ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Case Settled, Issue Not Settled

Newport Beach has just settled a costly lawsuit that suggests police need to pay more attention to training on the use of force. No one was killed in the bad shooting incident that occurred two years ago--but it was much too close for comfort. A citizen is out an arm; the city is out more than a million dollars in damages, and the public is left without any assurances that the police have learned from the tragedy.

Sundaga Bryant, a Liberian immigrant, was walking on the beach near Balboa Pier with his wife early one morning over Labor Day weekend in 1988. Police were on alert after receiving a report about a man in the vicinity with a sawed-off shotgun. An officer mistook Bryant’s 18-inch radio for a gun, and shot Bryant after he turned around when ordered instead to freeze.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” says City Atty. Robert Burnham, who argues that the officer acted within departmental guidelines that gave him discretion to shoot when he felt endangered. Maybe so. But whatever tensions pervaded the waterfront that night--a suspect with a weapon was indeed apprehended nearby--there’s no hindsight rationalization for an innocent, unarmed man being shot while out for a stroll with his wife.

Bryant, left without the use of one arm and restricted use of the other, has been unable to work, and sued. The recent out-of-court settlement means Newport Beach taxpayers will have to fork up $1.5 million for a police officer’s apparent case of the jitters. The officer was later cleared by the Orange County district attorney’s office of any wrongdoing, but the local police review of this incident shouldn’t end there.

The city should update its guidelines on the use of deadly force, if need be. Police since have put lights on shotguns, for nighttime duty, which may be a help. But local police work will benefit if it acknowledges that technological innovations won’t substitute for judgment when the temperature rises.