Arrrrrgggghhh. I hate stories like this one.
The LA Times’ Joel Rubin has written a very well researched article that reveals that certain higher-ups in the LAPD engaged in a an aggressive campaign to try push an alternate version of events in the case of the death of 19-month old Suzie Pena who died when members of an LAPD SWAT team stormed the car dealership where the little girl’s father, a drunk and coked up Raul Pena, was holed up with his daughter, shooting at police. In so doing the SWAT officers killed both father and daughter.
I reported extensively for the LA Weekly on the 2005 death of the little girl, which was devastating to the SWAT guys, who had, until that sad, bad day, performed approximately 3800 successful rescues in SWAT’s nearly 40-year history, and never lost a hostage in such a stand-off.
When I researched the circumstances that led to the tragedy, I talked to multiple officers and members of LAPD command staff, and no one expressed any doubt that the bullet that had killed Suzie Pena came from an LAPD gun. Moreover, hours spent at the crime scene, and going over every moment in the sequence of events, with both cops and family members, produced the same logical conclusions.
Now it seems, Rubin has learned that a 32-year-old criminalist named Amy Driver, who had on the department four years, decided that SWAT had not killed Suzie at all. Instead, her father had put his own pistol to her head and shot her.
Pretty soon Driver convinced her boss of this theory and, before long, writes Rubin, the then-head of LAPD’s Internal Affairs, Michael Berkow, plus several of his detectives, had climbed on the HER-FATHER-SHOT-HER bandwagon.
A SIDE NOTE: Color me not surprised that Berkow was the higher-up that championed this fact-challenged notion. I had my own go-round with IA under Berkow, and came away with the disquieting conviction that, in certain cases, whether deliberately or because of unexamined bias, facts were being molded to suit a preferred theory, rather than the reverse.
Anyway, this fun little posse began hammering the coroner’s office saying that Dr. James Ribe, the senior deputy medical examiner who had performed the autopsy, had essentially done a shoddy job with his examination…..and that’s why, they maintained, he erroneously thought that SWAT had killed Suzie.
Read the story. It gets worse from here. In the end, Driver and Berkow’s quest to rewrite the truth was rejected by neutral experts.
But the events are troubling in that they only came out because the paperwork became part of discovery in a big-bucks wrongful death suit against the department.
A CAVEAT: My criticism of what is otherwise a very good piece of work is that Rubin globalizes his conclusions to include LAPD Chief Bill Bratton and, by extension, the whole of the LAPD command staff as being complicit in this fact-changing expedition. This strikes me—from what he has presented here, and from what I observed in the course of my own research—as unproven and unfair.
Unlike you or Joel Rubin, I have spoken to SWAT officers who were directly involved in the attempted rescue of Suzie Pena. If you talk to them, (if they trust you) they will give you some very specific reasons why they are confident they did not kill Suzie. In fact, they blame Bratton for the ruling, and feel he forced a smear on them in order to break their institution and standards — which is exactly what he did with the schlock BOI report.
As for you claim that this report was “well researched.” Are you F’ing serious? Not a single LAPD officer quoted, even anonymously. No independent pathologist’s review of the findings? A gimme quote fromt he ACLU bashing the LAPD (WOW! SURPRISE! SHOCK!)?
I like Joel Rubin, but this article was half baked and missing some ingredients. The Times will say “well, gee, nobody from SWAT will ever talk to us.” And they will not understand that this is why!
RCJP, before you slam Celeste, maybe you should read her links–she quotes SWAT officers in her articles. Meaning, SHE TALKED TO THEM.
” I talked to multiple officers and members of LAPD command staff, and no one expressed any doubt that the bullet that had killed Suzie Pena came from an LAPD gun”
I have talked to officers with first and knowledge of the incident who specifically have doubts.
RCJP, you talk to the culprits and they denied guilt? Well, that’s a shocker!
Kudos to the LA Times for confirming what the polulation is increasingly aware of: Our Police Force are a repressive force.
RCJP and Evan, thanks for your thoughts.
Just to clarify, actually, although I spoke with many officers at the time I did the Suzie Pena stories, I did not speak to any members of the SWAT team as, for understandable legal reasons, they were prevented from speaking to the press at that time. (Plus I was given to believe they were quite traumatized by the entire thing, as one could certainly understand and respect.) However, I spoke to many non-SWAT officers present at the incident, at various levels of the food chain—both way off the record and on—and I also spoke to multiple people—both on the department and off—who spoke to the SWAT officers involved.
Again, in the immediate aftermath, there was no suggestion from anyone at the LAPD that the bullet that killed Suzie Pena was fired by her father. Perhaps some people said something different privately and that POV took on greater life as the weeks and months past. I have no way of knowing, as my reporting took place right after the standoff and during the first week or two that followed. But it was fairly extensive.
However, RCJP, in Joel Rubin’s defense, his was not an article about what SWAT did or didn’t do, but what people involved with the forensics side of things and the post incident investigation did or didn’t do.
>>The Times will say “well, gee, nobody from SWAT will ever talk to us.†And they will not understand that this is why!
Well, if nobody from SWAT ever talks to a reporter on or off the record, their point of view isn’t going to be in the stories is it?
BTW, is there any truth to the rumor that the autopsy indicated the kind of severe head trauma to Suzie Pena that would only be caused by a high-velocity round, such as a .222 rifle?
Thanks Celeste for being honest. It doesn’t surprise a hell of a lot of people the LA Slimes would put out yet another hit piece on LAPD. They are desperate to sell papers these days and everyone is saying they have gone down the toliet of journalism and the only credible one left is David Zachniser. Contrary to what LA Latino states that the population thinks we have a repressive force they should know that the majority of people BOTH LATINO, BLACK AND all races overwhelmingly supported LAPD officers on various websites all over the internet. They are intelligent enough to know it was a horrible mistake because of a drug, paranoid father and questioned why would a mother allow her child to be with a drunk & druggie.
…This strikes meâ€â€from what he has presented here, and from what I observed in the course of my own researchâ€â€as unproven and unfair. (Celeste)
You are right Celeste very bias piece of garbagge from Joel.
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