Articles

Robert Berke - Article
Los Angeles Daily Journal

CITY PAYS $5M TO VICTIM'S KIN IN BOTCHED RAID

By Martin Berg Daily Journal Staff Writer

Deal with Bell Gardens' May be Among Largest Settlement of its Kind

In what some believe to be one of the largest settlements of its kind the city of Bell Gardens recently paid $5 million to the family of a man shot dead by police in August 1997 during nighttime service of a search warrant at his home. After the shooting, the police went to a parking lot and drank beer.

Particularly troubling, the family's lawyers said is that family members of the victim, Michael Shinaia, had filed harassment complains against the Bell Gardens police before the shooting.

Equally disturbing, the lawyer said, were the police officers' actions before and after the raid.

No Justice.

"The family would give back every penny if they could get the one thing they never received---justice," attorney Gigi Gordon, who handled the case with attorneys Andrew Stein and Robert Berke, said. Shinaia v. Bell Gardens, CV. 06784, DDP.

Stein said the cause of the shooting was poverty. "The police thought that they could kill a poor person in Bell Gardens and no one would care or notice", he said. "They were so sure they could get away with this killing they didn't offer any of the 'standard lies', such as reaching for a shiny object."

Gordon questioned why neither state nor federal prosecutors has taken action against the officers in the case, after an investigation by the plaintiff's attorneys turned up key inconsistencies between authorities' investigation of the shooting and evidence at the scene.

'Treated like Criminals'

Gordon said the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's off ice failed to interview key witnesses and examine important evidence, like the victim's bloody clothing, that would have undermined the officers' version of the shooting. The officer who killed Shinaia feared for his own life after Shinaia repeatedly ignored his orders to raise his hands and appeared to be coming out of a crouch.

Gordon said no law enforcement agency ever contacted Shinaia's family members either to interview them or offer any explanation of the shooting.

"Although they were family members of a homicide victim." She said, "they were treated like criminals. What's wrong is that it was up to a plaintiff's attorney to vindicate this wrong."

Attorney Glen Tucker, who represented Bell Gardens, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

The sheriff's department and the district attorney's office cleared the officers of wrongdoing in the shooting. Gordon said the FBI closed its investigation of the case last year without contacting the plaintiff's attorneys or family members.

Shinaia, 23, was asleep and unarmed in a homemade lean-to in the backyard of the house he shared with his mother, brother, triplet sisters and 4-year-old daughter, when a Bell Gardens police officer entered the yard, the plaintiff's attorneys said.

The officer shot Shinaia 11 times. Inside the house were six other officers clad in black and armed with submachine guns, pistols, a battering ram and bolt cutters.

The officers were looking for Shinaia's brother, Hector, as a suspect in a drive-by shooting. Charges against the brother stemming from the drive-by were later dropped.

After the shooting the officers handcuffed and arrested Shinaia's mother and three sisters and took them to the police station. No charges were field against the family members.

Before the raid, the officers called for "radio silence" so that dispatchers could not contact them. The officers did not notify their watch commander where they planned to execute the search---the only time in a three-year period they had not told their boss of their plans, according to depositions taken during the litigation.

After the shooting, the officers went to a parking lot in Commerce and drank beer for more than two hours, according to the depositions. The officers did not recall what they discussed, how many beers they drank or who bought them.

"This case shows that it's not just Rampart, and it's not just Los Angeles," Berke said. "The officers were unwanted and apparently felt invincible. The good thing about our case is that we were able to bring a measure of accountability to what happened."

Gordon and her husband, Stein, are primarily criminal defense attorneys who were handling their first civil rights case.

"We handled the case like we were prosecuting a murder case." She said.

Criticizing what she called a poor investigation into the Shinaia shooting, Gordon said an examination of the victim's bloody clothing showed that the officer who shot Shinaia was much closer to him than he said he was.

Gordon said she researched other verdicts and settlements during the negotiations in Shinaia's case. The only larger monetary awarded in a federal case stemming from a police shooting was a $12.5 million verdict to the family of a Dinuba man, Ramon Gallardo, fatally shot 13 to 15 times by police serving a search warrant at his home in July 1997. Last year, a federal judge reduced that award by $5 million. Gallardo v. Reinnecius, CV 97-06111 OOW.