The encounter began as a routine traffic stop. It ended with
the avoidable shooting death of a young man that the killer described as an act
of self-defense.
After the jury acquitted the defendant of murder, the
prosecutor indicted the shooter a second time on several lesser charges. The
second jury acquitted the defendant on the most serious charges and deadlocked
regarding multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon. The prosecutor, grudgingly
admitting that the defendant had been exonerated in a “fair trial,” dismissed
the remaining charges.
San
Diego resident Sagon Penn was 22 years old when he was detained and
assaulted by Officers Donovan Jacobs and Thomas Riggs in March 1985. At the
time, he was about two weeks away from starting a job as a “community service
officer” with the police department. He had also filled out an application to attend
the police academy.
Physically and temperamentally, Penn was over-qualified for
a job with the SDPD. Although he hadn’t played high school sports, he was tall
and athletic, and had
earned a brown belt in Karate. According to his friends and family, he was a natural
peacemaker, a student of Buddhism who later converted to Christianity and
who learned martial arts as a way to protect himself and those around him
without using lethal force.
Jacobs, by way of contrast, was superbly qualified to be a law
enforcer, and patently unqualified to be a peace officer. He was described as “one
of the most prejudiced white people I’ve ever known” and “an ideal candidate
for the Ku Klux Klan” by former police colleague Drew MacIntrye, who became a minister in nearby Alpine after
leaving the San Diego PD in disgust.
Fellow SDPD Officer Nathaniel Jordan, a black man who also
left law enforcement for the ministry, confirmed
that assessment, testifying that Jacobs made casual and frequent use of
epithets in his presence, such as “n*gger” and “boy.” During Penn’s second
trial, former SDPD Lieutenant Doyle Wheeler described his attempts to warn
superiors that Jacobs’ bigotry and aggression had provoked confrontations
endangering the lives of his comrades.
Jacobs was made a Police Agent (the department’s designation
for a patrol officer) despite an academy assessment documenting his tendency to
“use profanity, slurs, and lies in his police work,” in the words of a Los Angeles Times summary of trial
evidence.
“Unless you show some considerable change or at least some
more consideration for others and can change your behavior … we don’t want you
because you are going to do nothing but create problems for yourself, for the
public, and for the department,” Jacobs
was reportedly told by an academy supervisor in 1979.
At the time of his confrontation with Penn, Jacobs was a
known danger to his colleagues and the public at large. Penn, despite
“rumors” that the prosecution lusted to introduce as evidence in the
subsequent trial, had no criminal record, no gang affiliations, and no
demonstrated inclination toward violence.
Among the tenets instilled in Penn by his
Karate instructor, Orned Gabriel, was the need to de-escalate conflicts
before they blossom into violence. Self-defense, Penn was taught, begins with
walking away from a potential fight.
Officer Jacobs, who had stopped Penn without cause simply
because he was a young black man in the company of several black friends, was
determined to start a fight. Penn, on the other hand, was determined to avoid
one.
Penn wasn’t stopped for a traffic violation. The official
pretext supplied in the subsequent report was that he had made an illegal U-turn, but that
pretense dissolved very quickly during the first trial. He was seated behind the wheel of a pickup
truck in a driveway talking with friends when he was accosted by Jacobs.
“Are you Blood or Cuz?” Jacobs
sneered at Penn, assuming that the puzzled young black man simply had to be
a member of a street gang. “Are you Blood or Cuz?”
Although Jacobs had neither probable cause nor reasonable
suspicion to do so, he demanded identification from Penn. Out of an abundance of caution
and a desire to be fully cooperative, Penn handed the officer his billfold,
inviting him to inspect its contents. His intent, Penn later explained, was to
demonstrate that “there were no drugs or anything in there."
Jacobs – who by this time was being backed up by Officer
Thomas Riggs, who arrived in a separate cruiser with
a police groupie named Sarah
Pina-Ruiz -- reciprocated his cooperation by shoving the wallet back in
Penn’s face and ordering him to withdraw the license. Recognizing that Jacobs
was trying to start a fight, rather than conduct a legitimate investigation,
Penn behaved in accordance with his martial arts training: He put up his hands
in a gesture of withdrawal, and walked away.
