There’s Chill in the Air Since LAPD Detained 2 Deputies

It was nearing 1 a.m. in Carson. Two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were in full uniform in their unmarked car hunting a cat burglar well inside the sheriff’s jurisdiction when darkness suddenly turned to daylight.

Their car had been caught in the blinding spotlight of a Los Angeles police cruiser. At gunpoint and without explanation, two LAPD officers commanded the perplexed deputies to step out with their hands up.

For 20 minutes, the deputies were forced to lie face down in an intersection until sergeants from both departments arrived and ordered them released. The two LAPD patrolmen, Antonio B. Sanchez, 38, and Patrick E. Bradshaw, 23, explained later that they stopped the deputies after reports that police impersonators had been robbing illegal aliens in the area.

The Sept. 14 incident prompted Chief Daryl F. Gates this week to suspend the two officers without pay following a board of rights hearing.

Sanchez, a four-year veteran of the force, received 10 days off; Bradshaw, who last year graduated first in his Police Academy class, was suspended for five days. Both are assigned to the Harbor Division station, which patrols an area adjacent to the sheriff’s Carson station.

The incident, which occurred nearly half a mile inside the sheriff’s jurisdiction, has prompted some extraordinary sniping at the Police Department by members of the Sheriff’s Department, whose working relationship with the LAPD is rarely strained, at least outwardly.

For about a week following the incident, the Carson sheriff’s station would not accept women prisoners brought in by Los Angeles police officers--an otherwise common professional courtesy intended to save the officers time, according to sheriff’s sources. Instead, LAPD personnel were directed to drive to Sybil Brand Institute, about 15 miles away, to drop off their prisoners.

More recently, a cartoon appeared in the sheriff’s December in-house newsletter, the Star News, depicting a sergeant speaking at a deputy roll call. “One last briefing item,” the sergeant says. “Some LAPD units have been seen in our area, so let’s all be careful out there.”

Since January, other deputies believed to be from the Carson station have sent the LAPD copies of an instructional videotape that the deputies produced. The tape offers sarcastic, intentionally simplistic tips on “how to identify” uniformed deputies and sheriff’s cars.

Despite the sniping, several ranking sheriff’s and police officials insisted that relations between California’s two largest law enforcement agencies have never been better.

“This was an isolated case and (the LAPD) dealt with it,” said Capt. Ed Padias, commander of the sheriff’s Carson station. “As far as we’re concerned, the matter is over.”

Padias said the two Carson station deputies, whom he would not identify, were making a slow U-turn at the intersection of Milton Street and New Hampshire Avenue checking reports of a cat burglar when they were “more or less blinded” by the spotlight shone on them.

When they were ordered to step out of their car, the deputies complied “because they were being held at gunpoint,” Padias said. “They were in fear of the situation.”

He said the deputies identified themselves repeatedly but were ordered nevertheless to lie on the pavement in the intersection. Bradshaw and Sanchez did not approach the deputies but merely radioed for a supervisor and waited, Padias said.

When supervisors from both departments arrived about 20 minutes later, the deputies “were allowed up and went on about their business,” Padias said. “The deputies were angry, of course. There wasn’t much communication between them and the officers. I don’t know what was said between the two sergeants. It was a sensitive situation.”

Padias said he subsequently met several times with Capt. Robert A. McVey, the officers’ commander, and “we more or less reaffirmed our spirit of cooperation.”

The LAPD’s three-member board of rights attributed the bizarre incident to the two officers’ relative inexperience on patrol.

“However, once you saw those badges, then you should have stopped your investigation,” the board president, Capt. Patrick E. McKinley, told Sanchez and Bradshaw. “Your actions in this matter could have very easily ended in tragedy had the deputies elected to draw their weapons. . . . Your poor judgment, overzealousness and misguided initiative brought a great deal of embarrassment to the Los Angeles Police Department.”

In a similar but unrelated matter, LAPD officials said Wednesday that they are continuing to investigate an incident in December in which an undercover vice officer working on a prostitution detail near downtown was pulled over by two patrolman from a neighboring station and beaten despite his pleadings.