SANTA ANA : City to Pay $150,000 in Slaying by Officer

The City Council has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by the family of a man shot and killed by a police officer earlier this year.

The council voted 5 to 2 in closed session Monday to settle the case, which was filed against the city but did not name the officer who fired the fatal shot.

The suit was filed on behalf of Robert V. Duarte’s four adult children.

The suit stemmed from an incident in May in which two police officers approached Duarte, 58, as he was allegedly injecting narcotics outside a Grande Avenue doughnut store.

City Atty. Edward J. Cooper said Wednesday that one of the officers, approaching with his gun drawn, fired accidentally when Duarte jumped and turned in “an unanticipated violent movement.”

“It’s a fair settlement,” Cooper said. “Everybody agrees that it was an accidental discharge.”

However, Mervyn Lazarus, the attorney for the Duarte family, said the officers acted improperly in the shooting.

“They approached him with their guns drawn,” he said. “I don’t think they had any basis to draw their guns at that point. Mr. Duarte was startled, or the officer was startled, and Mr. Duarte was killed.

“The rules and regulations of the Police Department are such that if they believe their lives are in danger or somebody else believes their lives are in danger . . . if they believe that, they are entitled to shoot. I don’t believe that the officer, at that point, had justification to draw his weapon. What happened at that point was negligence on that basis.”

Speaking of the city’s decision to settle, he added: “They must have felt strongly enough to put that money on the table. I think it’s a significant sum. Obviously, they thought when they weighed the risk of taking the case to trial, they felt it was a sum that was worth offering.”

The city has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements this year in cases related to police conduct, including $150,000 to a man whose jaw was broken by police, $60,000 to a man whose testicle was ruptured by officers, and $68,000 to the family of a child who was handcuffed and questioned about a small garage fire he was suspected of lighting.

Cooper said that the Rodney G. King beating in Los Angeles has much to do with Santa Ana’s willingness to settle cases in general because “the consequences of losing might be worse. I think the Rodney King incident has driven settlements that would have otherwise gone to trial.”

However, Cooper added, the King incident was not a consideration in the Duarte case.