Reap the Whirlwind, page 10
His former tae kwon do instructor, Master James Wilson, said Penn was “totally committed to the mental and physical discipline demanded of the martial arts” and knew never to use his skills outside the studio unless his life was in danger.
Reverend Robert Ard of the San Diego Black Leadership Council said, “He’s seen as a good kid, law abiding with good values.” Vernon Sukumu had known the Penn family for years and called Sagon “the kind of young man whom every father would want to have take his daughter to the prom.” A police spokesman said a records search of their files turned up no previous contact between law enforcement and Sagon Penn, confirming the assertion of family and friends that Sagon had never been in trouble with the law before.
Although emotions were running high with police and Penn supporters having conflicting views of the situation, the message from both sides four days after the incident was one of continued restraint, patience, and even constructive cooperation. Homicide lieutenant Paul Ybarrondo said police felt that Penn was responsible for the incident, but he was otherwise reserved in his comments to the media. “It was just one of those things that escalated,” he said, softening the stronger statements made by some officers and police officials. Kolender declined to make any premature statements about the incident, saying he would prefer to wait until he knew more facts. Reverend Ard said, “I’m not ready to put it into a white/Black situation, because I don’t have all the information in at this point.” Kathy Rollins, executive director of the Black Federation, told a reporter, “I want to express my condolences to the chief. The loss of the officer is a great loss to the community.”
Whatever patience and restraint may have existed on April 4 would be gone by the end of the following day.
9
JUST AFTER 9:00 AT NIGHT ON AUGUST 16, 1983, A TWENTY-four-year-old pool cleaner named Edward Prosinski parked his car in the lot of the Wells Fargo Bank on Balboa Avenue in the Clairemont Mesa area of San Diego. Moments after making a forty-dollar withdrawal from the twenty-four-hour ATM outside the bank, Prosinski heard someone approach from behind. Looking over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of a young man before a two-inch blue-steel revolver was pressed into his back. “Give me the fucking money,” the assailant said. Prosinski handed the two twenty-dollar bills over his shoulder. The robber demanded more. Prosinski withdrew another sixty dollars from the machine and handed over his wallet along with the money.
When the suspect fled, Prosinski did exactly what police advise a victim never to do—he ran after him. Prosinski saw the thief run to a Chevrolet Monte Carlo parked on the street behind the bank. When Prosinski got close, the man lifted the gun and pointed it at his pursuer. “You better stop or I’m gonna blow you away,” he said. Prosinski ducked behind a tree, and the robber ran away. This time, Prosinski let him go.
As Prosinski approached the Monte Carlo, twenty-three-year-old Johnny Bradford opened the driver’s door and stepped out of the car. “I witnessed the whole thing, man,” Bradford said. “I was just sitting here in my car waiting for my girlfriend.” Prosinski knew it was bullshit. He asked Bradford to come with him to a nearby pay phone to call the police. Bradford took off.
The first SDPD officer on scene intercepted Bradford walking south through the Wells Fargo lot. A second officer responding to the scene saw a man fitting Prosinski’s description of the man who robbed him exiting an alley behind an apartment building a half block away. Twenty-two-year-old Andre Smith told the officer he was a professional boxer out for his nightly exercise walk. But his story fell apart under questioning, and Smith was put under arrest.
The officers checked the alley behind the apartment building and heard something moving. Crouched beside a juniper bush between the front of the pickup and the wall of the apartment building was a third suspect. Beside the young man was a pile of clothing matching those described by Prosinski. Underneath the pile of clothes, police found an H&R .22-caliber blue-steel revolver with a two-inch barrel, cocked but not loaded. A foot away was Prosinski’s wallet. In the pocket of the suspect’s jacket were five twenty-dollar bills.
According to police, suspect three, a Black male in his early twenties, was discovered kneeling in the bushes beneath an apartment window, chanting softly while working a string of Buddhist prayer beads between his fingers. When questioned, he was noncommunicative, refusing or unable to provide police with even his name. Prosinski was brought down for a curbside ID but could not positively identify him as the robber.
