Illegal Aliens

And so once again the billy clubs flail, and once again the suspects fall, and once again a camera rolls, and once again a drumbeat of public outrage begins to pound. Pictures don't lie. No more street justice. Call in the feds. Prosecute. Reform. Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat. Yes, in some ways the heavy-handed apprehension by Riverside County deputies of two suspected illegal immigrants is, as an American Civil Liberties Union leader put it, "Rodney King all over again."

The Mexican woman whose videotaped beating has been broadcast around the world met the media after her release from jail Tuesday, but spent much of the brief news conference in tears. At one point, however, Leticia Gonzalez Gonzalez, 32, composed herself enough to say: "I thought they were going to kill me." Gonzalez and her companion, Enrique Funes, were beaten by Riverside County sheriff's deputies after a high-speed chase Monday.

Five years after the Rodney King beating, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department takes its place under the unforgiving media spotlight, where cops' images are made or tarnished forever by a few seconds of videotape. Riverside's time came at 7 p.m. Monday when spokesman Mark Lohman, newly promoted from deputy to sergeant, stepped in front of broadcast and print reporters demanding information about the videotaped beating of a man and a woman.

Because of TV, it looks bad for the cops. Police brutality may, indeed, be the issue regarding Monday's TV chopper footage of Riverside County Sheriff's deputies briefly roughing up suspected illegal immigrants after an 80-mile chase of a battered pickup truck that ended in South El Monte, with most of the 21 occupants fleeing, only to be apprehended later. Push the caution button, though.

While Los Angeles and the nation debate the videotaped beating of two illegal border-crossers two weeks ago, the man who owns the South El Monte property near where the incident took place shakes his head at the irony of being a footnote in the most recent, often ugly discussion about immigration. The owner of a thriving nursery business, with five locations of row upon row of green plants, Ramon Gallo, 46, is a tax-paying legal resident and shining story of hard-earned success.

A cop is accused of crossing the line--and attorney John D. Barnett is in the maelstrom once again. The bookish defense lawyer has been up since 2 a.m. to appear on a network morning show in defense of his latest high-profile client, one of the two Riverside County officers whose videotaped beating of undocumented immigrants set off an international furor. By noon, a parade of television crews has trooped through Barnett's Orange suite.

Sheriff's deputies here say they're the ones being bashed these days, they're the ones under siege, and they've had enough and now they want some support. They hope to get it at a "Law Enforcement Appreciation Rally" that the Riverside Sheriff's Assn.--which represents 1,300 rank-and-file deputies--is planning for Monday in downtown Riverside. Their keynote speaker: former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

The disclosure that a California Highway Patrol officer secretly tape-recorded a beating by Riverside County sheriff's deputies has rocked the investigations of the incident and opened a new line of inquiry, with authorities now attempting to identify another officer caught using a racial epithet. On the tape, which Officer Marco DeGennaro recorded without the knowledge of other officers at the scene, Riverside deputies can be heard shouting to the Mexican immigrants, "Get down!"

The California Highway Patrol announced Thursday that it has concluded that a 19-year-old illegal immigrant was the driver in the April 6 crash outside Temecula that killed eight illegal immigrants. Fernando Covarrubias-Varela already faces federal smuggling charges for his role in the crash. If state charges are filed in connection with driving the vehicle, he could get a far more serious sentence than the federal case would bring.

An immigrants' rights group accused federal immigration officials Monday of backing away from a promise to give work permits to the illegal immigrants whose wild truck ride while fleeing authorities ended in a videotaped beating by Riverside County deputies.