By Raul Hernandez
[email protected]
It was a jaw dropping incident, and after the video was launched into Cyberspace, it sparked immediate outrage along with cries of police brutality.
On a busy highway, a California Highway Patrol officer chased down a black woman walking alongside Interstate 10, pulled her to the ground , got on top of her and repeatedly slammed his gloved fist on her head as cars passed on Interstate 10 in Mid-City.
A motorist slowed down, took out his cell phone and captured what happened.
Now, many organizations, including civil rights and community activists, are demanding that the U.S. Justice Department investigate and for the CHP officer to be suspended pending a probe.
CHP officials, however, are saying that it is too early to come to a conclusion, assuring the public that there will be an investigation and after it is completed, it will be reviewed at multiple levels within the department.
It will be difficult to arrive at any other possible conclusion other than an unarmed woman, who allegedly had mental health issues, was pinned down and badly beaten.
If the video is slowed down, sped up or taken apart frame-by-frame, it’s difficult to arrive at any other conclusion then this is police brutality.
But the officer is entitled to due process and has every right to offer a plausible explanation along with evidence to support why he felt she posed a threat to him or others.
Commissioner Joe Farrow wants a swift investigation into this matter.
In 2008, however, Farrow allegedly sent a memo to his employers telling them not to cooperate with authorities investigating a 2007 hate crime against an off-duty CHP officer unless they got his approval, according to the San Diego Union Tribune.
A 2007 Hate-Crime Incident Involving a CHP Officer Raises Questions About CHP Probes
If the past is any indication of how the CHP handled investigations of its officers, as it handled the investigation involving one of its officers, Seth Taylor, who ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor hate crimes in September 2009.
The CHP delayed in turning over the names of witnesses, Taylor’s personnel file and its own internal report on the incident to authorities investigating this case.
In February 2008 while I was working as a reporter for the Ventura County Star, a source told me that a CHP officer had made racial slurs and swung at some Hispanics to fight during a holiday party in 2007.
In interviewing witnesses and sifting through court documents, this is what came to light:
- Taylor made racial slurs and took swings at Hispanics who were attending a holiday party in 2007 at the Marriott Residence Inn in Oxnard on Dec. 14, 2007. Two large groups – Ventura-based CHP officers and Clinicas del Camino Real Inc., a nonprofit healthcare group – were having separate parties in adjacent rooms but shared a bar.
- Some CHP officers who were there thought Taylor’s antics were funny and kept him from lunging at one person.
- Oxnard police officers who responded to the disturbance weren’t able to get Taylor’s name. When police arrived, Taylor was taken out of the Marriott through the hotel’s back entrance by some CHP officers.
During the grand jury investigation of Taylor, prosecutors became aware of an earlier incident involving him.
In court documents, prosecutors said Taylor used racial slurs while addressing two men, Ricky Rodriguez and Michael Borja, at O’Leary’s Side Bar in Ventura on Jan. 27, 2007. With his fingers, Taylor simulated holding a gun and told Rodriguez, “I’m gonna put a cap in (you),” according to court documents.
In addition, court documents indicated that Taylor’s ex-wife filed a report with the Ventura Police Department in 2005 stating that Taylor had injured her during a domestic dispute.
“It should be noted that Taylor’s police baton was involved in the incident,” Prosecutor Karen Wold stated in court records referring to the 2005 incident.
Taylor’s ex-wife, who is Hispanic, requested a restraining order after that incident, court records show, and the couple divorced the same year. Taylor was not arrested and not charged for the incident, and his C
Hispanic Civil Rights Organization Demands an Investigation
There were outcries also from the League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, the oldest Hispanic civil rights organization which ended up taking its concerns about the CHP and Taylor to then Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger.
LULAC wanted Taylor fired, the Star reported in 2009.
“Actions by his CHP associates to remove him, hide him and protect him from investigating Oxnard police are an indication of an organizational culture run amok,” Gil Guevara, district director of LULAC, said in a written statement. “He is dangerous. He shouldn’t be a public servant.”
LULAC put pressure on the District Attorney to investigate Taylor.
After the Star stories were published, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote a detailed article about the incident in 2009. The center is a nonprofit organization that tracks hate crimes in the United States.
“In what the prosecutor says might be the first case of its kind, a California Highway Patrol officer has been convicted of a hate crime. Four counts, no less,” the Center article stated.
CHP Refuses to Cooperate with Authorities
Seth Taylor’s case was assigned to veteran prosecutor Karen Wold who took it before a grand jury.
From the beginning Wold and CHP officials were butting heads. The CHP refused to give its Internal Affairs report and Taylor’s personnel records to the District Attorney’s Office in Ventura who was conducting its investigation, according to court documents.
In court in October 2008, the state’s Attorney General’s Office, which represents the CHP, initially took the legal position that prosecutors weren’t entitled to the full internal report or the names of CHP officers involved in the investigation and fought to turn over his personnel records.
The Star reported that Ventura County Superior Court Judge John Dobroth, during a hearing, told the state attorney representing the CHP to show up with the report on Nov. 3, 2008 or face sanctions. In addition, Dobroth ordered CHP officials to provide the names of two civilian witnesses who saw what happened during the two alleged racially charged incidents.
In an interview after a court hearing, Wold, however, stopped short of saying whether prosecutors felt the CHP and the attorney general’s lawyers were being less than cooperative.
