Murder in Brentwood (17 page)

On a trip, coming back through the Spokane airport for our flight back to Los Angeles, my wife and I went into a waiting area near the gate and a man came up to me. He identified himself as a reporter with the Spokane Spokesman-Review. I told him I did not want to talk to him. My

[Self-promotion or self- preservation appeared to be the dominant motivation of the actors in the Simpson trial, all the way up to Judge Ito himself.]

wife went off to buy a magazine. The reporter said that he had heard I just bought a house in Sandpoint.
                  
“Why is that news?” I asked. If I had bought a palace in Cancun, maybe that would nave been news, but a modest house in a small town in northern Idaho?

My wife came back from the newsstand. She saw me talking to the reporter and signaled to me that he had a micro cassette recorder going underneath his notebook.

The reporter asked me a few more questions, which I refused to answer. Then I asked him a question.

“Where do you live?”

“Spokane,” he answered.

“How would you like it if I came out to your house, bothered your wife and children?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“So, now you understand.”

Obviously, he didn’t. He asked if his photographer could take a picture. I said no; I didn’t want anybody taking a picture of my wife. (For security reasons, obviously.) I don’t even know why he asked, since it was clear they were going to do it anyway. The photographer ran ahead and stood in front of my wife and me as we; made our way toward the gate. As he snapped several pictures, I held my briefcase out and kept walking straight ahead. The photographer ran into my briefcase, but wouldn’t get out of my way. My wife walked off to the side.

“You’ve got your pictures, now leave us alone,” I said.

But he kept shooting.

“Get out of my way,” I said, and kept walking forward.

“No.” The photographer refused to move.

So I reached up to grab his jacket and as soon as I touched him he collapsed like he was shot. As I stepped over him, I felt embarrassed for him. He got up and called for security. There were eight or nine witnesses who had seen the entire incident and agreed that it was the photographer’s fault and he was a jerk. I felt it was a setup; the photographer wanted to provoke me into an altercation so he could have a dramatic story and maybe a lawsuit.

And he got one. The incident played big in the media. The managing editor of the newspaper the photographer worked for wrote a letter to LAPD Chief Willie Williams, which ran in the Los Angeles Times and is reprinted here in full:

Dear Chief Williams,

In the heat of the moment, a true professional keeps his cool. Unfortunately, Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman lost his cool in Spokane on Wednesday, January 25. During the course of a routine interview that evening at Spokane International Airport, detective Fuhrman grew enraged, then hit a Spokesman-Review photographer in the chest with a metal briefcase and proceeded to grab the photographer and force him to his knees, ripping the buttons off the photographer’s shirt in the process.

This lapse of professional conduct and show of temper needs to be investigated by your office.

As an editor, I expect my reporters and photographers to keep it together, maintain a professional decorum and treat people with respect. The public expects this of the media. The same should he expected of LAPD officers.

I know Detective Fuhrman has been the center of much attention in relation to the trial of O.J. Simpson. Perhaps he is under stress. Probably he was hoping to find some serenity on his house-hunting trip to Idaho.

But all of this doesn’t, in my view, excuse the shoving, yelling and ripping of buttons.

The Spokesman-Review’s reporter Bill Morlin and photographer Dan McComb had a job to do Wednesday night. Their job was to interview a police officer who finds himself in the midst of a very big story. Reporter Morlin and photographer McComb maintained, a high professional standard of conduct that evening. Upon first recognizing detective Fuhrman and his wife, they let the two finish dinner before approaching them. They identified themselves right away as working press. Witnesses will confirm neither reporter nor photographer raised his voice.

For this, McComb was subjected to profanities and then forced to the ground with a ripped shirt at the hand of detective Fuhrman.

I hope you will agree this is conduct unbecoming a police officer. I would urge you to investigate these events and I await your response.

And one more thing. Dan McComb makes $455 per week. He could use a new shirt.