At that point, Penn had done everything the law had required.
He was not legally obliged to answer any questions, or endure any abuse. He had
been compliant and respectful in the face of provocation, and rather than
responding with violence when baited by Jacobs he stood down.
These actions, San Diego Deputy DA Michael Carpenter would later pretend, displayed “an insurmountable attitude problem toward authority.” The unarmed Penn, whom Carpenter described in court as “Mr. Arrogance,” supposedly threatened Officers Jacobs and Riggs by asserting his legal right to end a conversation with a truculent, abusive cop. His behavior was “insolent, brazen, and immature” in dealing with a police officer who supposedly had the authority to berate him in any language he chose, and detain him on a whim.
These actions, San Diego Deputy DA Michael Carpenter would later pretend, displayed “an insurmountable attitude problem toward authority.” The unarmed Penn, whom Carpenter described in court as “Mr. Arrogance,” supposedly threatened Officers Jacobs and Riggs by asserting his legal right to end a conversation with a truculent, abusive cop. His behavior was “insolent, brazen, and immature” in dealing with a police officer who supposedly had the authority to berate him in any language he chose, and detain him on a whim.
Carpenter disgorged that lengthy string of adjectives in
order to avoid the one he almost certainly wanted to use, but was canny enough
to avoid: “Uppity.” He also urged the jury to accept the sophistical claim that
because Penn had been trained in self-defense, he couldn’t invoke the right to
self-defense in justification of his actions – presumably because anything
other than abject helplessness on the part of a victim of criminal aggression
by police constitutes a felony.
After Penn turned to leave, Jacobs attacked him from behind,
throwing him to the ground and assaulting him with both punches and kicks.
“He beat me down, over and over,” Penn
recalled years later. “He beat me down. He beat me down.”
Unprepared for the skill with which the trained and
physically skilled victim repelled the unprovoked attack, the costumed bully
withdrew his baton, and – according to several witnesses – screamed
that he was going to “beat your black ass.” Rather than intervene on behalf
of the victim, Riggs joined in the criminal assault.
“I could hear ‘em just grunting with anger and just
breathing real hard and just trying to take my head off,” Penn later recounted
to investigators. At the time, Jacobs was “sitting on top of me … punching [me]
in the face … He was reaching for his gun, he was reaching like right there for
his gun .... And I reached, and I grabbed it before he did.”
“The power of the state was ganging up on him,” summarized
defense attorney Milton Silverman during Penn’s second trial. Multiple witnesses
described how after he gained control of Jacobs’ gun, the victim hesitated and
briefly pleaded for the assailants to stop before firing several shots within
the space of six seconds. Riggs was fatally wounded. Sarah Pina-Ruiz, who was sitting
in a police vehicle, suffered a gunshot wound that left her paralyzed.
Jacobs, who had instigated the entire affair, was
shot in his right arm and then run over by Penn, who commandeered a police
vehicle and fled – not from the
police, but to the police. Acting
entirely out of character for someone who supposedly had “an insurmountable
attitude problem toward authority,” Penn drove to the nearest police station to
report the incident.
“The police were nice to me at first,” Penn told a reporter
following his second trial. “But that didn’t last.”
Unlike Darren Wilson, who also shot and killed someone in
what he describes as an act of self-defense, Penn suffered visible injuries
from being struck and kicked by two armed police officers – including blows to
the head with a baton, which is an act of attempted homicide. Years after the
beating, Penn still
displayed wounds in his skull from the baton strikes.
Unlike Darren Wilson, after the fatal shooting Penn
was not allowed to clean his hands and change his clothing, thereby destroying
physical evidence.
Unlike Darren Wilson, who
never filled out an incident report or gave a formal statement to investigators,
Penn – acting in the ingenuous hope that his self-defense claim would be
respected -- spoke at length and in detail about what had happened. Since Penn
was not protected by the “Garrity”
privilege that Wilson invoked, or the
spurious doctrine of “qualified immunity,” every self-incriminating
statement he made was used as evidence against him.
