Roadrunner wins top journalism awards
Always the shameless self-promoter, Roadrunner editor David Ross displays two plaques that he won last Thursday at the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists.
He won a first place in news writing for non-daily newspapers and Best of Show for non-daily newspapers. Both awards were for a story that he wrote last year about a shooting on the Rincon Reservation.
The story, entitled Shooting Highlights Tension Between Res and Deputies was described by contest judges: “David Ross showed that the seemingly insignificant shoplifting of two 12 packs of beer can lead to other consequences. As with any news story, there are many elements. It would have been easy to see the action from the so-called victim’s point of view, or as an intrusion into the life of the reservation. Instead, the article gets into the community, the community’s wishes to keep bad people in check and touches on the differences but cooperation between the reservation and law enforcement.”
Many people are puzzled about what a “Best of Show” award is. Ross explained that it means you will be able to bid on him at the Del Mar Fair’s livestock exhibition in July.
The following story ran in the June 30 issue of The Valley Roadrunner. The story won the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists’ award for best news story appearing in a non-daily paper and the Best of Show award for non-daily papers.
SHERIFFS HAVE GOOD RAPPORT WITH RES, DESPITE SHOOTING
By DAVID ROSS
It started with four men shoplifting two 12-packs of beer and strong-arming the owner of Pala Vista Market. It ended with one of the men shot in the head, face down in Morningstar Lane.
About 4:30 p.m. on June 23 Kee Lee, owner of the Pala Vista Market, looked up to see a large man with a close cropped haircut walking back towards the coolers.
“Do you have change for a hundred?” the man asked, and Lee said he did.
Lee continued to wait on customers and when he looked up, the man was headed out the door with a 12 pack under each arm. Lee chased after him, but was grabbed just outside the door by a second man, and thrown against the wall of the store.
A total of four men, two of whom had stayed in the vehicle during the robbery, drove off.
Lee, his heart beating rapidly, called 911. Thus began a drama that ended 90 minutes later with death of Anthony Reed, 22.
Shortly after the robbery Deputy Joe Hernandez encountered the robbery vehicle. With the help of other deputies, he stopped it and arrested the occupants. The arrest took place on Valley Center Road near Morningstar on the reservation.
Arrested were Melvin Donald Rodriquez, 30; Billy Boy Reed, 19 and John Victor Paipa, 26. Rodriquez and Reed were later released. Paipa is still in jail at this writing. Anthony Reed escaped.
Reed was what might be called a “hard case.” Born in Northridge in 1975, it is reported that he was not enrolled as an Indian, although he lived on the reservation. He had been banished from Pala and Barona reservations.
Although only 22, he had served some time in prison and at the time of his death a warrant was out for his arrest for assault with a deadly weapon. His 80 year old grandfather, Sam Reed, was quoted in another paper as calling him “a rough character.”
It was another 45 minutes before the dispatcher relayed a call from the reservation for deputies to deal with a man who was firing his shotgun in the air on Morningstar.
The suspect was described as a Hispanic with a shaved head.
The call was unrelated to the robbery.
Deputies Hernandez and Chuck Kett answered the call. Hernandez is a nine year veteran of the force. Kett has been a deputy for 27 years. Both are members of the canine patrol.
Kett is well-liked by the Indians. He is described as a hard worker, a stabilizing influence, a deputy who does his work in a businesslike manner.
Contrary to a previous report, Kett did not recognize Tony Reed when he found him. According to Lt. Doug Clements of the VC Sheriff’s substation, “He had no idea who it was.”
Kett had encountered Reed before, but he had shaved his head and beard because he was a wanted man, so he didn’t recognize him this time.
When the two officers arrived, around 6 p.m. they saw Reed, who answered the description of one of the men who had participated in the robbery.
What happened next is unclear.
According to Lt. Jerry Lipscomb, the Sheriff’s homicide detective leading the investigation: “We haven’t been able to establish that Reed fired his weapon while the deputies were present. We found the shotgun shells so several shots were fired.”
At some point Reed pointed his shotgun directly at Kett and made a motion as though trying to load. Investigators who examined the shotgun found that it had three rounds in the cylinder, but none in the barrel. To fire the weapon, “Reed would have to chamber a shell into the barrel and then pull the trigger.
That is what appeared to happen as he approached Kett.,” noted Lipscomb. “We have witnesses to that effect.” It was then that Kett fired, hitting Reed in the head.
The investigation continues. “What we’re looking for is the facts,” explains Lipscomb. “We try to approach it in an objective manner. “We don’t make a judgment on the right, whether it was justified or not. We collect the facts into a package with the statements and present it to the DA’s office. They will look at the total investigation and make a determination whether the officer shooting was justified.”
