The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 15

LOS ANGELES TIMES WASHINGTON EDITION FRIDAY. AUGUST 5. 1994 B3 lltMHHMilHftl 1 Reservation Rally Blocks Sludge Trucks CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS U.S. SENATE Huffington Ad Calls for End to Welfare Candidate says huge increase in volunteerism could replace government programs for the poor. Feinstein calls proposal unrealistic.

4 i It Pam Roberts and Jennifer Zurick reservation's water supply has been contaminated and residents' health has been jeopardized by the growing pile of manure, which attracts hordes of flies and emits enough dust so that children must be kept inside on windy days. 8 i By LAUREN STRAUB TIMES STAFF WRITER THERMAL, of the Torres Martinez band of Desert Cahuilla Native Americans protested the dumping of sludge on their reservation Thursday, carrying picket signs and blocking the path of trucks carrying sewage to their community in this rural town. Private waste management companies truck more than 3,000 tons of solid waste to the reservation from Los Angeles and Orange counties each week, dumping it on 120 acres of land they lease from Torres Martinez tribal member Geraldine Ibanez. But tribal leaders backed by the U.S. Department of the Interiorhave ordered the contractors to halt delivery of the sludge, while the Bureau of Indian Affairs tries to find ways to dispose of the 470,000 tons of solid waste already piled five stories high.

Tribal elder Alec Dominguez, who owns land across the road from the sludge heap, says the Grand Jury STEVEN K.DOI lot Angela Timet by waste management firms. More than 40 tribal members and Los Angeles-area environmentalists marched in 120-de-gree heat, forcing trucks carrying loads of smelly sludge to turn back. Riverside County sheriffs deputies watched the protest, but no arrests were made. of Greenpeace protest dumping Joseph Mirelez, 12, who spent hours protesting with his mother Thursday, said his young cousin had to move from the reservation because she became ill after living near the sludge dump. "I would like it just to disappear," he said.

Probes Compton Police Beating begin negotiations about the showdowns. Huffington scoffed at negotiations, saying instead that Feinstein can talk to him directly if she wants to debate. He added that he was ready for the faceoff anytime and, provided an adequate audience, almost anywhere including, if she wanted, Thursday evening on the Capitol lawn. "You tell her, if she wants, I'll be there," he said. Responded Feinstein: "There is a time for all things under the sun.

There will be debates. Right now, we both have a very big responsibility. It's health care reform." Feinstein and her campaign staff said Huffington's proposal for ending welfare was unrealistic and, they charged, it shows that his enormous personal wealth has left him out of touch with the needs of the poor. "I think it's easy for a person like Congressman Huffington, who can buy anything he wants any time, to talk about charity," said Feinstein, who is also one of the Senate's wealthiest members. "I would hazard a guess that I have spent far more time on skid rows and in soup kitchens than Congressman Huffington has," she said.

"Some of it can be funded with charitable contributions, but a lot of it cannot be because the money is not forthcoming. I think it is wishful thinking and an obfusca-tion of fact." Huffington said he has given substantial financial contributions to charity, but he acknowledges that he does not have a long background as a volunteer. He and his wife, Arianna, started helping at shelters last New Year's Day. Since then, he has encouraged his campaign staff to spend time at shelters near his Orange County headquarters. The candidate and his wife have also stopped at sites around the state while on the campaign trail.

Critics of Huffington's plan say it is wishful thinking to believe that charitable an. accommodate the nation's' Bob Erlenbtisch, executive1 director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness, called the plan "simplistic" and worrisome because if government support is cut he believes the poor will suffer more. "I've been doing this for 10 years, and under the Reagan Administration they said the same thing," he said. "Let's prove that capitalism works; let's prove that the private sector can pick it up. What's happened over the last 10 years is that homelessness has increased about 15 each year." ByDAVELESHER TIMES STAFF WRITER Republican Senate candidate Mike Huffington outlined what he said was the central theme of his campaign in a new statewide television commercial that calls for replacing government welfare with a huge increase in community volunteers.

Rep. Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) calls his plan "far more radical" than President George Bush's vision of a thousand points of light, and in the ad, he points to an audience of Republican supporters as the people who must solve the problems of poverty by spending more of their time and money to help the poor. The candidate said he supports legislation to increase tax deductions for charitable giving. As a result, he says to the audience in the commercial: "It will mean you will have to stand up and take some of that money that you used to pay in federal taxes and give it to your church, give it to your charities, give it to the homeless shelters. "We can turn the country around," he continues.

"We can get rid of the welfare state." Huffington's commercial hits the airwaves in California just as the Senate race emerges from a bruising seven-week exchange of attack television commercials between the Republican and his opponent, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In recent polls, the race continues to be close and, for Huffington, they indicate that he has spent so much of his campaign effort criticizing Feinstein that most California voters do not know much about him. The new commercial seeks to remedy that by providing Huffington's vision of government reform. At 60 seconds, the ad is twice as long as most political commercials.