Unlike Darren Wilson, Sagon Penn was not given the luxury of
a grand jury inquest in which a congenial prosecutor presented exculpatory
evidence and examined
the background of the victims at length and in detail. Penn spent years in
jail prior to his trial, and then endured two lengthy and expensive trials
before he was free to resume a life that had been irreparably damaged as a
result of a few minutes of senseless, state-inflicted violence.
Perhaps the most striking divergence between Wilson and Penn
is offered by their respective answers when asked how they would remember the
shootings, and if they would respond the same way in similar circumstances.
Is the killing of Michael Brown “something you think that
will always haunt you?” Wilson
was asked by George
Stephanopoulos, who clearly expected a perfunctory expression of regret.
“I don’t think it’s a haunting,” Wilson replied, his voice
flat as the Kansas prairie and his blank demeanor displaying no evidence of a
burdened conscience. “It’s always going to be something that happened.”
Penn’s
response to similar questions revealed that he was tormented to the depths
of his soul by the knowledge that he had taken the life of another human being,
and left two others permanently disabled.
“I should of just [gone] ahead and let ‘em just blow my head
off,” a
tearful Penn told investigators following his acquittal. “Lord, is that
what you want?... You know, that’s a tough faith, but at the same time it’s
like saying, `Well, Lord, if that’s your will, then I’ll just close my eyes and
just pray…. That’s what I would do right now. If it ever happened again like
that, I would just close my eyes and I would just pray…. I’ll just accept that
pain, I’ll just accept that bullet to my head.”
Penn was haunted – a condition with which Wilson professes
to be unacquainted – by the fact that Officer Riggs had a family.
After Riggs died, Penn recalled, “I would cry, I couldn’t
live, I hated holidays. I’ll always be worrying and praying and thinking about
his two children and crying.”
After Penn’s acquittal in the first trial, Judge
J. Morgan Lester – who was by no measure inclined
to coddle accused or convicted murderers -- excoriated
the San Diego PD for what he described as a pattern of serious misconduct,
including perjury and withholding evidence. Following Penn’s second acquittal,
the California Attorney General’s office briefly considered pursuing assault
and perjury charges against Jacobs. Those charges were never filed, in large
measure because Penn – who did not want to see his assailant prosecuted -- refused
to cooperate.
In an interview with investigators, Penn described his
belief that God wants to “give Donovan Jacobs a chance to receive [Him]. To
receive Christ into his life, to receive God in his life. That’s why he lived
through that.”
Although he was not a paragon of virtue, either before or
after the fatal encounter with Jacobs and Riggs, Penn followed the
much-discussed and little-observed Christian practice of praying for his
enemies and forgiving the men who had attempted to murder him. Significantly,
Michael Riggs, brother of the late Officer Thomas Riggs, found
it more difficult to forgive Jacobs, who initially sought to deflect blame
by dishonestly claiming that his dead comrade had started the fight.
Free from prosecution because of Penn’s forgiving nature,
Jacobs remained with the San Diego PD for six years before retiring on a
disability pension. He went into legal practice representing other police
officers accused of misconduct or seeking disability benefits. Utterly
impenitent, Jacobs has also published
two books describing his “innovative, proactive tactics” for dealing with
street crime.
Doyle Wheeler, the former SDPD Lieutenant who testified
against Jacobs during Penn’s second trial, barely survived what could have been
one application of those “innovative, proactive tactics.”
Shortly after the trial, Wheeler retired from the force and
relocated to Sun Crest, Washington, a suburb of Spokane. In April 1988, three
or four unidentified men broke into Wheeler’s home, forced him to write a
suicide note at gunpoint, then bound him and shot him behind an ear. Just
seconds before the shooting, phone records and an automatic recording confirmed,
a
call was placed from Wheeler’s home to the desk of Police Agent Donovan Jacobs
in San Diego.
Police authorities in Spokane and San Diego dismissed
Wheeler’s story, claiming that the former officer was psychologically infirm
and had staged the alleged attack – despite the fact that witnesses had seen
strangers enter his home. Police detectives insisted that Wheeler’s voice was
the one in the recorded phone call to Jacobs. No effort was made to follow up
on Wheeler’s suggestion that the recorded phone call be subjected to voice
analysis.
