Civil Rights Official Seeks Probe of Death

The chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said Friday that he will seek to initiate a federal investigation of the death of an African-American Pasadena barber who died last month in police custody after he was shot with a stun gun and hogtied.

Commission Chairman Arthur A. Fletcher told Pasadena officials and community leaders that he will try to persuade other commission members to appeal to U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to investigate the death of Michael James Bryant, which has aroused the city’s African-American community and prompted the City Council to seek a federal investigation.

“We’ll ask her to open the case and take a good look at the circumstances under which this fine gentleman died,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher was responding to an appeal from the Pasadena City Council for commission action, he said at a news conference at City Hall. He said he was in Los Angeles--”to find out for myself” about race relations--when the City Council called for commission assistance.

He said he will ask federal authorities to look into the use of the Taser stun gun and hogtying procedures, both used in subduing Bryant. Fletcher said he will ask the commission to discuss the incident during scheduled hearings in Los Angeles in June.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office announced this week that Bryant’s death March 9 was the result of “cocaine intoxication and asphyxiation from restraint procedures,” specifically the hogtying. The coroner described the death as a homicide.

A police officer stopped Bryant late on the evening of March 8 at a closed gas station in San Marino, suspecting that he was under the influence of drugs, police reports said. Bryant apparently panicked and fled in his car, slightly injuring the officer, the reports said.

Bryant led police from three cities on a chase through San Marino, Pasadena, South Pasadena and Los Angeles, before leaving his car and tumbling down a Highland Park hillside into an apartment swimming pool, police said.

Police from San Marino and Los Angeles acknowledge striking him with batons in an attempt to get him to submit to arrest. A Los Angeles officer shot Bryant twice with a Taser gun as he stood in the pool. The officers dragged him out, hogtied him and placed him on his stomach in the back of a San Marino police car, police said.

Lawyers for Bryant’s family allege in a $20-million claim filed with the three cities that Bryant was beaten by police before he died. According to an independent autopsy performed by a pathologist hired by the family, Bryant’s body had 26 lacerations.

The coroner would not confirm or deny that report.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office has had the case under investigation since shortly after Bryant’s death, said spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons. “We had a rollout team at the scene right after it happened,” she said.

The district attorney and the coroner emphasize that the finding of homicide did not imply culpability on the part of the police. “Homicide means death at the hands of another,” said coroner’s spokeswoman Margaret White. The district attorney could find that the homicide was justifiable.

Flether said he will ask the Justice Department to determine the appropriateness of hogtying and disabling suspects with Tasers.

A look at documents from the district attorney’s Special Investigation Division, which looks into in-custody deaths, shows that 35 suspects in the county have died after being hogtied in the past five years.

In five cases, restraint procedures were found to have contributed to the deaths. In most other cases, the cause of death was found to be acute intoxication from drugs.

Pathologists have warned that corpulent suspects, especially when they are agitated, are in particular jeopardy from the procedure because the stomach and diaphragm push up against the lungs, impeding normal respiration.

Bryant weighed 320 pounds. He had been placed on his stomach before he died, in apparent violation of a recent directive in Los Angeles.

In October, the Los Angeles Police Department restricted the use of cord cuffs--the hobbles that officers use to attach an unruly suspect’s wrists and ankles behind his back. A directive signed by Police Chief Willie L. Williams and Capt. David Doan, head of personnel and training, ordered arresting officers to keep cord-cuffed suspects on their sides rather than their stomachs and to monitor their breathing continuously.

Community leaders in Pasadena say that the Bryant case has taken precedence over the fate of four police officers awaiting verdicts in Los Angeles U.S. District Court on charges of violating Rodney G. King’s civil rights.

“I can tell you that quite a few people are definitely outraged,” said Gary Moody, head of a group called Friends of Michael Bryant.

The group has scheduled a series of meetings and rallies to serve as a sounding board for community feelings, Moody said. The group may schedule a rally next week at the San Marino City Council meeting, in the city where the chase began, he said.

Friends and family of Bryant, who was active in community affairs and volunteer work, say his death has been a blow to the sense of well-being of the community.

“Because of the role he played in the community, it really highlights the fact that you can be victimized even when you’re doing good things in society,” said Prentice Deadrick, director of city programs in northwest Pasadena.