Last Updated on December 9, 2005 by Paulette Brown-Hinds
San Bernardino
By Mary Shelton
A Riverside Police Department officer who shot and killed a woman last year while on duty has filed a $500,000 tort claim against a member of the Community Police Review Commission for defamation of character.
Officer Ryan Wilson alleged in the three-page document that Commissioner Sheri Corral defamed his character when she made several comments about the shooting at an Oct. 12 meeting. Other defendants in the proposed civil action included the city of Riverside and Riverside Community College, which employs Corral as a police officer.
At that meeting, Corral said that “it was an executionary shooting. He executed her, ” during the discussion of the drafting of a public report. Corral's comments were included in an article published in the Oct. 20 edition of the Black Voice News.
Last month, the CPRC found that Wilson had violated the department's use of force policy, when he shot Summer Lane on Dec. 6, 2004. The Lane shooting was the first of seven fatal shootings that were investigated by the CPRC during its history to have received this finding. The CPRC's recommendation was then forwarded to City Manager Brad Hudson for its final disposition. However, the final decision on the outcome of the shooting was made by Chief Russ Leach, who upheld his own department's conclusion that the shooting was within departmental policy. The Lane shooting was Wilson's second fatal shooting since he first started working for the department in September 2002.
The tort claim was filed by Wilson through the Riverside Police Officers Association and its attorneys several weeks after the CPRC issued its finding, and within one week of the case's final disposition.
Since a CPRC briefing held last Sept. 28 shed new light to the public on the details of the Lane shooting, it has attracted a lot of attention.
Initial reports including a briefing given by the department on Dec. 22, 2004 had placed Wilson behind the car, when he fired at Lane's car as it backed towards him. However, according to two interdepartmental memos dated Dec. 7 and Dec. 21, 2004, Wilson had left Christopher Grotness on the ground behind Lane's stationary vehicle, walked up to the driver's side window then shot four times inside the car, without saying anything. The correct information was first released to the public at a CPRC briefing on Sept. 28, 2005, when its private investigator Norm Wight presented a report on his own investigation.
Wilson had said in his Dec. 7, 2004 interview with two detectives on the Officer-Involved Shooting Team that Lane had run over him twice, and also struck him once. Food 4 Less Security Guard Henry Bowie had said in his interviews with both department investigators and Wight that Wilson had told him after the shooting that the car had bumped him three times.
One adult male witness interviewed by both the department and the CPRC investigator said that he thought Wilson might have been run over once. Another teenaged witness interviewed only by the department stated in his interview that he saw Wilson's leg get run over once, but then also said that he saw Wilson shoot Grotness, which did not happen. Other witnesses reported that Lane approached Grotness and Wilson with her car but could not see if she hit them. In his interview, Grotness said that Lane's car had hit him once but he was not sure whether the officer was also hit.
Photographs of Wilson's legs showed a small contusion on one of his knees, and there were no photographs included in the investigative report of his sprained ankle. At one public meeting, the CPRC briefly discussed whether to subpoena Wilson's medical records of his injuries which also were not included in the department's investigative repot but ultimately decided not to do so.
According to the department's investigative report, Wilson and Officer Matthew Parrish were dispatched at 8:22 p.m. to the Food 4 Less grocery store, in the University area, in response to a call for assistance regarding a man trying to cash a stolen check. At 8:26, Officer Dawson Smith told dispatch that he would respond to the call, and dispatch cancelled Parrish, who was in route from the Mission Grove area, according to the incident's CAD log sheet and Parrish's supplemental report. After Helicopter Pilot Paul Benoit issued an 11-11 call for immediate backup at 8:27, Parrish continued enroute and was joined by three squad cars containing Officers Michael Mears, Chris Williams, Trinidad Lomeli, David Riedeman and Chad Milby.
At 8:28, Sgt. Mark Rossi and Sgt. George Masson responded simultanously, causing their transmissions to cross, then Benoit requested that Rossi respond, according to the RPD CAD log sheet. Parrish arrived onscene at 8:30, along with Officer Vincente De La Torre, who had responded after Wilson had issued a call, “shots fired” after the shooting.
Milby was the first officer to check on Lane after the shooting, according to his supplemental report. He had walked up to the car, opened the door and saw Lane unconscious in her seat. He asked her to put her hands up where he could see them, but she did not respond.
“I reached across the WFA(White female adult), grabbed the gear selector and pushed it forward until it stopped,” Milby stated, “I believe the vehicle was turned off.”