Police transported all three suspects to the Northern Division substation for processing. Suspect three was booked under the name of John Doe. In their report, the arresting officers wrote they suspected John Doe was noncommunicative because he “was suffering emotional shock” and in a state of “extreme fear.”
Smith and Bradford were transported to a cell in the county jail. Suspect Doe was transferred to a psychiatric facility and held for seventy-two hours before being released. Three weeks later, the DA’s office notified police of their decision not to prosecute any of the three for the robbery of Edward Prosinski. “It is quite likely that one or two or three of the [suspects] were involved,” a prosecutor from the DA’s office wrote. However, “Even circumstantially, we can’t prove which one did it.” No one was ever charged.
Although suspect three did not answer police questions regarding the incident, somewhere during his seventy-two-hour psychiatric detainment, authorities learned the young man’s real name. All records and documents related to suspect three were updated and subsequently filed by the San Diego Police Department under the name as it appeared on those materials: First name: Penn. Last name: Sagon.
IT TOOK THE San Diego Police Department four days to discover the administrative mistake. On Friday, April 5, news of the previous arrest was featured in all three local papers and television newscasts, one day after police spokesman Bill Robinson had announced Penn had no previous contact with the department. Assistant DA Richard Huffman would not comment on why his office declined to prosecute the case. “It would be highly unethical for this office to release past criminal history records on anyone, including Sagon Penn.”
It was left to Edward Prosinski to lay out the details of the incident in a Los Angeles Times article titled “Victim ‘Almost Sure’ Penn Was Robber.” In it, Prosinski lamented that Penn had not been prosecuted. “They just said there was a lack of evidence, but I think there was plenty of evidence. Maybe if they hadn’t of dropped the charges, that cop wouldn’t be dead.”
Edward Prosinski was not the only one who felt that way. On April 10, San Diego Union editorial page editor Ed Fike gave full voice to that sentiment in an opinion piece titled “More Should Be Said About San Diego Police Killings.” The sixty-five-year-old Fike was a former Navy lieutenant, seasoned newspaper man, and unabashed conservative with an affinity for western bolo ties. He was a heavyweight in the San Diego press community and had been a journalist and editor on papers throughout the country going on forty years, the last fifteen for The San Diego Union. He was opinionated, plainspoken, and did not pull punches in his editorials.
Dripping with sarcasm and disgust in the 1,437-word opinion piece, he began by calling out “friends and family” who “vowed that Penn had never before been involved with the police.” He sneered at Vernon Sukumu’s characterization of Penn as the type of kid you’d want to take your daughter to the prom. “Penn, this ‘real nice boy’ was described by those who know him as a clean-living athlete . . . The truth has belatedly come out, casting the suspect in an entirely different light. No choir boy he.”
Summarizing Penn’s 1983 arrest, he concluded that “the known evidence certainly warranted prosecution and San Diegans are left to wonder why Penn was not brought to trial. Otherwise, a splendid young officer might still be alive.”
Fike addressed allegations of excessive force on the part of officers. “Criminals and friends of criminals blame the police first and last,” he wrote. “Say what the criminals will,” Fike assured his readers, “police officers do not go around beating citizens; they are careful about using force only when it is necessary to subdue a wrongdoer.” He rejected the idea that any police force would tolerate an abusive officer among its ranks: “The bad cop is soon exposed and cashiered.” “The fault lies not with our police officers,” he concluded, “but with the punk elements that inhabit this fair place.”
Even for an editorial piece, Fike’s reporting was sloppy, containing mostly inaccurate details and conjecture about Penn’s motivations presented as fact. “The horror of that recent Sunday evening began with the accused killer’s arrogance for authority,” he wrote. Jacobs was warranted in using whatever force necessary because Penn “is an athlete who has already communicated his prowess in the black belt arts and made threats that he better not be ‘provoked.’” He went on to note that “Penn showed no signs of being beaten in the photographs taken of him the very next day.” His comments almost perfectly echoed the position among investigators within the police department, where Fike had many friends.
