The city of Mission Viejo settled a lawsuit last week involving an Old English sheep dog, a woman named Toy who suffered a nasty black eye, and an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy who was arrested for DUI after two crashes within a half-hour.
Mission Viejo paid $24,000 to make this suit go away- but it is still pending against Deputy Allan James Waters’ bosses, the County of Orange and the Sheriff’s Department. No sign of a settlement there, the attorney for Toy and Steve White says.
Deputy Waters is also named in another lawsuit charging civil rights violations, and the Whites’ attorney wonders just how much Orange County is paying to defend him.
INCITING INCIDENT: DOG BITE
On July 7, 2007, Toy White was home in Mission Viejo with her husband Steve, and their three Old English sheep dogs. A woman entered the property without permission, the suit says – and one of the dogs bit her.
That evening, there was a knock at the Whites’ door. They opened it, and there stood four sheriff’s deputies and an animal control officer. They entered the house without the Whites’ consent – and without a warrant – demanding that the dog be surrendered for a 10-day quarantine.
Mission Viejo law allows for in-home quarantine when a bite happens during trespassing on private property. The Whites said they wanted to do that instead.
And here, according to the suit filed in federal court, is where things got dicey. The deputies became threatening and said, “Just give up the dog,” the suit says.
ESCALATION
Toy White asked the officers to leave her house; they would continue the discussion outside. As she placed her hand on the door handle, “she was violently grabbed and thrown face first onto the tile floor, without warning or provocation, by (deputies) Macias and Waters,” the suit says. She wast hen cuffed tightly, arrested, and hauled off to jail.
The dog, meanwhile, was taken into custody as well.
The dog was returned the following day, when the city realized its error. White, however, was charged with three misdemeanors, including battery on an officer and resisting arrest. Charges were dismissed four months later, after the District Attorney’s office determined that the officers had no authority to enter the house, and no legal right to remove the dog, the suit says.
It also accuses the deputies of doctoring their report to make it look like the Whites were out of control. “The acts Defendants constituted unlawful stop and seizure, excessive use of force, false arrest, malicious prosecution and conspiracy,” the suit says.
Deputies named, along with Waters, are J. Macias, S. Crivelli and T. Jansen, along with animal control officer H. Holmes.
MISSION VIEJO SETTLES
Assistant City Manager Irwin B. Bornstein said this case was entirely handled by Mission Viejo’s insurer and outside counsel. “We are pleased that we were able to reach a mutually acceptable solution to the issues,” he told us in an email.
This suit, and another naming Waters, are still pending, said county spokesman Howard Sutter. The White case is slated for trial in a few months.
Which makes the Whites’ attorney angry. “But why isn’t the County of Orange taking responsibility? Why?” wrote Mary Frances Prevost on her blog. “It was the cops who beat this tiny cosmetics rep into the ground in her own house. It was the cops who had her wrongfully prosecuted, having trumped up false charges to cover their dirty acts.”
The presence of Waters, to her, is the icing on the cake.
Waters, to refresh your memory, is the 13-year veteran of the force who crashed his Mercedes into a Lexus near Dana Point City Hall in March. Deputies took a traffic report, and sent everyone on his way. About 33 minutes later, Waters crashed again – this time into a Toyota in Laguna Niguel, propelling the car and the elderly couple inside into a tree.
Waters was driving under the influence, according to a California Highway Patrol report.
(In other DUI cop news, former Anaheim police Kevin Noel Schlueter, 37, of Costa Mesa, was sentenced to 10 months in jail last month after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor counts of driving under the influence of prescription drugs. The incidents occurred when Schlueter was off-duty and driving in his personal car. Schlueter must serve six months in a residential drug treatment facility, will be on five years of informal probation and attend a multiple-offender alcohol program. Schlueter resigned from the Anaheim Police Department in March.)
We’ll bring you details on the other lawsuit naming Waters next week.
– Staff writer Teri Sforza contributed to this report