The following year, t-shirts
depicting an ear and the inscription “Doyle Wheeler Hit Team” were sold
during a party held by the police department. The
FBI briefly investigated a claim by a police informant that he had been
offered $1,500 by a San Diego PD sergeant to attack Wheeler, but turned down
the offer because the risk was too great and the payoff too small. A short time
later, the matter was consigned to the cold case file.
Although he physically survived the events of March 31, 1985,
Sagon Penn lost the life he might have enjoyed had he been spared the encounter
with Officers Jacobs and Riggs. Advised by friends and family to leave San
Diego for his own safety, Penn stayed where he was in order to help raise his young
son – who was given his mother’s maiden name out of fear of retaliation. He briefly
attempted to attend college under
an assumed name.
For
fifteen years following his acquittal, Penn’s life was a fitful affair
frequently punctuated by domestic conflicts and hostile encounters with the
police, at least some of which were self-inflicted. In the early 1990s, he
served time in prison for a probation violation after he threw a brick at his
wife’s vehicle.
Penn’s conduct subsequent to his acquittal, contended former San
Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender, supposedly validated the claim that he “was
guilty of [unlawfully] killing a police officer.” It could just as easily have
been a reflection, at least in part, of the physical and psychological trauma
Penn had suffered. Kolender tactfully declined to comment about Jacobs’s
alleged role in the attempted murder of former Lt. Doyle Wheeler, or the
conclusions that could be drawn from the behavior of subordinates who referred
to themselves as the “Doyle Wheeler Hit Team.”
On Independence Day, 2002, Penn committed suicide,
consummating by his own hand the fate Jacobs and many of his comrades had
intended for him.
When informed of Penn’s demise, Bill Farrar, president of
the local police union, reacted with all of the
graciousness we should expect from someone in his position.
“As far as the Police Officers Association is concerned, the
world is better off without him,” grunted Farrar, reflecting the widespread and
demonstrably untrue belief that any Mundane who dares
to disarm an abusive cop has committed a capital offense.
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Dum spiro, pugno!
13 comments:
A tell-tale story.
I know this whole story very well and in fact learned more as a teacher, working in the intercity of San Diego. An important part of this story needs to be told. The gun that Penn got out of the cop's hand that sat on top of him beating him in the face was discharged by being kicked by the other cop who had been standing and kicking Penn while he was on the ground being punched in the face. The woman ride a long was hit first by the gun being kicked and discharged. Then the cop on top of Penn was shot as the gun was still being kicked. At that point Penn on his own or another kick shot the cop doing the kicking.
During the start of the first trial the people of San Diego only knew the propaganda the PR department of SDPD was spewing to get a public conviction before the trial started. Once Silverman started bringing out the truth and the morning and evening papers for the most part reported the truth. Which the had to report the truth because a local free weekly newspaper, The Reader was covering the story. Did The Reader have a way of getting at the truth in getting the dirt on the local government. So the GOP neocon Helen Copley and her two local papers were trapped into having to report the truth. Once the frist trial was over most of the people understood that the cops were the bad guys and it really was self defense with Penn.
It does not stop there. A young woman was murdered by a CHP cop Craig Pryer. Her name was Karen Knot. The people were wise to bad cops and the system to cover for the at all cost. The Penn matter was fresh so the system was forced to do the right thing. I believe the murder is on death row to this day. Miss knot was a real sweetheart and a wonderful daughter. Her father could never stop missing her and many years had a heart attack and died at her memorial while he was taking care of it. Her memorial was where the CHP officer threw her body off the top of the off ramp after untieing the rope on her neck that he murderd her with.
San Diego cops are known to be a gang first and foremost. They can not solve a crime unless someone comes forward with information that solves the crime for the. The one crime that needed to be solved but was way over their heads to do that was the murder Of the scientist who died with his young daughter as the got out of the car in their driveway. The were murdered by a pro hit team of the best money could by. The doctor was on a breakthrough on Alzheimers research.
Another point of the SDPD that is of interest is, San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender. He was under the eye of the San Diego City Manager, Murray. First, Mr. Murray was the city manager for Cincinnati and the City of San Diego spent huge amounts of money researching and coming up with the best in the country. Mr. Murray was the number one city manager in the country. San Diego made a huge offer to get him to come and be the city manager. I believe Roger Hedgecock was the mayor during the research for the best city manager in the country.