He dismissed assertions the incident had anything to do with race. “Because Penn is black and the officers white, racist overtones have unfortunately arisen. The San Diego chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is exacerbating the racial aspect of the tragedy by raising money for Penn’s legal defense. This is widely being seen as a perversion of that organization’s traditionally noble purposes.”
Among the younger journalists on the paper, Ed Fike was considered an excellent writer but one who often wrote his editorials from the gut rather than with full knowledge or details of the issues. Most felt he had overreached in the Penn piece, without verifying information and lumping in unrelated cases as evidence of Penn’s guilt. As the elder statesman among San Diego newsmen, few in the media were inclined to publicly take Ed Fike to task over it. But the one who did wasted no time doing so.
ONE WOULD HAVE been hard-pressed to find anyone in the news business more different from Ed Fike than Michael Tuck. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Tuck earned a degree in journalism from Trinity College. At the age of just twenty-four, he landed a major-market television news anchor position at independent Channel KTVU in Oakland, California. The station paired the handsome, photogenic, and fiercely intelligent Tuck with a more senior reporter and built their nightly 10:00 p.m. news program around the “Tuck & Fortner Report.” Tuck quickly drew the attention of the major networks and was picked up by the CBS affiliate WCAU in Philadelphia and became the centerpiece of the anchor team there. In 1979, he received a call from sportscaster Ted Leitner, who had recently jumped ship to CBS’s San Diego affiliate KFMB. The news division was looking for a fresh new anchor, Leitner said. “How would you like to come out to paradise?”
Tuck took Leitner up on the offer and joined him on air as part of the News 8 team in what was at the time a lucrative yet rather complacent and unimaginative television news market. In addition to anchoring both the evening and late-night news, Tuck investigated stories from the field and gained a reputation as a talented writer. With his youthful energy, compelling personality, and flawless delivery, Tuck propelled CBS past ABC to claim the top ratings spot among local newscasts. He was so effective, in fact, that ABC News 10 hired him away from CBS in 1984. By 1985, having just turned forty, Michael Tuck was the dominant news personality in the San Diego market.
The media outlets Tuck and Fike represented were as different as the two men themselves. Both The San Diego Union and Evening Tribune had been under ownership by Copley Press since 1928. Except for a few years in the 1940s, a Copley family member had headed up the news conglomerate ever since, the current being Helen Copley. Copley papers historically skewed heavily conservative in their coverage and editorial positions, almost always endorsing Republican candidates and frequently accused of underreporting on the Democrats running against them.
The paper had been taking pragmatic steps to adapt to the changing, less conservative San Diego demographic by adding younger and more diverse reporters and an ombudsman to give voice to underrepresented communities. But top management remained dominated by old-guard newsmen. Jerry Warren, former White House press secretary for the Nixon and Ford administrations, had been managing editor since 1975, while another former Nixon aide, Peter Kaye, held the influential senior political reporter role. The third member of the leadership group was their senior editorial writer, Ed Fike.
At News 10, Michael Tuck was doing his best to transform the station’s image to that of a more contemporary, adventurous news organization. While anchoring two early evening newscasts, he was writing and presenting a commentary segment entitled “Michael Tuck’s Perspective” at the end of the late-night broadcast. Doffing the suit jacket, loosening the tie, and rolling up his shirt sleeves for the segments, Tuck’s first few outings were, by his own account, “pretty soft and boring” and made little impact. “But then I read something in the paper one day and I got really mad,” he later said. “I delivered it mad, and the phones started ringing.” What Tuck had read was Ed Fike’s April 10 editorial piece on Sagon Penn. In his “Perspective” that same evening, Tuck took aim at Fike and The San Diego Union.
“Give editorial writer Edward Fike a rope and a tree limb and he’d be dangerous,” Tuck said in what the Los Angeles Times later described as “a voice that seems to emanate, in tone and intent, from behind a burning bush.” Tuck continued: “Sagon Penn would be just a memory” if Fike had his way. “Why waste taxpayer’s money? Ed Fike is your man.” Whatever thoughts Ed Fike had on the scathing commentary, he chose not to share them with his readers. But The San Diego Union itself termed it a “venomous attack” on the paper that had “also dealt harshly with the author.”