The investigation included more than 15 hours at the original crime scene to collect and preserve any evidence.
Was Kett justified in firing? “Anytime a person levels a shotgun or any weapon at you, depending on the deputy’s state of mind and if he feels his life is in danger, at that point the officer is justified in taking whatever action he feels appropriate at the time,” says Lipscomb. Both are going back to work shortly.
This is the first time in four years that an officer from the VC substation has drawn his weapon and shot someone. That time the officer was forced to shoot a migrant worker who was firing off his weapon on Calle De Vista.
Despite this most recent incident, Lt. Doug Clements, commander of the station, maintains that relations with the reservations are good.
Perhaps not as good as a couple of years ago, when federal money helped fund an Indian Reservation Enforcement Detail for Rincon, similar to one that pays Deputy Ken Simon to patrol the Pala Reservation.
Simon was quoted by an area daily Friday as saying that a small percentage of the reservations’ residents “absolutely hate us. They think it’s sovereign land and we have no right to enforce the laws of the state.”
However, Lt. Clements points out that the call that brought deputies into a fatal confrontation with Reed came from the reservation.
“We have pretty good rapport with the tribal elders of Rincon,” says Clements. “We meet with the tribal elders. I see [Tribal Chairman] Ed Arviso from time to time, and Jack from La Jolla, not formally, but we touch base quite often.”
During Clements’s 30 years with the department he’s seen a “tremendous change” in the attitude towards law enforcement by reservation residents.
“When I came up here as a deputy in 1968 it was ‘us and them’ and they hated us and it was pretty clear. We only dealt with them as we needed to. With the exception of the resident deputies, like Wilbur Van Cleeve, who was well-liked.”
During those intervening three decades, but most particularly the last ten years there has been a significant change in the attitude of reservation residents toward the law.
“They are fed up with these young thugs on the reservation. Pala, Rincon and La Jolla have banished a lot of people from the reservation. They don’t want any trouble. They want the people to live out there in peace just like everyone else,” says Clements.
What complicates things is the close blood ties between so many people on the res.
“Everyone is pretty much related to someone else. Even when they agree that someone is wrong and shouldn’t be doing something they are extremely reluctant to put their name on a line and testify. They feel like traitors. It’s like a brotherhood. That makes it particularly difficult. You don’t get lots of cooperation,” says Clements.
Of course, it’s something of a leap to go from “non-cooperation” to actually threatening a deputy with violence, as some of the people who gathered on Morningstar last week did.
That was the reason that the deputies felt justified in calling for back-up.
Such a call is not taken lightly among peace officers, and when it was broadcast, every free patrol car from here to the coast was on the road.
A total of about 25 cars eventually arrived, and Valley Center residents heard them all as they roared through town about 6 p.m. Tuesday night.
During those few minutes the two deputies were surrounded while residents accused them of murder.
“That’s to be expected,” says Clements. “In the first place it was kind of a spontaneous reaction. They were looking for someone to blame. They are relatives that he has known all his life. They want someone or something to pay for it, if you will.”
There’s a small element in the reservation that Clements characterizes as “thugs.” They are not gang members, but petty hoodlums. Whether Reed was one such person remains to be established. But that element certainly doesn’t represent the prevailing wind on the res.
“I’ve had a number of calls since this incident by people who don’t want to come forward. They’ve told me: ‘I’m a Rincon member, I’m calling to express my sympathy for the deputy. I’m getting a lot of calls like that,” says Clements.
“A lot of people talked to me and said it was a matter of time before something like this happened.”
Among the law enforcement community, there’s a term for a person who acts in such a manner that he virtually guarantees his own death. It’s called an “officer-assisted suicide.”
Whether Reed’s death will turn out to be such a case, or the officer’s fault, or a drunken incident that got out of hand, or a dozen other possibilities, will be the job of the homicide detectives now investigating the case.
While incidents involving officers discharging their guns are rare, gunfire on the reservation is a pretty common occurance.
According to Lt. Clements “There are a lot of guns on that reservation and a lot of young people living there, some Indian, some non, and they carry guns and shoot them off and threaten people. They don’t necessarily go off the reservation to do their dirty work.”
“There’s also an awful lot of folks, Indians and non-Indians, who are really nice people. And they call us. The majority of the people are law-abiding citizens and they don’t like this stuff and they’d like these young criminals off the reservation.”
And, far from wanting less of a law enforcement presence, tribal elders want more, says Clements. “Last fall we had meetings with the tribal elders. They wanted to explore a contract with us to bring in more law enforcement.”