Huffington, who is financing his campaign from a personal fortune, is estimated to have paid about $2 million to air the new ad statewide for about three weeks. Meanwhile this week both candidates continued to posture for the fall campaign by exchanging a series of debate challenges. Feinstein suggested in a letter to Huffington on Wednesday that the candidates hold three debates in the final six weeks of the race with at least two broadcast on television and one on radio. She listed media organizations in San Francisco, Los and San Diego as possible hosts and she called on Huffington to designate a staff member to animosity and competition for jobs and services in Compton is growing. Attorney Michael Hannon, who represents Jackson, called attempts to paint his client as a racist "a complete fabrication," and said that the videotape shows only a fraction of what went on between Soltero and his client.

Soltero was examined Thursday by Encino neurologist Dr. Martin Levine. According to Guizar, Levine determined that Soltero has a concussion, a forehead bruise and an injured left elbow, which is causing partial numbness in his hand. On the tape Jackson is seen dragging Soltero to his patrol car by his elbow, using his baton as a hoist. Meanwhile, the battle over ownership of the tape continued.

KNBC-TV, which broadcast the tape for the first time on Tuesday, has claimed it purchased exclusive rights to its use for $125 from Soltero's godmother. Citing those rights, Jhj gtayofeasjefuseltp allowother stations broadcast it. On Thursday, however, an attorney stepped pound youth hit him with his fist while being arrested. Jackson's attorney said Thursday that the police officer, who is short of stature but weighs more than 180 pounds, wrestled with Soltero before the confrontation seen on the tape. With the tape's images shown repeatedly on local and national, television for a third day, angry anti-police rhetoric was accompanied by church-sponsored peace rallies and calls for calm.

"They treat us like animals, and it's time for it to stop," said Theresa Allison, founder of the Mothers Reclaiming Our Children organization in Los Angeles, one of the groups that was scheduled to participate in a protest march Thursday night outside Compton police headquarters. She said that although Jackson is African American and Soltero is Latino, the issue is police abuse, not racism, 7.S),j- "Let's" not make it" likeTa black, and Latino 1 thing," she said. "It's human beings being beat up, human beings being discriminated against;" About 40 whites, Latinos and African-Americans demonstrated in front of the Compton police station for about 30 minutes Thursday evening, chanting "No justice, no peace." The group demanded that a civilian review board investigate claims of police misconduct and that charges be filed against Jackson. Investigation: Activists call for officer to be charged in the confrontation with a teen-ager and urge police chief to resign. The youth's lawyer is ordered to turn over videotape of incident.

By RICHARD LEE COLVIN and PATRICK J. MCDONNELL TIMES STAFF WRITERS With the Los Angeles County grand jury moving quickly to look into the videotaped beating of a teen-ager by a Compton police officer, community activists Thursday called for charges to be filed against the officer and demanded that the city's police chief resign. Humberto Guizar, who represents 17-year- old Felipe Soltero, was subpoenaed by the grand jury and ordered to turn over the crucial videotape that shows Officer Michael Jackson lunging at the youth and then striking him at least six times with his baton. The district attorney's Special Investigations Division is looking into the beating, but because no charges have been filed, it cannot subpoena witnesses or evidence. The grand jury, however, can order evidence produced.

Jackson was called last Friday by a county children's social worker to the mobile home where Soltero lives with his mother, his mother's companion, Manuel Shigala, and five, other children. The social worker had gone to the residence to investigate an allegation of child abuse involving Shigala, 41, and she alleged that Soltero had interfered with her and threatened her life. Jackson's report on the incident said he had to subdue Soltero with his baton after the 130- forward to claim that the tape was actually shot by a neighbor and that Soltero's family did hot have the right to sell it to a television station. Jim Blancarte, a lawyer who represents Libidia Vasquez, said his client sold the tape to Soltero's mother for $60 with the understanding that she would only show it to police to get her son leased from jaiL' Mark KNBC's vice president for released a statement Thursday night saying the station had discussed the tape with Vasquez before purchasing it from Maria Quin-, tana, Soltero's godmother. With Quintana's ownership of the tape now under attack, Hoffman said the station will investigate the issue further.

Times correspondents Emily Adams and Psycho Pascual and staff writer Shawn Hubler contributed to. this story. It not about color, said Antoine Brown, one of the demonstrators. "It's about the badge." But Pedro Pallan, a Compton baker and past, president of the city's Latino Chamber of Commerce, said the video "proves what we've been saying all along the Compton police have a hostile attitude toward Latinos." Pallan and other Latino leaders in Compton said Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor should be forced to resign. The videotape comes at a time when racial Ocean-View Property Lease by AF Opposed Jxjfxji i JIM, lis lJ' 11 Police Chief 'Shocked' by Videotape By EMILY ADAMS SPECIAL TO THE TIMES The first time Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor saw the televised videotape of one of his officers beating a teen-ager with a police baton, he was shocked, Taylor said Thursday.

