WHEN POLICE CROSS THE LINE

Law enforcement officials are ridiculing a Superior Court jury's $1 million
verdict against Garden Grove police and California Highway Patrol and
Department of Corrections officials for a raid of an auto body shop that
they conducted in 1997. The shop's owner, Merrit Sharp, who was put in
handcuffs and forced to the ground during the raid, argued that it left him
with emotional and physical injuries. "I've never heard that we need to make
people comfortable when they are detained," said the attorney for the state
parole officer involved in the incident.

The Garden Grove police have shown no remorse for the incident. Police
defenders also are mocking the size of the award, arguing that some time in
handcuffs is a small price to pay for a big-dollar bonanza. They chalk up
the verdict to yet another case of lawsuit mania. But is it really? Here's
another way of looking at the case. You are a law-abiding citizen who owns a
legitimate business, but with a son who has drug-related troubles. The
police get a tip that he might be running a methamphetamine operation out of
your business.

They then conduct a raid without a warrant, entering the business with guns
drawn under what cops call a "dynamic entry." During the raid, in which no
meth lab is found, the officers handcuff you for as long as 45 minutes,
force you to the concrete floor at gunpoint. While you are on the ground,
you say that officers high-five each other, hurl insults at you and ransack
your property.

Would that change the perspective? The key here is that the raid was
undertaken without a warrant because Mr. Sharp's son was a parolee - and
parolees are subject to searches without a warrant. But while parolees don't
have the same rights as other citizens, a parolee's father and innocent
bystanders certainly do. Mr. Sharp's attorney, Jerry L. Steering of Newport
Beach, argued that the law enforcement officials involved "all got together
and schemed it up." The jury, he said, agreed that the officers knew that
they weren't allowed to raid Mr. Sharp's shop without a warrant but did so
anyway. They "conspired to violate my client's constitutional rights."

"These were not liberal people [on the jury]," Mr. Steering told us. "These
were conservative people. They were insulted and hurt that the cops would
get on the stand and lie." We don't know about the seriousness of Mr.
Sharp's injuries, but we do understand the injuries inflicted on individual
rights and liberties if officers take the law into their own hands, conduct
illegal searches and raids and treat detainees with unnecessary force and
abuse. Garden Grove Police Captain Dave Abrecht denies that the officers
were abusive.

Yet the jury unanimously found that the officers involved in the raid
violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights, unlawfully detained him,
unlawfully searched his shop and used unnecessary force and they conspired
to violate his civil rights. In addition, the jury issued a separate $10,000
punitive damage verdict against the involved parole officer for acting with
malicious or reckless disregard of Mr. Sharp's rights. If some of the
alleged abuses did occur, Captain Abrecht said, "they were unprofessional,
but is it worth a million bucks?" That's not the point. In a constitutional
democracy law enforcement officers cannot act with impunity. They must
protect rights, follow rules.

It's too bad that Garden Grove and California taxpayers might get stuck with
the bill for its officers' negligence. But if the criminal justice system
doesn't take action when civil liberties are violated, that leaves the civil
justice system to do what it can to secure restitution. Is a million bucks
too high a price for such a mistake? Or is it a small price to pay to warn
law enforcement against constitutional abuses?