Drown Must Testify on Duffy and Jail Abuse : Law Enforcement: Sheriff's candidate opposes timing of his appearance at hearing, two weeks before the election.

By MARK PLATTE

Oct. 16, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Assistant Sheriff Jack Drown has been subpoenaed to testify two weeks before the Nov. 6 election about Sheriff John Duffy and allegations of inmate abuse by a so-called “Rambo Squad” of deputies who were disciplined for jail beatings.

Although Drown said he has no new information about what went on in County Jail at El Cajon, or what led to the punishment of 10 deputies for alleged abuse there, his attorney has fought attempts to have Drown testify at the Oct. 24 county Civil Service Commission hearing and asked that his appearance be delayed until after the election.

Drown, whom Duffy endorsed just after announcing last year that he would not be running for a sixth term, is running against Sheriff’s Capt. Jim Roache in what polls show to be a close race. Roache won the June primary, gathering 32% of the vote to Drown’s 28%.

The commission hearing is an appeal by Sheriff’s Capt. Maudie Bobbitt of her 35-day suspension without pay in late 1989. Duffy suspended her for “failure to take appropriate steps to investigate various allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at (El Cajon) by a number of deputies,” according to attorney Martin J. Mayer, who is representing both Duffy and Drown.

Bobbitt was one of 10 deputies and officers disciplined for alleged abuses at the El Cajon jail as part of the “Rambo Squad,” which the county grand jury said tormented and abused prisoners.

Bobbitt was the jail’s highest-ranking officer, and is the only Sheriff’s Department official whose case has not been resolved.

Her husband, attorney Everett Bobbitt, said Duffy singled out his wife for punishment, even though the grand jury criticized the inner workings of all county jails. Bobbitt said Duffy dislikes him for a series of court victories the attorney has won over the years, including one that allowed Roache to run for sheriff.

Bobbitt, who is representing his wife, said he will ask Drown why, as his wife’s supervisor, he did not review her suspension, as is normal practice. Drown said he was not Maudie Bobbitt’s supervisor when the alleged abuses occurred. But she said Drown was her supervisor at the time the suspension was handed down, which required him to review the punishment.

Everett Bobbitt also said Drown has told him in a tape-recorded interview taken as part of his wife’s case that that he has not reviewed the department’s investigation into the alleged jail beatings, a claim that Bobbitt says makes Drown an uninterested administrator.

“I will attempt to link Drown and Duffy together as two people who mishandled my wife’s case,” he said. “Already, there is a thinly veiled attempt to protect Duffy and Jack Drown from testifying.”

Mayer, the attorney for Duffy and Drown, asked Bobbitt in August to continue the hearing until after the election.

“As you can appreciate, it is vital that (Drown) be able to devote his undivided attention to his election campaign,” Mayer said. “ . . . It seems to me that the best way to avoid unnecessary controversy would be a short postponement of the hearing, so that Mr. Drown’s appearance would take place after the election.”

Commission hearing officer Richard Lyon said he would not delay the hearing.

Mayer also has asked Lyon to exclude certain evidence in the case, including the possible motive Duffy might have had in suspending Maudie Bobbitt, whether Duffy had condoned abuse at the jails, whether Duffy chose to investigate brutality allegations at other jails and, if not, whether abuse occurred at other jails.

Lyon is expected to rule Wednesday on whether the evidence should be admitted.

Duffy could not be reached for comment Monday. In a letter to the grand jury in August, 1989, Duffy said his own internal investigation confirmed the existence of the “Rambo Squad.”

The deputies involved, he said, engaged in “cell-trashing,” the indiscriminate destruction of an inmate’s cell under the guise of a search; “wall leaning,” in which inmates had to lean spread-eagle against a wall until they lost muscle control, and “what simply amounts to deliberate and cruel harassment of inmates in order to establish control and to ‘show the inmate who’s running the jails.’ ”

Duffy concluded that the deputies’ conduct was “inexcusable, unprofessional and embarrassing to the department.”

Drown said Monday that he knew little about the “Rambo Squad” because the El Cajon jail was not under his jurisdiction. He said he has no choice but to testify, although he now is beginning to believe that Bobbitt is playing politics with the hearing.

“I’m beginning to think all of this is very much pointed to me and the election,” he said. “I’m beginning to have resentful feelings about it. This is not what civil service hearings are supposed to be about.”

Drown said he had Mayer request the postponement until after the election because “I didn’t want to be sequestered away for hours waiting to testify.”

Although Roache has likened Drown to Duffy, because the two served closely together for so many years, Drown said he didn’t always agree with his boss.

“We had operational differences from time to time, but you don’t air those in public,” he said. “This campaign is not, nor should it be, a report card on John Duffy. Come January, 1991, there will be a different management style and different policies and programs in place.”

Roache said Drown ducked the El Cajon jail incident because he found it unpleasant and bothersome. Bobbitt said Drown believed it would come back to haunt him during this election.

Bobbitt said he will ask Drown to assess Duffy’s leadership and management style during the hearing.

“I think the hearing could have a potentially great impact on Jack Drown’s chances for election,” Bobbitt said. “Here he said he was concerned about abuses in the jails, and he claims never to have read the investigative package on the El Cajon jail. What does that tell you?”

Duffy was elected sheriff in 1970 and reelected four times. He decided last December that he would not run for a sixth term, after scrutiny into whether public money helped finance his home security system.