers who may have violated Penal
Code Section 192, which deals with manslaughter.
The unwillingness to prosecute places an unfair burden on the survivors who are forced
to live with the guilt and stigma associated with the “reasonable doubt” that their beloved
committed a crime. In order to get a measure of justice, families must hire a lawyer and go to
civil court to clear their reputations.
This is an expensive and time-consuming undertaking. It may take years just to be heard
in court. A family may well succeed in clearing the name of their dead relative, but the system
remains unchanged. Is the officer judged negligent in the use of deadly force deterred from doing
it again? Not hardly. Officers know that the chance of being prosecuted is slight, and that if they
are, the costs of defense zero, since taxpayers pick up the tab. Furthermore, while on trial they
still collect their salaries and if punitive damages are awarded, taxpayers will again pay the bill.
Take the case of Jildardo Plasencia, 33. In 1980, the Plasencias hosted a family New
Year’s Eve party in their Willowbrook home. The women and girls were in the house, the men
and boys in a converted rumpus room in the garage. At about 9 p.m., Jildardo fired two guns and
a shotgun into the air to celebrate the approaching New Year.
At roll call that evening, sheriff’s deputies had been told of this tradition. If they heard
gunshots while on patrol, the deputies were instructed to go in, after calling for backup, with
lights flashing. The sheriff’s department wanted to avoid an incident. But deputies David
Anderson and Sandra Jones took it upon themselves to investigate the source of the gunfire,
together in the dark.
According to the deputies, they encountered two men. The first immediately put up his
hands; the other, Jildardo, allegedly stood in the garage doorway and pointed a gun at Jones, who
shot and killed him. In the next three or four seconds, the deputies fired nine times, seven times
through the partially opened garage door. Inside, three men, two teenagers and three boys
crouched in terror. When the shooting stopped, Jildardo lay dead with an unloaded revolved in
his hand; Juan Santoyo, 18, was wounded in the leg; and 3 year old Jildardo Jr. was struck once
in the buttock, and another bullet ruptured his intestines.
A special investigation subsequently cleared the deputies of any wrongdoing. Although
mistaken, according to investigators, they had acted reasonably. Witnesses were said to
corroborate the officers’ version of the events, though many were characterized as confused. The
coroner’s report, based on a blood-splatter test supposedly proved that Jildardo had pointed the
gun at Jones. The district attorney refused to follow up.
Six years later, Stella Plasencia, her five children and Santoyo received a judgment of just
under $1.4 million. During the civil trial, attorney Samuel Paz refuted the findings of the special
investigation on four points. One, that the autopsy had corroborated the deputies’ account that
Jildardo had pointed the gun at Jones; it did not. Two, that Jildardo was standing in the garage
when he was shot and killed. Three, that the officers had acted “reasonably” in firing blindly at
the garage door, Paz showed, the deputies had acted negligently and recklessly. And four, that
witnesses supported the deputies’ version of events; in fact, their accounts were distorted when
translated by a deputy with a third-grade knowledge of Spanish.
In light of the new evidence, will the district attorney bring charges? To date, no charges
have been filled.
Other Latino families are faced with similar ordeals. The family of Arturo Oviedo, 25, for
example, is demanding answers concerning the circumstances surrounding his death while in
police custody. According to the arrest report, Oviedo was stopped at the Fullerton Mall on Jan.
8 at 1:40 a.m. because he looked like a Ninja warrior. A deputy noticed a syringe protruding
from one of Oviedo’s gloves. Oviedo was then said to have run from the deputies, who pursued
him. Five officers were eventually needed to restrain Oviedo. Two more syringes were allegedly
found. The arrest report also showed that Oviedo was not under the influence of drugs.
Over the next couple of weeks, according to family members, Oviedo was kept under
heavy sedation at the Orange County jail medical ward. While there, his public defender plea-
bargained the charges against him. When Oviedo was found strangled to death in his cell on Jan.
31, he was serving a five month sentence for assaulting an officer. The family hired a pathologist
who found that Oviedo had several broken ribs, a crushed vertebrae and a damaged spinal
column. There was no evidence that Oviedo had fought back.
Through news reports, the family has learned that there is reason to believe that Oviedo
might have been beaten to death by Thomas Pick, 23, his cellmate. Pick, who has a history of
violence, was also the cellmate of another prisoner who died under mysterious circumstances.
The Orange County District attorney has since filled criminal charges against Pick in both
deaths.
For the Oviedos, many questions remain. Why was Arturo placed in a cell with Pick?
Why was Arturo, who had no criminal record, kept sedated? While they wait for the answers,
they must live with their grief and with the disturbing hindsight that if only they could have
raised the $50,000 bond, Arturo would be alive today.
We all want safe cities. The price should not, however, be the abuse of governmental
authority through the negligent use of deadly force.

