LAWYERS: ACCUSED COPS DID NOTHING WRONG

Top Oakland Officials Urged Tough Policing, The Defense Contends.

OAKLAND -- Three former Oakland police officers, on trial for allegedly
fabricating reports, making false arrests and, in the case of one of them,
assault and kidnapping, were actually doing the aggressive policing that
top city officials wanted, their lawyers contended Tuesday.

Each of the defendants' attorneys asserted during their opening statements
that their clients did nothing unlawful two years ago during a handful of
incidents in West Oakland, a section of the city they portrayed as
then-rampant with drug-selling hot spots.

Rather, the lawyers said, the three officers were engaged in an active
effort, devised by Police Chief Richard Word and championed by Oakland
Mayor Jerry Brown and other top officials, to eradicate illegal drug markets.

Further, they ridiculed Keith Batt, the rookie officer whose allegations
are central to the prosecution case as naive, frightened by the tough
neighborhood he patrolled and, now, out to make money from a lawsuit he has
filed against the city of Oakland.

"Life in West Oakland is ugly. Life in West Oakland for (the three
officers) was ugly," Michael Rains, attorney for former Officer Clarence
Mabanag, told jurors.

The Oakland Police Department declared war on street drug dealing in the
fall of 1999, he added.

"When they did that they sent their soldiers out to fight the war," Rains said.

The three officers known as the "Riders" -- Matthew Hornung, Jude Siapno
and Mabanag -- face 26 felony counts. Most relate to allegations of
fabricated police reports, false arrests and conspiracy. Siapno, however,
also faces more serious charges of kidnapping and assault by an officer.

A fourth officer who was considered a leader of the Riders, Francisco
Vazquez, is a fugitive.

Prosecutor David Hollister, in his opening statement last week, contended
the officers invented details of the West Oakland incidents in order to
support the arrests they made.

They did this, Hollister said, because they craved the adulation of fellow
officers for making large numbers of significant arrests.

But Rains, focusing on each of the incidents forming the setting for the
charges, said the police reports reflected events that actually occurred.
He suggested there were legitimate reasons why separate reports that his
client and Batt wrote about the same incidents used the exact or similar
language.

The victims of the allegedly false reports and assaults were drug dealers,
Rains charged. He painted some intersections of West Oakland as infested
with drug dealing, at one point showing jurors a surveillance tape of
street transactions.

He also displayed documents describing how Chief Word and other police
officials expected the notorious sections to be cleaned up.

Moreover, he said, Oakland officers learned they had to talk tough and be
perceived as tough in order to do their jobs effectively.

"The mandate was to do 'walking stops' and find ways and reasons to get
these drug dealers off the street," said Rains, referring to searches of
suspected drug dealers.

"They were right out there ... dancing on the head of a pin called
'probable cause' to do what the department wanted them to do."

And Batt, Rains charged, is conducting a "money grab" by suing Oakland.
Batt's allegations to police internal affairs investigators led to the
current charges. He left the department after only 2 1/2 weeks and is now a
Pleasanton officer.

William Rapoport, Siapno's lawyer, noted that the alleged victims of the
officers' conduct also are seeking monetary damages in a federal civil
rights lawsuit.

And Ed Fishman, Hornung's attorney, noted that his client is on trial even
though Batt never mentioned him in taped interviews with internal affairs
officers.

"Something stinks," Fishman told the jurors. "Something just isn't right."

The first witness for the prosecution, expected to be Batt, is scheduled to
begin testifying today.