State Seeks Federal Help in Protecting Witnesses

WASHINGTON —  They executed Denise Jones at 11 in the morning in the middle of her South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood. Several of the neighbors knew who pulled the trigger, but only one of them would agree to testify in court.

It was surprising that even one came forward. Jones too had been an eyewitness. That’s why, prosecutors say, she was shot. A member of one of Los Angeles’ notorious street gangs, a guy nicknamed Big Evil, allegedly gave the order by phone from jail, saying: “If they can’t pull no fish up out the water, they don’t eat, you know what I’m saying?”

The one eyewitness to the killing who took the stand in the case against Big Evil came to court in his own disguise--six sweatshirts, a pair of odd-looking glasses and a ridiculous wig. He wanted to wear a fake beard, but the judge wouldn’t let him. The trial is continuing.

“He looked like the Michelin man,” Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Jennifer Lentz Snyder recalled in recent testimony before a House subcommittee on crime.

Under California’s paltry witness protection program, a preposterous disguise was about all that witness could hope for, said Snyder, who as a prosecutor of gang crimes has seen four witnesses killed in three cases.

By contrast, the federal witness protection program has not lost a witness in more than 25 years of prosecuting a parade of hard-core criminals, from Mafia-style gangsters to Hells Angels and skinheads, a Justice Department spokesman reported.

“These people are heroes, and they are essential to the pursuit of justice. They deserve our protection,” Snyder told the subcommittee in a plea for federal help to contain a problem that law enforcement officials reluctantly concede is escalating unabated in major urban cities.

In Los Angeles County, officials estimate that 40% of gang killings went unsolved between 1990 and 1994 and 30% of trials ended in dismissal or acquittal, primarily because witnesses were afraid to cooperate.

The idea of a state-federal partnership to fight crime is not new--a 1994 crime bill paid for 100,000 police officers in cities across the nation, and Congress is considering giving federal incentive grants to states that toughen their juvenile justice systems.

But federal law enforcement agencies--experts at disguising and relocating endangered witnesses since 1970--have been reluctant to share their resources, even as California and many other states struggle to keep witnesses to gang violence alive, prosecutors such as Snyder complain.

The result is a $62-million-a-year federal witness protection program expert at arranging new names, birth certificates, jobs, even faces--and a $150,000 counterpart in California that offers little more than first- and last-month’s rent on a new apartment, officials said.

The inequity could be partly solved by a bill now moving through the California Legislature that would authorize as much as $10 million to set up a state-run witness protection program. Sponsored by Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), the program would provide everything from physical relocation to psychological counseling.

Already passed by the Assembly, the bill could be approved by the state Senate as early as this month. But how well the program ultimately works could depend on how much expertise the federal sector is willing to share, Hertzberg and others said.

The U.S. Marshals Service, which administers the federal witness program, is already adept at arranging new identities, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has surplus housing that could be used to move witnesses off of dangerous gang turf.

But Snyder testified about a reluctance to protect county witnesses by federal agencies facing their own budget constraints and of drastic cuts in the number of homes HUD agrees to lend for the relocation of county witnesses.

HUD and Los Angeles County, for instance, are still deadlocked over who should accept liability for damage done to HUD property by witnesses. This dispute prompted HUD to all but stop the informal practice of lending vacant housing to witness relocation efforts.

The Marshals Service office in Los Angeles is not committed to providing significant aid to county witnesses. The federal witness protection program, is just that--a program for federal witnesses, spokesman Bill Dempsey said.

“The program is not supposed to be relocating large numbers of state and city witnesses,” Dempsey said. “It’s not a step to be taken lightly . . . it’s an expensive program.”

States may request federal protection for some witnesses. But acceptance into the program, which takes mostly high-profile cases, is limited and involves rigorous screening. Witnesses must be deemed good candidates for relocation, meaning they are expected to assimilate into a new community without returning to their old unsafe haunts. Snyder said Los Angeles County witnesses have been rejected repeatedly.

Even if federal help is provided, the state must foot the bill, and the Legislature historically has not authorized the funds to pay for such services.

As a result, law enforcement officials routinely dip into their own pockets to keep a witness alive. Snyder once sent a cab into South-Central in the middle of the night to retrieve Denise Jones from a camper shell where she was hiding.

They saved her that night, but she was dead a few weeks later.