Although quite small in the larger context, there are those brave enough to take on the powers-that-be, at least in the courtroom:
Settlement is too little, way too late
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
It tarnished the reputation of the Harris County Sheriff's Office.
It brought down District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal.
And on Monday, a civil rights saga that had dragged on through six years of courtroom delays, politically charged depositions and appeals, ended with another bang.
But this time, it was the Harris County taxpayers doing the whimpering.
In a hastily convened emergency meeting, the Harris County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to pay $1.7 million to settle a lawsuit brought by two brothers who were wrongfully arrested after a 2002 drug raid at their neighbor's southeast Houston home. One brother photographed the raid; the other videotaped sheriff's deputies struggling to confiscate the camera from his brother.
If you think $1.7 million sounds high, the total price tag is even steeper.
A judge still has to determine how much to pay for the brothers' legal fees, which could total $1 million. That's on top of more than $574,000 that County Attorney Mike Stafford says the county paid in legal fees before the civil trial began last month. In addition, attorney fees for Rosenthal's defense on a contempt charge that he deleted subpoenaed e-mails in the case could total $127,000.
That's $3.4 million — still lower than the $5 million Lloyd Kelley, an attorney for the brothers, said the case has already cost the county.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett called the settlement a "rational" step to end the litigation and help the county move forward.
"Clearly, this is one of those things you can look back on and say 'How did we let this spin so out of control?' " Emmett said. "I keep thinking that Watergate started as a break-in and ended up as this huge coverup. This started as a simple civil rights case. Either the officers did it or they didn't do it. And it ended up being about e-mails and scandals and the DA's office and everything else that had nothing to do with the case."
The lawsuit did provide citizens a kind of backstage pass into the inner workings of the agencies that are supposed to be enforcing the law and seeking justice on our behalf. The millions of dollars that went into the lawsuit bought a lot of sunshine, including subpoenas that uncovered Rosenthal's e-mailed love letters to his secretary, racist jokes and the political campaign he was running out of the criminal courthouse.
Taxpayers will decide if their investment was worth it.
But the fact remains that, from the beginning, the county had the power to prevent the whole, expensive, grueling, legal mess.
Harris County could have avoided legal liability if Sheriff Tommy Thomas' department had simply done its job by investigating the claims of brothers Sean Carlos Ibarra and Erik Adam Ibarra and taking any disciplinary action — so much as a letter of reprimand — against the deputies involved.
"The sheriff could have avoided all this with a letter," Kelley says.
But instead of actually looking into the Ibarras' claims that the deputies stormed into their home without probable cause, drew their guns, arrested them, seized their cameras and confiscated their film, the sheriff's department argued that it couldn't investigate because, technically, the Ibarras' written complaint didn't count.
Why? It wasn't typed onto the right form, or, as one representative of the sheriff's department put it, it wasn't presented on pink paper with a blue ribbon. After all, the sheriff's department can't make it too easy for citizens to file complaints. Then everyone who's had his home invaded, property confiscated and spent a night in jail for no good reason could complain about it.
Stafford, when asked what lessons had been learned during the ordeal, said communications between his office, the DA's office and sheriff's office could have been better. He said the sheriff's department could have done a better job following its procedures on investigating complaints.
Indeed.
When I called the sheriff to get his response, his spokesman, Capt. John Martin, told me Thomas was gone for the day. But he said the sheriff believed the settlement was fair, although he still doesn't acknowledge any wrongdoing on the part of his deputies.
The deputies — Preston Foose, Dan Shattuck, John Palermo and Sgt. Alex Rocha — said they acted because they did not want their faces exposed since they worked undercover.
Emmett said he believes Thomas has learned from the experience, although he wouldn't go as far as his fellow Commissioner Steve Radack and acknowledge the deputies violated policies.
"Tommy Thomas is a smart man, and this whole thing has been a major distraction, if not an embarrassment. And I'm sure he wants it behind him and he wants it never to occur again," Emmett said.
I'm sure the taxpayers agree. But violating citizens' civil rights and then not investigating the resulting complaint properly is more than just a distraction or an embarrassment.
It's an injustice that requires more than a multimillion-dollar payoff. It requires reform. It requires responsibility. And it begs for assurances that it won't happen again.
For that, we the taxpayers are still waiting.
lisa.falkenberg@chron.com