Editorially yours, Chris Peck

Managing Editor

I’ve been accused of a lot of things in my life, but ripping buttons has got to be a first. Considering the circumstances, I thought I used incredible restraint and professionalism. But though I am a professional, I’m also a human being. I was in civilian clothes and with my wife on the tail end of a four-day vacation to buy a house. I understand that journalists have rights, but where do our rights come in? Don’t we have a right not to be harassed by journalists? I had already given the reporter as much of an interview as I was going to give. And I had allowed the photographer to take photos. Everything beyond that was simply harassment.

Peck got what he asked for. Internal Affairs pursued an exhaustive investigation of the incident. After countless interviews and a report hundreds of pages in length, Internal Affairs completely exonerated me. Eyewitnesses in the airport complained about the two journalists and thought I did nothing out of line. They stated that any physical contact was the photographers fault, not mine. There were no charges against me and no legal fallout in the trial, because Judge Ito for once ruled that any mention of the incident was not relevant. Oh, and I’m no longer bothered when I go through Spokane Airport.

One last thing: McComb will never get a new shirt from me.

The fact that I retired to Northern Idaho unfortunately dredged up the media stereotype of the area as a hotbed of militia freaks and Nazis. That is completely inaccurate. Sandpoint is less racist, less opinionated, and less plagued with human weaknesses than Brentwood. It’s also more tolerant and more diverse than Brentwood. In Sandpoint, people of all races, religions, backgrounds, and economic classes live and work together. Brentwood could learn a lot from the people of Sandpoint.

The headquarters of Aryan Brotherhood is thirty miles south, in Hayden Lake. Thirty miles is a pretty good distance in northern Idaho, but the people of Sandpoint wish the Aryans were even farther away. In the two years I have lived in Sandpoint, I have never seen a Nazi, never talked to one, don’t know anybody who has, and don’t know anybody who has ever seen them in town. Most of the time, they stay on their compound, but once in a while they come into town in the middle of the night and drop literature, which nobody wants to read and everyone resents, but it starts nice fires. If the people of Sandpoint hate anybody, it’s the Aryans. No doubt there are Aryans and other crackpots in Los Angeles or New York, probably more proportionately than there are in northern Idaho.

But the media doesn’t ever characterize those places as bastions of Nazism.

Our house cleared escrow in late February 1995, and we all drove up to Sandpoint. The moving company was due to arrive a day after us, so we spent our first night at Ron and Rose Chaney’s house. The next morning, my wife and kids began settling into the new house. I flew back to Los Angeles to take the stand.

Around the same time, my mother received the following letter from Daryl Gates, former chief of the LAPD.

Dear Mrs. Fuhrman,

Thank you for your thoughtful letter. For some unknown reason I just received it today, obviously it came by way of China. At any rate, I deeply appreciate your kind comments. I, too am very proud of Mark and I know he has done his job “proudly and properly” and very effectively, perhaps too effectively for the O.J. defense lawyers!

Now that the trial is beginning there will be more accusations. You can be assured that I will continue to make my voice heard in support of Mark and other LAPD detectives.

Best always, Daryl Gates

Chief Gates was right, but I don’t believe even he could have predicted that the accusations would be so numerous and so outrageous.

As I flew back to Los Angeles, I did not welcome what awaited me. For months, the defense had painted a picture of me that was at the least not accurate, and most times completely false. Had I been able to address some of these issues and defuse them as they came up in the media, I would have had less of a burden to bear during my testimony. But that was not possible. Although my personal life was being attacked, I had lo agree with the department and the prosecution that my professional obligations to them came before any personal concerns for myself and my family. That sounds very strange now that I put it down on paper. But I felt it was my duty. Of course, that sense of duty was not reciprocated by the department or the prosecution. They seemed to put their individual interests first and their professional responsibilities second.

Self-promotion or self-preservation appeared to be the dominant motivation of the actors in the Simpson trial, all the way up to Judge Ito himself.

