Attitude of Officer Emerges as Issue in Drunk-Driving Case

Private investigator Walter Goode was thinking about his upcoming vacation in Mexico when he walked into the Cobblestone Inn bar in Placentia.

He ordered a tall vodka tonic, he recalled, and struck up a conversation with the bartender. Forty-five minutes and another drink later, he left. It was 6:45 p.m. on Nov. 7, 1986.

Accounts differ as to what happened next, but Placentia Police Officer Dennis Grimm wrote in his report that he saw Goode “staggering” through the shopping center to his car. Goode then weaved from one side of the lane to the other on Orangethorpe Avenue as a drove away, Officer Grimm reported, prompting him to pull Goode over for a field sobriety test.

Taken to Jail

Goode was unable to touch the tip of his nose in four attempts, the police report said. He swayed and on one occasion lost his balance. Grimm also wrote that Goode had watery eyes and slurred speech. Goode was arrested and taken to Orange County Jail.

Now facing trial on a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol, Goode has taken a novel approach to defending himself. He and his Santa Ana lawyer, Eugen C. Andres, said the charge should be dismissed because Placentia police discriminate against bar patrons as a class and Goode is a victim of “selective prosecution.”

Grimm declined to be interviewed, but Placentia Police Capt. Jim Robertson said that the harassment charges are not true and that Goode is “just stirring things up.”

A hearing on Goode’s allegations is scheduled for today in Orange County Superior Court, where Andres is trying to win a reversal of a Municipal Court judge’s decision denying him access to a wide variety of Placentia police records concerning Grimm’s performance.

That performance is a subject of some debate in Placentia, a bedroom community of 38,000 and former “All-American City” that police say has fewer than a dozen bars.

Robertson described Grimm, 29, a highly regarded lawman who has received more commendations during his six years as a police officer than anyone on the force.

‘Folder Full of Them’

“He has a folder full of them,” said Robertson, head of administrative services for the department. Grimm has received praise for his work from businessmen, civic organizations, school districts and private citizens.

Andres, Goode’s lawyer, painted a different picture. Citing a stack of affidavits from people who said they have been harassed by Grimm, Goode and Andres argued that Grimm has harassed bar owners, employees and patrons in Placentia for years.

Further, they said, Grimm has staked out neighborhood bars, lying in wait for unsuspecting patrons.

Grimm’s actions show a “pattern of obsessive behavior toward drinkers,” Andres argued in court documents.

“In my personal opinion,” said a sworn statement by former Placentia bar owner Gerald Chaston that has been filed in Orange County Superior Court, “Officer Dennis Grimm hates drinkers.”

Chaston said in an interview that Placentia police activity both inside his bar and in the parking lot outside was a prime reason he closed his business there.

“I just wanted to get out of town, it was too much,” Chaston said. He now operates a bar in Fullerton.

Some citizens who gave statements to Goode and his lawyer said that, among other odd habits, Grimm would come into bars and sit for long periods of time, simply staring at customers.

‘Stared at the Customers’

Once, said Kathy Johnson, a former employee of Bonnie’s Place, a bar on Orangethorpe Avenue, “Officer Grimm approached me and told me he didn’t care for my taste in music (referring to the jukebox). He then sat inside the bar at least 15 minutes and stared at the customers.”

Johnson said in her statement that she had seen Grimm enter that bar at least four times in one week.

“On one occasion, I was ordered to do an inventory of my customers because, in Grimm’s opinion, some customers had too much to drink,” she said in her declaration.

She said the owner of the bar had complained to the police department at least four times.

Robertson said one of the sworn statements attacking his officer had been completely discredited in court when it was learned that it was not true. And he said the public-drunkenness arrest that was supposed to have been made by Grimm had actually been made by another officer.

In 1982, Santa Ana attorney William F. Garman, representing bar owner Chaston, wrote a four-page letter to then-Mayor Donald Holt Jr., alleging 13 instances in one month of police coming inside the bar or waiting just outside. Many of the complaints involved Grimm.

Police Chief Harold A. Fischer wrote back, calling Chaston’s complaints “unfounded” and “unsustained” and said they were “beginning to smack of harassment of the police by you; presumably to intimidate us into neglecting our duty in order to avoid being hassled by you!”

Has 47 Sworn Officers

Placentia has a small police department, with just 47 sworn officers. Robertson said the entire force makes an average of just 20 arrests a month for driving under the influence. He termed the complaints against Grimm “just not fair to the officer.”

Goode, who pleaded guilty to a drunk-driving charge in 1985, also said in an interview that the results of a blood-alcohol test on the night of his arrest were inaccurate. In addition, he said that the urine sample analyzed was not his and that police either mixed up samples to be tested or “intentionally switched” them.

The results of the test showed a blood-alcohol content of 0.25, more than twice the level at which a driver is presumed to be under the influence of alcohol. According to a chart put together by the Automobile Club of Southern California, a 200-pound man like Goode would require more than 10 one-ounce drinks of 100-proof liquor to reach that level.

Urine samples for such blood-alcohol tests are taken at the Orange County Jail, which is operated by the Sheriff’s Department. Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Bob Rivas said many safeguards make it almost impossible for one urine sample to be substituted for another.