From – Los Angeles Herald Examiner (June 3, 1988)

Title – “The fire that too many are willing to forget”

On May 24, a raging chemical fire threatened to explode 26,000 gallons of lethal
chemicals (among them cyanide) in Lincoln Heights. The hurried evacuation of thousands of
residents was chaotic. Some likened the potential disaster to Bhopal’s.
How could this have happened? Easy. It occurred in a poor, politically powerless Latino
neighborhood, a non-controversial resting place for the toxic ingredients of the “American
Dream” to be used or stored.
Builders Hardware Finishers, where the fire broke out, is located in a residential
neighborhood. The owner of the metal-plating company was previously fined and jailed for
illegally dumping hazardous materials in city sewers. Builders Hardware had no emergency
plans to deal with the fire, as state law requires for businesses storing or using hazardous
materials. But the company isn’t solely to blame. The indifference of elected officials and the
general public to the dangers of haphazard regulation of toxic chemicals cannot be ignored.
According to Commissioner Ed Avila, president of the Los Angeles City Commission of
Public Safety, his department is playing regulatory catch-up. Although his department has 50
inspectors, it is struggling to compel errant businesses that use or store toxic chemicals to comply
with the safety codes. Only about half of the estimated 8,000 companies handling toxic materials
have even filed emergency plans. This despite the fact that many of them, such as Builders,
encroach on residential space.
Enforcement is difficult. For example, the metal-plating industry is composed of many
small shops widely dispersed along the edges of the Los Angeles River, extending from Cypress
Park to Boyle Heights. In the 1930s, the auto industry encouraged the local pattern of growth.
Throughout the 1950s, chrome bumpers were the industry’s major product. But when plastics
and aluminum replaced chrome, many of the plants were marginalized.
At the time, public pressure resulted in the passage of sewer laws and other regulations
governing the handling and disposal of hazardous waste materials. Unwilling to spend capital to
modernize their plants to comply with the law, the owners sold out to their Mexican foreman or
newly arrived Middle Easterners willing to take the risk in pursuit of the American Dream.
 Today, these small entrepreneurs employ thousands of workers. In part, they maintain
their profits by either illegally dumping or burying their toxic wastes, thus ultimately shifting the
expense of disposing of poisonous materials onto the taxpayers. In the case of the Builders
Hardware fire, the Environmental Protection Agency will spend an estimated quarter of a million
dollars to clean up the toxic materials.
According to Frank Villalobos of Barrio Planners, these types of plants could easily be
cleaned up by installing filters and other safety devices. Villalobos’ planning corporation has
helped the Ideal and New Way companies in Lincoln Heights to modernize their plants. The
major snag is that the filtering systems cost about $100,000 and are produced by only three
manufacturers that prefer to sell to large companies.
As a result, the small companies usually opt for attorney fees rather than investing in
expensive technology. Meanwhile, the city offers little leadership in controlling the use and
storage of toxic materials.
Many East Siders, however, believe that the costs of modernizing the plants are not the
most important obstacle to preventing a future catastrophe involving toxic chemicals. Rather, it
is the attitude of city politicians and the public at large. To them, the Lincoln Heights fire
reinforced their suspicion that Los Angeles divides its concerns into Councilmanic districts.
Aside from Councilwoman Gloria Molina, L.A. politicos expressed little outrage at the
near tragedy. The Builders Hardware fire did not make the front page of the city’s biggest-
circulation newspaper; within three days, the media, with some notable exceptions, considered
the “mishap” forgettable news. Molina’s press conference did not even rank a footnote in the
electronic or print media. Such indifference leads many Latinos to wonder if a similar fire
endangering the sea life off the coast of Santa Monica would have received wider and more
enduring coverage.
It also reminds Latinos that the obsession of the governor, the California Department of
Corrections and the state Democratic and Republican elected officials to build a prison in
downtown Los Angeles makes no room for the health and safety of East Siders. The property
adjacent to Crown Coach, the proposed prison site, is contaminated with carcinogenic
polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, the by-products of a former oil gasification plant operated
by the Southern California Gas Company. The Crown Coach property itself is also contaminated.
Yet, state authorities have refused to fully investigate the site’s safety. Nor have they
acknowledged that trucks carrying toxic materials, with all their attendant risks, regularly travel
through the area.
The effect on the evacuees of the gases emitted by the Lincoln Heights’ fire will not be
known for many years. Nevertheless, the incident has left many of us wondering if the public’s
lack of concern for the health and safety of poor Latinos stems from their mistaken assumption
that the victims are intruders who don’t belong here anyway.
 a

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