After Mayor Hedgecock the mayor was a democrat woman whom the GOP neocon Hellen Copley had little use of or liking for. But a bond seem to happen when Hellen Copley's friend and good buddy San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender was under the eye San Diego City Manager Murray for some issues that Mr. Murray had fired high ranking city employees for in Cincinnati. An interview was done with the new city manager who by the way is black. He talked about growing up and the police hassling him, family and friends. He said, in the interview that, "he got off on having the power over the police". That was the in the Copley newspapers and big time in such a way to destroy Mr. Murray. The city fired Mr. Murray and never gave him a reason for firing him. No kidding. The Copley newspapers and the democrat mayor became buddies. And Hellen's newspapers treated the democrat very well.
Cops seemingly have a long list of issues no matter what city, county or state in noted. Back in the Wild West many times the shoot outs were between lawman on who was going to control the gambling and whore houses. You can't make this stuff up.
Hide-behind-the-badge oinkers like Jacobs and Riggs deserve to be killed off like flies.
Thanks, anon, for taking the time to do that write up. Very interesting, indeed.
I do not know if disarming a cop is a capital offense. I do know, however, that anyone attempting to disarm me will be killed...regardless of how they are dressed at the time.
Have to agree that the world would be better off...without the likes of Riggs and Jacobs and the tens of thousands of their like-minded sociopathic "brothers in blue".
Not that there aren't decent cops out there, and they're not quite as scarce as honest politicians, but close.
It seems the cop perpetrator was the only one that benefited. So sad.
It only goes to show there is not a charitable way to deal with evil. Penn should have testified against the cop. The bad cop might have been forced out of the department instead of continuing on to infect more cops.
I briefly lived in SD in the early 70's. The cops there were really bad even then.
I think the numbers of cops and the number of killed people is being manipulated, probably by the Feds. Every day I see on the internet another person has died by the hands of the police.
Just yesterday there was a video of a person being detained by a cop. The reason he was stopped was because he was walking with his hands in his pockets! The last thing the cop said about his hands being in his pockets, there have been homes robbed. Huh, what? What logic!
The news is all hyped and lies. It turns out Ferguson was not about a unarmed citizen being shot and killed a cop. It was about the news controlling a civil war they hoped to instigate.
If justice needed to be served, it was for this guy. http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/another_young_black_man_shot_to_death_by_missouri_cops_video_20140821
One thought that often comes to mind after reading a piece like this is "Cops, who needs them?" The ordinary citizen certainly doesn't need them, cops are simply attack dogs for politicians.
I've noticed that every cop I've ever met was, at best, a simpleton. Those whose worst defect is simplmindedness are the minority who most commenters are referring to as "good cops". The majority of cops I've met are amoral, vicious dimwits.
That the people who aspire to be cops are dim bulb types is understandable. A man of at least average intelligence who has a moral foundation would much prefer to live life as his own man, rather than as someone else's dog.
Oinkers aren't exactly intellectual giants. But then, they don't have to be. They just hide behind the badge and the gun.
Disarming all the badge-bedecked hoodlums should be mandatory, and only a potential capital offense for THEM if they refuse to submit to US their alleged EMPLOYERS, to permanent disarmament for THEM! The State and its armed, sycophantic functionaries have always been the greatest threat "normal" people face.
Some people are better off dead...
MOST COPS BELONG IN JAIL AND YOU KNOW IT...
My Cousin, Sagon Penn represented what many Black males lack. He stood up and confronted his attackers. He defended himself. There are Black people, then, and now, who maintain that we should always do what the cops say do. Had cuz did anything differently he may have died that night. My cousin, Sagon Penn needs to be remembered for his bravery. If America was not such a racist nation, Sagon Penn would have a Justice Department building named after him, or a street named in his honor. We should have a Sagon Penn foundation for all the victims of police crimes. We should honor my cousin every year to remind us how unsafe we still are as a people. #ILOVEMYFAMILYESPECIALLYSAGONPENN
signed... Ms. Penn aka LIPGLOSS
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