"I was surprised, certainly. I was shocked," Taylor said. "I'm not saying his actions were incorrect but I wasn't expecting it." The tape, showing Officer Michael Jackson hitting 17-year-old Felipe Soltero as he lay on the ground, was especially disconcerting for Taylor, who has spent the last two years trying to instill a new attitude in his 125 officers. Ever since the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers and the riots the next year, Taylor has been putting out the word that brutal force is not acceptable in Compton, he said.

"We're still a quasi-military organization, like all police departments. But we're moving toward community-based policing and trying to sensitize our officers to the community, and the ethnic diversity within it," Taylor said. He became acting police chief just days before the riots began after about 23 years on the Compton force and was given the job permanently in January, 1993. As chief, Taylor said, he has fired three officers: one for using excessive force and two for improper conduct. Two other officers Under the lease, the state, county or Los Angeles must compensate the district or provide another property by August, 1995.

The building plans angered residents who have been embroiled in a bitter fight over another military housing complex on Taper Avenue. The 144 housing units will be abandoned by the Navy when the Long Beach Naval Station closes in September. A shelter for 880 homeless people was approved for the site in January, but federal officials are reconsidering the decision. Residents said the Air Force should use the Navy housing site instead of developing open parkland. "In good faith we are asking that the military be a good neighbor to San Pedro and take over the Taper Avenue site," San Pedro resident John Washworth told Air Force officials Tuesday.

But LL Col. Gilbert T. Perry, director of acquisitions for civil engineering, said the Taper Avenue housing is below Air Force standards. Shambra said during last year's negotiations, concerns were raised that the Air Force would pull out of Los Angeles if it could not get the Fort MacArthur site. "There were a lot of jobs at stake in Los Angeles, and I think it was in everyone's best interest to provide the housing so the Air Force could remain," he said.

Antelis said, however, that the decision to keep or close the Los Angeles base will not be made by the Air Force but by the national Base Closure Commission. Another public hearing will be scheduled this winter when a draft environmental report on the planned development is completed. The Air Force plans to begin building the housing in September, 1995, Antelis said. By SUSAN WOODWARD SPECIAL TO THE TIMES Air Force officials have leased 26 acres of prime ocean-view real estate in San Pedro where they plan to build about 150 housing units, hoping to lure top space-industry engineers and their families to Los Angeles. But they faced heated opposition from San Pedro residents when they unveiled the plan at a community meeting this week.

Most of the 150 residents who attended the meeting said they are not convinced that the new development next to Angeles Gate Park is needed. They said the next round of military base closures, scheduled to begin in the fall, could affect the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo. LL Col. Phillip E. Johnson, public affairs director of the Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo, said prime housing is used to compensate Air Force engineers who could demand much higher pay in the private sector.

Air Force spokesman Howard B. Antelis said that Air Force officers can refuse assignments, and that attracting engineers to work on satellite research and design in Los Angeles has been difficult because of earthquakes, crime and the high cost of living. Houses with an ocean view help lure the Caliber of workers that the Air Force needs, Antelis said. A year ago, the Air Force signed a 50-year lease for the property with the Los Angeles Unified School District for $1 a year, said district Planning Director Dominic Shambra. The property is part of 47 acres known as the Fort MacArthur Upper Reservation, which the school district has owned since 1977.

crew: "We're trying to sensitize Chief Hourie Taylor talks with TV left the department before they could be fired or punished for misconduct, but he would not elaborate. "On occasion we do have people who violate procedures and we react to that as quickly as possible," Taylor said. In describing his department's record of discipline and citizen complaints, Taylor is quick to point out that his officers labor under a heavy workload. In 1993, when 29 citizen complaints were recorded seven of them alleging excessive force his officers also handled 160,000 calls for service. Taylor said.

In 1992, ROBERT GAUTHIER Lot Angelet Timet our officers to the community." sive force last November on behalf of two Latino youths and never heard from the department again-even after the complaint was apparently found to be without merit, he said. Compton police have declined to provide specifics about any excessive force complaints. "I think (Taylor has done a little bit to change," but the change has not been fast enough and Taylor should resign, Ortega said. Taylor, however, says that change is already happening. And for an understaffed department with fewer financial resources than a big city, his officers do "a magnificent job," Ta vlor said.

when seven of 25 citizen complaints involved excessive use of force, the number of calls was similar, he said. This year, 14 complaints have been logged, but Taylor did not know how many of those alleged excessive force. "I think you'll find that the ratio of complaints to radio calls is something like one-tenth of 1," Taylor said. "That's a good record." But some in the community are complaining that Taylor's record isn't good enough and that he should resign. Compton attorney John Ortega said he filed a complaint of exces.