Chapter 12

THE JUDGE AND HIS WIFE

I have no recollection of the nature of any interactions between then-Officer Fuhrman and me, or any other contacts I may have had with him.

MARGARET A. YORK SWORN DECLARATION,
 
11/21/94

READING ON JULY 23, 1994, that Lance Ito had been selected as judge for the Superior Court case just about made me choke on my breakfast. I was still up in Ukiah at the time of his selection, but once I returned to Los Angeles, I went down to Marcia Clark’s office and told her about my history of professional conflicts with Ito s wife, police Captain Margaret York. I explained that I thought the judge had a clear conflict of interest, and would at least go after me if not derail the whole case. Marcia said that there was nothing we could do; Ito had already been accepted by both prosecution and defense. When I asked that the presiding judge be made aware of Ito s possible conflict of interest, the answer was still “no.”

I can’t imagine that Judge Ito didn’t hear about me long before he took on the Simpson trial. His wife had known me for almost nine years, during which we had the most negative professional relationship I had experienced in my twenty years on the LAPD. I’m sure that there were some job-related problems that York didn’t take home, but as a new lieutenant, she had a monumental problem with one policeman in particular: Mark Fuhrman. It’s difficult to believe that she didn’t complain about me to her husband.

The problems began in 1985, following the investigation of a supposed group of males at the West LA division called “Men Against Women.” The group was reportedly sexist and shunned female police officers. Internal Affairs, the Police Commission, and Inspection and Control investigated the allegations, but no discrimination was found, just a few bad jokes. I was one of the subjects of the investigation, and when York came to West LA, she immediately singled me out and tried to make my life miserable.

“Men Against Women” was a tongue-in-cheek, beer-drinking joke used by officers to blow off steam, make us laugh, and try to forget the impossible job we had in front of us. Some might argue that even as a joke, “Men Against Women” is immature and sexist. Maybe in hindsight I would agree. But\at the time, we were trying to relieve the pressure of a difficult situation through humor. The LAPD was in a period of transition and growing pains. Many female officers who had recently been hired were pleasant, intelligent, and competent. Unfortunately, some were not. Politics being what it is, they were trained and supervised with special rules, a hands-off policy, and blanket acceptance of all their conduct, no matter how unsafe. This created frustration among the cops who were asked to train and work with those female officers who were incompetent or inexperienced.

My problems with Margaret York might be dismissed as a disgruntled cop complaining about a strong female leader. But our problems were professional, not personal. I couldn’t stand being led by someone who I thought was an inexperienced supervisor, no matter what gender. And I didn’t hide it.

The confrontations between York and me were not quiet conflicts. They were loud, frequent, and impossible to ignore. York was so antagonistic toward me that virtually everyone who knew her or me was aware of the situation. York made it clear that she detested me.

When York first came to West LA patrol as a brand-new lieutenant, she appeared uneasy with her new leadership role. After all, from what I know of her career, she was originally assigned to duties other than patrol. Under Chief Ed Davis she attended a limited academy training course that taught patrol skills and allowed her to move into
  

[Did Captain Margaret York, Commanding Officer of Internal Affairs Division and wife of Judge Ito, lie to a superior court judge?]

positions that were considered field assignments. In other words, she was field-certified. Now, although she had not worked the streets as a uniformed police officer, she could promote and lead officers who had.

York singled me out. She participated in at least one of my six-month ratings. Ironically, this rating ended in a

grievance that I initiated to remove a negative comment that one sergeant told me Lieutenant York had written about me. I won the grievance, and the comment was removed. Even though she had denied writing the comment, she was still angry about this incident and more confrontations between us ensued.

When York was the acting captain, she did not waste any time exercising her temporary power. One afternoon, while I was checking out my radio and shotgun before my P.M. watch, York came up and asked to speak with me. I walked several feet away from my fellow police officers and listened as she told me, “Starting tomorrow you will be working day watch so I will be able to watch you.”

My surprise at the statement was probably written all over my face.