More Allegations Surface Against 3 Suspended Officers : Pomona: Lawsuits and investigations center on members of an elite police unit, five of whom have been placed on leave.

Two of five members of an elite Pomona police unit who have been placed on leave while they are being investigated for alleged misconduct were previously named in separate lawsuits alleging excessive force.

In addition, one of those two, plus another member of the task force, were placed on leave in October, 1994, in separate investigations into whether they entered a house without just cause, according to internal police memos obtained by The Times.

The most recent investigation involves allegations that five members of the Major Crimes Task Force tampered with evidence, stole narcotics, falsified reports and used excessive force, according to Pomona police sources.

The five officers, members of a nine-man unit that deals with gang- and drug-related crimes, were placed on paid leave April 12. They are Senior Officer Robert J. Patterson and officers Mondo J. Lanier, Michael S. Ezell, Phillip J. Dotson and John Crenshaw Jr.

None of the officers could be reached for comment. William Hadden, an attorney representing the officers, refused comment.

Pomona Police Chief Charles Heilman refused to comment on the suspensions, the nature of the internal investigation or the lawsuits. Heilman said he expects the internal investigation to be completed within three weeks.

In a separate investigation of alleged misconduct, Patterson and Ezell were placed on paid leave on Oct. 13, 1994, while authorities investigated claims that they entered a house without just cause, according to the internal police memo. They were reinstated, but police officials refused to comment on the outcome of the investigation. Police sources said the two officers were members of the Major Crimes Task Force at the time.

Patterson also is one of eight officers named in a 1989 police brutality lawsuit filed against Pomona and the Police Department that claimed the officers used excessive force and violated an Inglewood man’s civil rights during a 1987 traffic stop.

Woodrow Jackson, a retired sheriff’s deputy, claimed police officers stopped him, pulled him out of his van at gunpoint, assaulted him and then falsely arrested him. The van matched the description of a stolen vehicle, although it proved not to be the same vehicle.

Jackson, who has since died, was 61 when officers allegedly beat him and threw him to the ground, causing his portable kidney dialysis machine to be ripped from his body. Pomona officials have declined to comment on the case.

The city settled the case out of court in 1991 for less than $5,000, said Jackson’s daughter, LeNise Jackson Gaertner, 41, of Colton. Pomona City Atty. Arnold Glassman declined to confirm the amount of the settlement.

“(Jackson) tried to pursue it from the standpoint that he had been treated improperly,” Gaertner said. “He ran into a wall. Their attitude was he was a ‘blue,’ a former policeman, and he should understand that this sort of thing happens.”

Lanier was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed April 12 in U.S. District Court. In the lawsuit, members of the McMaugh family, formerly of Pomona, claim that Lanier was one of six officers who beat them, falsely arrested them and then lied in court after a police response to a domestic dispute at their home early last year.

In the suit, members of the McMaugh family claim that Lanier was one of six officers who used “excessive and unreasonable force by employing a Taser (stun weapon) and needlessly and maliciously striking them with batons, hands and fists” during the April 17, 1994, incident.

Four members of the family--James and Cristina McMaugh, their daughter, Diana, now 23, and son, Daniel, 19--were arrested that day on suspicion of assaulting a police officer. The family has since moved to Orange County.

According to James McMaugh, his daughter, Diana, called police to the home claiming that James McMaugh had thrown a chair during a family quarrel. When Lanier and the other officers arrived at the family’s home, officers shot James McMaugh, 46, four times with a Taser gun, the family claims. As family members came to his aid, they were arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer, said McMaugh family attorney Thomas E. Beck.

Earlier this month, James, Cristina and Diana McMaugh were sentenced to community service after they were convicted on one count each of assaulting a police officer.