The five-day mediated hearing to determine whether the Santa Maria Police Department wrongfully terminated former Lt. Dan Ast included a parade of testifying witnesses—so many witnesses, in fact, that the hearing had to be continued to late July.
Police Chief Ralph Martin fired Ast last year, citing “gross incompetence” in connection with the shooting death of Officer Albert Covarrubias Jr. at a DUI checkpoint in the early morning hours of Jan. 28, 2012.
The shooting occurred when a handful of supervising officers attempted to arrest Covarrubias after receiving information that he was having a violent sexual relationship with an underage Police Explorer.
The hearing—which Ast and his attorney, Jonathan Miller, chose to hold publicly—kicked off June 2 with an emotionally charged testimony from Martin.
Miller argued that Martin retaliated against Ast at the direction of someone else in the city because Ast was one of three whistleblowers to file complaints against former Police Chief Dan Macagni alleging widespread problems in the department—including favoritism, unfair distribution of overtime, and officer misconduct.
Miller also claimed that city officials failed to protect Ast and the two other whistleblowers—former Lts. Norm Comé and Jim Ginter—from retaliation and willfully delayed an investigation into the complaints.
Dennis Gonzales, the attorney hired by the city for the hearing, denied those claims and maintained that Ast is the one guilty of misconduct and therefore is deserving of termination.
“Do you really think Martin would say, ‘I don’t know these guys, I’ve never met them. It’s against the law, but sure, I’ll retaliate against them. Yeah,’” Gonzales asked Ast during cross examination. “Do you think he’d jeopardize his career and future like that?”
Many of the officers involved in the Covarrubias investigation—including Ast; former Cmdr. Craig Ritz, who resigned; and now-Sgts. Paul Van Meel and Alfredo Ruiz—provided testimony of what happened the night of Jan. 28, 2012.
The main point of contention appeared to be who was actually in charge of the Covarrubias investigation and subsequent arrest, and who made the command decisions that night.
Miller argued that Ast wasn’t in charge of the investigation because Macagni had recently switched him to night shifts and that Ritz was the one who ultimately decided to arrest Covarrubias at the checkpoint. According to hearing testimony, Ritz was out sick most of the day prior to the arrest, but he did go out for dinner with friends around 5 p.m. Ast called him into the police station around midnight.
Both attorneys questioned Ast at length about why the other supervisors and he chose to keep then-Lt. Rico Flores out of the investigation until just hours before the arrest.
“There was an issue with confidentiality with Flores and Lt. Kendall Greene,” Ast testified. “It was known in the department that both of them had had trouble keeping things confidential in the past.”
In an attempt to get the victimized Explorer’s name, Ast ended up asking Flores for a roster of who was working the DUI checkpoint. Ast testified that Flores was upset that he had been kept out of the loop, but that he ordered the other lieutenant not to tell anyone about the investigation.
“It didn’t last 15 to 20 minutes before he blabbed it to the entire unit,” Ast said.
According to numerous accounts, Flores told the traffic officers, including Covarrubias, at an all-hands meeting scheduled before the DUI checkpoint that their supervisors were looking into the Explorer Program.
“He put the investigation on a path that we had to rush everything so we could get our criminal evidence,” Ast said.
Around midnight, the officers had Jane Doe’s mother pick her up at the checkpoint and instructed the teenager to make a pretext call to Covarrubias. The officers testified that Covarrubias sounded paranoid during the call and told Jane Doe, “I’m not going down for this. I’m not going to jail. I’ll kill myself.”
Ast testified that Ritz and he then chose to leave immediately for the checkpoint because Covarrubias was armed and they felt it would be safer to arrest him at the checkpoint rather than on his motorcycle, which was equipped with an automatic rifle and a shotgun.
Ruiz and Van Meel testified that they had concerns about the plan to arrest Covarrubias and raised “some red flags” with Ast—specifically that there weren’t enough men in the arresting party—but that those concerns were generally ignored.
Ritz corroborated Ast’s testimony to an extent, but said he wasn’t aware that the other officers had expressed concerns.
Ruiz said that when he asked Ast what to do if Covarrubias resisted arrest, “[Ast] looks me straight in the eye and tells me, ‘Just kill him.’ He said it twice.’”
Ast didn’t recall saying that to Ruiz.
According to the officers’ testimony, two uniformed sergeants approached Covarrubias as he was clearing the checkpoint. Covarrubias pulled out his service weapon, a struggle ensued, and he fired one shot. Fellow traffic officer Matt Kline—who, according to the slain officer’s father, was Covarrubias’ best friend—saw “the struggle for life” and returned fire, hitting Covarrubias once in the chest. Covarrubias later died during emergency surgery at Marian Regional Medical Center.
The hearing is scheduled to pick up again on July 28 and 29, after which the independent mediator will report her findings and make recommendations to the city on how to proceed.
This article appears in Jun 12-19, 2014.