Milby then stated he checked Lane for her vital signs and found she had a pulse and was breathing slowly. Riedman, his partner, talked to dispatch about medical assistance. Lane died at the hospital, of a gun shot wound that entered her left upper chest and punctured her heart, according to the coroner's report.
The law suit is not the first action taken against Corral by members of the RPOA.
In 2004, RPOA President Pat McCarthy sent a letter to members of the city council demanding that Corral be removed from the CPRC and alleged that she was biased against them. The letter was in reaction to comments that Corral had made at an earlier community meeting, where she said that some police officers in the department treated her differently and unfairly. She later told Black Voice News that this different treatment began after a workshop that the CPRC held with McCarthy and RPOA Vice-President Chris Lanzillo on March 24, 2004. During that workshop, Lanzillo had said that none of the commissioners knew what it was like to be in their shoes, because none of them drove a black-and-white. Corral raised her hand and said that she did because she was an RCC police officer. Lanzillo paused then said, no your cars are white.
The next day, Corral said, her sergeant related a conversation he had with McCarthy about her serving on the commission. During that conversation, McCarthy had mentioned “a heated meeting that got real ugly last night”.
Other incidents followed which she recorded in a memo that went to then Executive Director Don Williams and was also read by Police Chief Russ Leach and then-City Manager George Carvalho. The BVN also received a copy of that memo which related the following incidents:
On March 26, 2004, six bicycle officers from the Riverside Police Department appeared in the A.G. Paul Quadrangle on RCC's main campus where Corral was standing with RCC Police Department Chief Lee Wagner and Officer David Keers. The officers rode past them without stopping.
Wagner tried to flag them down, and two of them came back. Wagner asked them why they were there and said it was customary for officers with other law enforcement agencies to give a heads up to his department before coming on campus. one officer said that they were in the area and felt like coming on campus.
Later that day at 3:30p.m., Keers went to pick up a vehicle from a repair shop on University Avenue and encountered a 211 strong arm victim who told him a suspect was nearby. Keers called the RPD for an 11-10(RPD assistance) but had to wait 20 minutes for assistance while he apprehended the suspect. Corral was off on March 27-8 and said she noticed more than the usual RPD patrol cars driving past her house.
She also started having problems getting warrants from the RPD and on March 29, when she had asked Dispatch about the status of one, it was not available until the next day. on March 30, an RPD officer contacted her sergeant and asked if a RCC Police Department officer had driven by while RPD officers were fighting a suspect and losing the fight.
The same day, her sergeant told her that he had spoken with McCarthy and Lanzillo and McCarthy said that Corral was not part of the police and was not one of them. McCarthy also said that the sergeant was guilty by association because he worked with Corral.
Soon after these initial alleged incidents, Leach held a discussion with RCC Police Department Chief Lee Wagner about the situation.
After the meeting of the chiefs, Corral's sergeant told her that McCarthy had visited his office and apologized for his behavior and said that he had presented himself as somewhat hostile. McCarthy had asked who would handle Internal Affairs if Corral was involved in a shooting and that he had thrown his head back during the workshop because Corral had gone on and on about her police experience.
On May 5, 2004 however, Corral said that she and her partner encountered McCarthy at the Orange St. Station, and he said in a sarcastic tone, “Well if it isn't the commissioner. How are you doing commish?” Later that month, Corral said that she went back to that facility to pick up L-1 forms and followed the usual procedure of phoning Dispatch and then picking them up.
When she tried to do this, a male RPD officer said in front of the dispatchers, “she's not allowed in here. You (her male partner) can come in and she can't” and then blocked efforts by her to receive the forms. Corral said he make comments that she was not to receive any assignments because she was a “turncoat.” A day later, Corral said the officer called and apologized, saying that he was “messing with her.”
“Even though he was playing, it wasn't a joke,” Corral said in a May 2004 interview.
In a June 2004 interview with BVN, Leach had said that he believed the situation was a “range war” between Corral and the RPOA stemming from a “back and forth” between her and McCarthy and Lanzillo at the March 24 workshop.
“I have no control over the POA people,” Leach said during that interview.
In a June 2004 interview, McCarthy had denied the allegations, saying that it was an issue of right or wrong, that Corral could not handle complaints “openly and fairly” if she was alleging that she was treated differently and unfairly by the department's officers.
Corral has served on the CPRC since she was appointed on the commission in 2004, after serving as an alternate. She has worked as a police officer with RCC's police department since 1996 and has been the recipient of several awards including Latina Police Officer of the Year in 1999 and Latina of the Year in 2003. Many who keep a close eye on the CPRC praised Corral as an intelligent woman, concerned about community issues and outreach.