“I think we certainly are having to go to court and litigate every possible issue. Nothing is easy. So I am going to leave it at that,” said Wold.
Prosecutors said they went to court after CHP officials thwarted their investigative efforts to get witness names and statements in a report about the incident at the Marriott.
CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow Memo: Don’t Cooperate with Taylor’s Investigation
The CHP’s failure to hand over the report or names of officers involved in the CHP investigation and a recently discovered memo from CHP higher ups about the Taylor investigation prompted the following editorial from the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper:
“Now, an official CHP memo obtained by the Union-Tribune shows the agency’s obstructionism isn’t just an unshakable hangover from the days of CHP Commissioner Spike Helmick, who thought he ran a fourth, inviolate branch of government. Instead, it is formal CHP policy. The July 1, 2008, memo “reminded” all CHP commands that the agency must not cooperate, without direct approval from Commissioner
“Joseph Farrow, with local law enforcement agencies investigating alleged wrongdoing by CHP employees. This is justified on the grounds that it is required by state law.”
“The CHP, however, simply doesn’t care. This is why it is obstructing Ventura County’s investigation of CHP Officer Seth Taylor, accused of five misdemeanors stemming from two incidents with allegedly ugly racial overtones. It now faces a judge’s order to turn over its internal investigation report on Taylor by Nov. 3 or face sanctions. The agency also was ordered to provide the names of two civilian witnesses to the incidents,” the editorial stated.
In an editorial, the VC Reporter blasted the CHP for not cooperating with Oxnard police and prosecutors.
“The bigger problem here, however, is not Taylor’s admitted guilt, but the CHP’s alleged involvement in keeping his identity a secret, according to a petition filed by Senior Deputy District Attorney Karen Wold.
She said that “allegedly, a CHP officer told (Oxnard) officers that since the incident had occurred ‘off-duty,’ they were not required to provide the name of the officer involved.”
“The incident in question happened during a CHP holiday function. If the assertion is true, not only did Taylor tarnish the reputation of the CHP, but the department hurt its own credibility and integrity by not wanting to reveal one of their own as a perpetrator of hate crimes.”
Surprisingly, District Attorney Greg Totten wrote a letter to The Star editor in 2009 saying he wanted to “set the record straight” regarding his office’s investigation and allegations that the CHP was less than cooperative.
“During this case, the public and news media were understandably confused about the district attorney’s access to the reports of the CHP internal investigation of the incidents,” Totten wrote in part.
Adding, “Access to personnel records of this kind is subject to strict procedural requirements. The district attorney may not obtain these records to use in the case without a court order. The court must evaluate and balance the officer’s right to privacy in his personnel file against the prosecution’s need to know.”
Taylor left the CHP Two Months After Pleading Guilty
Despite pleading guilty to a hate crime, Taylor was allowed to keep his job as a CHP officer until he exhausted his union rights and appeals to keep his job until Nov. 2.
The Southern Poverty Law Center believes Taylor is the first officer in the United States convicted of a hate crime.
Officials were surprised that Taylor was being allowed to keep his job after a hate-crime conviction
“We were shocked, absolutely shocked, and never heard of such a thing before,” Heidi Beirich, the center’s research director, said of the Taylor case. She said the center, founded in 1971, works closely with law enforcement and provides training for police, schools, community and civil rights groups.
But CHP refused to comment on the case on whether he was fired, saying he was “no longer with the agency.”
CHP and Its History of Serious Internal Management Problems
Art Acevedo, a Cuban-born American, joined the CHP in 1986. His mistake while at CHP was wanting to replace then CHP Commissioner Dwight “Spike” Helmick.
In March 2004, Acevedo applied for Helmick,’s job after the election of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A few weeks later, The Los Angeles Times reported in January 2008 that the governor and the CHP received two anonymous letters purported to be from several women in the uniform ranks alleging that Acevedo had engaged in sexual harassment.
Command officers provided a written warning to Acevedo regarding the anonymous sexual harassment allegations, even though the CHP’s head of internal affairs at the time refused to participate in investigating the charges, which dated to 1989, because he believed that the statute of limitations had expired and they were meant as retaliation against Acevedo, the personnel board found, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“While it cannot be proven that Helmick or the other commissioners helped to generate these letters, they reek of retribution,” the board’s report said.
Acevedo worked his way up to the highest rungs of CHP, earning plaudits for combating gang violence in Los Angeles and respect for his willingness to take on police corruption, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News in April 2010.
Near the end of his highway patrol career, he ran into a rocky patch when a former girlfriend filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him and the highway patrol. A federal judge dismissed the allegation of sexual harassment.
Acevedo also won a $1 million whistle-blower settlement against the highway patrol after complaining that he faced retaliation for, among other things, exposing improper conduct by top officials, including pension irregularities.
CHP Commissioner Wants a Swift Investigation
CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow – who allegedly sent out the 2008 memo about the Taylor investigation – now promises a swift investigation into the highway beating of the black female. Farrow said it will be completed within weeks not months.
On Tuesday Farrow met with local activists and spoke at a news conference.
“This is one of the most significant events of my 34-year career that I’ve ever dealt with,” Farrow said. “We’ve never seen this before.”
The CHP report will only point to the obvious. But what will be interesting are the findings, conclusions and most importantly,the assessment of the damages – what criminal charges, if any, will be filed against the CHP officer.