Landrum case has lessons for city
Claremont must now try to rebuild trust

By WILL MATTHEWS
STAFF WRITER
 

Saturday, April 19, 2003 -

CLAREMONT — In the past six weeks, city officials have taken major steps toward healing the wound opened by four years of allegations and acrimony that followed the 1999 shooting death of an 18-year-old black man by two Claremont police officers.

Last month's rescinding of the employee-of-the-year awards given to the officers involved in the shooting and last week's $450,000 settlement with the family of Irvin Landrum Jr., shot during a routine traffic stop on Base Line Road, bring to a close the most highly charged aspects of the shooting.

But the city still must struggle with the lasting unrest unearthed by the shooting and the ensuing community furor.

"The important question here is whether the settlement of things might make it easier to address some of the underlying issues that have been revealed," said Richard Fass, chairman of Claremont's Police Commission.

"That is my fervent hope. My hope is that we can now make more progress on the circumstances that were revealed, the feelings of the community that have been on display and all the issues of trust that have been identified."

For more than four years, the Claremont community has wrestled with the wide-ranging aftermath of the Landrum death.

The Landrum shooting touched off a year of weekly protests in front of City Hall by critics who charged the Police Department with impropriety and racial bias.

An internal Police Department investigation as well as three independent investigations found the officers did nothing wrong despite claims that the use of deadly force by the involved officers was unnecessary.

The officers say Landrum had a gun and that he pointed it at them, but critics point to the fact that his fingerprints were never found on the gun found at the scene and that it was last registered years before to an Ontario police chief as evidence to support their claims.

In December 1999, 11 months after the shooting took place, the officers involved in the shooting, Hany Hanna and Kent Jacks, were given the city's employee-of-the-year award by City Manager Glenn Southard, angering many in the community who felt the decision was a callous affront to the Landrum family.

Now, with the awards having been taken back by Southard and with the Landrum family having been monetarily compensated for their loss, significant healing has been allowed to take root, many in the community say.

But despite that healing, Claremont's community leaders say the city must now be intentional about working to ensure the trust of Claremont's citizenry in their police and municipal government.

"Claremont has always been a community of high self-esteem, probably higher than it needs to be on many issues," said the Rev. Butch Henderson of Claremont United Church of Christ and an outspoken community activist.

"People liked to think that the Landrum incident or something like it couldn't happen here. Well it did happen here. Mistakes were made here. The closure that we hope comes out of this is that Claremont will recover its self-esteem in a healthy way. Good self-esteem comes out of admitting mistakes were made and addressing those mistakes in a healthy way."

In March 2000, city officials released a set of nine recommendations aimed at fostering a healthy response to the shooting and restoring the trust of its constituents.

Many of those recommendations, including the establishment of a city Police Commission, creation of a more accessible formal complaint process, expansion of diversity and sensitivity training for city employees and implementation of a study of traffic stops by Claremont police officers are still utilized.

But despite ongoing efforts, city officials were never able to fully shed the image of being unresponsive and unable to adequately handle traumatic and controversial issues, culminating in two longtime City Council incumbents being ousted in the last month's municipal elections.

Now, with a new council make-up and with the Landrum chapter having effectively been closed, the time is ripe, community leaders say, to move ahead with the substantive work of re- shaping the city culture.

"In terms of legalities, yes, this closes the door on the Landrum episode," said Ellen Taylor, a member of the League of Women Voters of the Claremont area who convened a six-week series of community study circles aimed at facilitating healing in the weeks after the awards were given.

"In terms of morality, the door is certainly not closed. I don't think the Landrum episode will ever close in terms of morality as long as people have a memory of what happened."

And that memory, community leaders say, will be essential in ensuring that Claremont is able to learn and grow from the saga that was born the night Landrum Jr. was shot.

"I would hope that the city has learned from it," said Helaine Goldwater, former chairwoman of the city's Police Commission.

"I don't think that it as an incident, should be paramount to the city anymore. But the basic premise of how we do business should be looked at and changes should continue to be made. Bringing the incident up over and over again doesn't serve any purpose as long as we are working to deal better with situations like this that might come up in the future."
 
 

Will Matthews can be reached by e-mail at w_matthews@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-9333.