Dispute Over Traffic Tickets Escalates Into Legal Battle : Valencia: The case involving a sign that some say was offensive pits a resident against the Sheriff's Department and tears a neighborhood apart.

By MICHAEL CONNELLY

April 15, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It’s a case of vex, lies and videotape.

What started as a contested speeding ticket has grown in less than a year to a full-scale legal battle between a Valencia man and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors.

The case includes allegations of obscenity and inciting a neighborhood to civil unrest. The parties have traded accusations of government conspiracy, violation of free speech, even Nazism. The legal morass includes a contested videotape made by an off-duty deputy and has grown to include the state attorney general’s office.

With all of these entanglements, there seems to be no immediate end in sight for the so-called “Suck My Duck” case in the Santa Clarita Valley.

The name for the case comes from a homemade sign that 33-year-old Gary Shaw attached to the rear window of a Toyota van parked in front of his home last summer.

Shaw, the owner of a messenger service, said the sign was a retaliatory salvo fired against Sheriff’s Deputy John Banks. Shaw claimed that Banks began harassing him last year after Shaw’s wife contested in court a speeding ticket written by Banks.

Though Diane Shaw lost her case in May, her husband said Banks was embarrassed by her testimony and began a campaign of intimidation that included parking his patrol car outside their Elder View Drive home on at least two occasions.

Then on Aug. 2, 1990, Banks issued Gary Shaw his own traffic ticket. Banks said Shaw was speeding in a residential neighborhood near his home; Shaw denied it but later lost when he, too, took the case to court.

However, directly after receiving the citation, Shaw set the months-long legal dispute in motion by taping a Manila file folder to the back window of a van he parked in his driveway.

On the folder, Shaw said, he wrote: “Deputy J. Banks can Suck My Duck.”

Shaw said he was so annoyed by Banks that he made the sign so the deputy would see it the next time he stopped in front of the house and feel the same vexation Shaw had felt.

“This guy was harassing me,” Shaw said. “I had to do something.”

Banks did not return calls for comment, but his commander, Capt. Robert Spierer, said Shaw’s claims of harassment are untrue. “We have investigated his claims and have formed the opinion that he was not being harassed,” Spierer said.

Neighbors on Elder View Drive who were contacted by The Times said they did not recall ever seeing a sheriff’s patrol car in front of Shaw’s house before he put up the sign.

But the sign set off a flurry of interest by deputies and neighbors. They claimed the sign originally contained a lewd reference that was changed after Shaw had repeated arguments with an angry neighbor.

Shaw acknowledged that, when he originally made the sign, he used a lewd reference, but he insisted that he changed it before ever putting it on display in the van window.

No matter what was written on the sign, he quickly added, it was a legal expression under the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.

Others didn’t see it that way. A few days after he placed the sign on his van, Shaw came home to find his nemesis, Banks, in his driveway videotaping the back of the van.

“I took this video out of curiosity,” Banks testified at a hearing where prosecutors sought without success to stop Shaw from seeing the tape. “The guys around the station were kind of laughing about it.”

On the video, Banks referred to the sign’s maker as an “idiot” and added a running commentary. “This used to be a peaceful town,” the deputy said while his camera panned the sign with his name on it. “This is Nazism that comes to Valencia. . . . How could this happen in America?”

After Banks was ordered off the property by Shaw, at least two other formal visits by deputies to the neighborhood followed.

One deputy interviewed neighbors and took complaints about the sign. Another knocked on Shaw’s door and asked him to remove the sign. Shaw responded by tearing the word “Duck” off the sign but leaving the rest of it in place in the van window.

Two weeks later, on Aug. 23, Shaw was charged by the Los Angeles County district attorney with advertising obscene matter and disturbing the peace by offensive language, both misdemeanors.

Since then, the case has moved slowly, prompting one judge to call it a “turtle race” during a recent hearing. Another judge dismissed the obscenity charge, ruling that no matter what was originally written on the sign, its purpose was not to appeal to the prurient interests of the public--a requirement of the law that Shaw was charged with violating.

What remains is the disturbing the peace charge--and the ongoing dispute over what the sign actually said while on display in the van window.

If convicted, Shaw could be sentenced to up to 90 days in jail. He said he has turned down repeated offers to plead no contest to lesser charges carrying no jail time because he wants his day in court. He said freedom of speech is at stake, and though several of his neighbors have lined up against him, he is carrying this costly fight--$7,000 in legal fees so far--for them as well.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Why should I plead anything to anything? What I am doing is for my neighbor, too. Next time, the deputies could do it to him.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bradford E. Stone, who filed the charges against Shaw, said three of Shaw’s neighbors and two deputies will be called as witnesses at the trial and will describe the sign as originally including a lewd remark.

Last month, Stone announced that he, too, plans to be a witness, testifying to admissions Shaw made to him during a meeting while the defendant was acting as his own attorney. Stone would not divulge what those remarks were.

Regardless of whether the sign was changed, Stone said, the intent of the message to Banks was clear, and it was repulsive to Shaw’s neighbors.

“He altered the sign,” Stone said of Shaw. “It does not alter the fact that they were about to have a little civil war in the neighborhood because of his dispute over a speeding ticket.”

According to Stone and sheriff’s reports, several residents complained about the sign. One of the residents told deputies he had an ongoing dispute with Shaw over the sign that escalated into a shouting match.

Stone said the neighbors’ complaints and the argument constituted a “violent reaction” to the sign, a requirement prosecutors must prove to convict Shaw of disturbing the peace by offensive language.

The prosecutor said Shaw’s freedom of speech defense is not valid, because his action impinged on the rights of his neighbors to peaceably enjoy life.

“Freedom of speech does not allow you to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” Stone said. “We have to balance the rights of the individual with the rights of the group.”

The next step in the case will take place later this month. Shaw’s attorney, Joseph C. Merkens Jr., has asked the district attorney’s office to disqualify itself from the case because Stone plans to be a witness. A hearing has been set for April 29 to determine if the attorney general will take over the prosecution.

Meanwhile, residents in the quiet, hilly neighborhood where Shaw erected his sign have watched the legal fallout with puzzlement.

Many families live on Elder View Drive, and legal concepts such as freedom of speech did not readily come to mind when children began asking parents about the sign on Shaw’s van. The Shaws have no children.

“This is a family neighborhood,” one resident said. “We found the sign extremely offensive. Shaw had a beef with the Sheriff’s Department and decided to incorporate his neighborhood in it. Well, I don’t want my kids exposed to this type of connotation from the back of some guy’s van. It was a ludicrous situation.”

Like most of the residents who spoke, he did so on the condition that he not be identified. Residents said coverage of the case by local newspapers has already focused far too much attention on their neighborhood.

Some residents said that, though they were offended by the sign, they now wonder whether the eight-month prosecution of Shaw has been worth it. The sign is gone, and the neighborhood is left with animosities that may be strengthened if neighbor is called on to testify against neighbor.

“I think a lot of money is being spent by taxpayers and Mr. Shaw on something that should not have gone this far,” a resident said. “They are following through with this prosecution for what? To slap the guy’s wrist and say, ‘Don’t do it again.’ Is it worth it?”

Shaw remains undaunted. These days, he said, he no longer sees Banks--other than at court hearings--and is still waiting to hear from the Sheriff’s Department about the two complaints against the deputy that he has filed with the Sheriff’s Department.

Most of all, he waits for his day in court.

“First, they tried to intimidate me,” Shaw said. “Now they are trying to wear me down. They are hoping I don’t have the time, the money or the initiative to carry this through. . . . But they are wrong.”