It was not just the News 10 phones that were ringing off the hook after the segment aired. While Fike’s position still had substantial support among readers, The San Diego Union was being flooded with calls and letters criticizing his column as grossly unfair and even downright racist. Reverend Ard of the San Diego Black Leadership Council weighed in, saying, “We will not allow The San Diego Union to convict Sagon Penn in its editorial pages.” When the onslaught continued into the following week, the paper’s levelheaded and diplomatic ombudsman, Cliff Smith, felt compelled to respond.
In an April 22 op-ed column titled “It Was Less Than Evenhanded,” Smith pointedly addressed the Fike piece. “One of journalism’s inviolable tenets is to never try and convict a criminal suspect by newspaper,” the column began. “Some readers have said they believe The San Diego Union failed to keep that trust.” He tersely countered Fike’s assertion that “the known evidence certainly warranted prosecution” of Penn in the 1983 incident. “Apparently, the known evidence did not warrant prosecution.”
IN JUST TWO weeks, the Sagon Penn incident laid bare a social division that had been developing in San Diego since the dramatic increase in real estate development in 1970s. The resulting influx of a young, educated, and socially liberal demographic began to challenge the existing older, conservative, career-military, and overwhelmingly white establishment. As the feud between the two newsmen commenced on April 10, it did so among the public in letters to the editor and talk-radio chatter. So long as the accepted view of Sagon Penn was that of a young Black man with a clean record, Fike’s devoted readers were willing to suspend judgment, or at least keep it to themselves. But with the revelation of the armed-robbery arrest and Fike’s permission to presume the worst, all reservations vanished. “It was like throwing a match into a pile of dried leaves,” Union journalist Tony Perry said of the impact of Fike’s commentary. When Tuck fired back, his loyal viewers, who were less trusting of the police, staked out their territory as well.
Fractures were beginning to show in another relationship of great importance to the city. Many people on both sides had worked hard over the previous decade to improve the uneasy relationship between the San Diego Police Department and the Black community. But with the Sagon Penn story refusing to leave the headlines, tensions continued to grow. A leader in the Black community termed the relationship “strained to the breaking point.” Republican mayor Roger Hedgecock warned of “a growing unrest in Southeast San Diego.” Irma Castro of the Chicano Federation called the Southeast a “volcano ready to blow.” Reverend Ard spoke of a “great rage that exists in our communities.” He warned that “it could be a long, hot summer in this city unless the police can reconcile differences with the Black community.”
THE MATCH IN the pile of dried leaves created by the Ed Fike editorial continued to smolder for a month before bursting into flames during the preliminary hearing for Penn. The four-day hearing concluded as expected, with Judge J. Richard Haden ruling there was sufficient evidence for Penn to stand trial on the charges brought by the district attorney. For many, the testimony of a frail and weakened Donovan Jacobs delivered from Grossmont Hospital offered the most dramatic moments in the proceedings. But for the San Diego Black community, something else of even greater significance had occurred the day before that.
“Racial Slurs Told in Police Slaying Case,” read the May 9 headline on page one of the San Diego edition of the Los Angeles Times. On the stand the previous day, Junius Holmes testified that Donovan Jacobs straddled Penn, shouting, “You think you’re bad, boy? We’re gonna beat your Black ass,” as he repeatedly punched Penn in the face. DeWayne Holmes and Anthony Lovett testified to hearing something similar. Sean Arkward accused Jacobs of ordering Penn to “turn over on your back, nigger” and Riggs of shouting, “Turn over on your back, Black bastard.”
Much of Arkward’s testimony was shot through with factual inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Nevertheless, when video of Sagon Penn’s soft-spoken younger brother on the stand leveling the accusations was broadcast unedited on the evening news, the impact was incendiary. “A lot of people in the community are comparing this situation to [Apartheid] South Africa,” activist Makeda Cheatom told a reporter in the hallway outside the courtroom.
