Point Reyes Light - September 23, 2004
Park's pepper-spraying report done; still secret
By Jacob Resneck
The National Park Service’s Internal Affairs Division is "reviewing" its investigator’s report on the July 28 pepper-spraying of two Inverness Park teenagers. It should release its findings within 10 days, the Park Service told The Light Wednesday.
Agent Paul Crawford, based at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, was assigned to investigate the actions of Point Reyes National Seashore rangers Roger Mayo and Angelina Gregorio who pepper-sprayed Jessica Miller, 17, and Chris Miller, 18, repeatedly even after both were restrained on the ground and Jessica was handcuffed.
At least that is what the victims and witnesses have said publicly. Both siblings were released without charge. Victims and witnesses have called the incident, off park property in Point Reyes Station, a case of unprovoked brutality.
The National Seashore meanwhile has asked the public to reserve judgment until the investigator’s report is released.
Agent Crawford made two visits to Point Reyes National Seashore to interview witnesses but not the Miller siblings. Although the National Seashore hopes the investigator’s report can be used by the county District Attorney’s Office and Juvenile Probation Department to prosecute the teens, the investigator refused to interview them with a lawyer present.
Report at park in 10 days
A Park Service spokesman in Washington, DC, told The Light the investigator’s report will be turned over to the Pacific West Regional Division of the Park Service in the next 10 days.
Spokesman David Barna said that after the report is delivered to the regional headquarters in Oakland, it will be up to regional director Jonathan Jarvis "to take such action as [he] deem[s] appropriate," Barna said in a statement.
Barna said that if the regional director decides to discipline either ranger, the rangers would have 10 days to appeal (because it is a "personnel matter") before the report could be released to the public.
"That’s just the way it works here," Barna said, "It’s not just [a] law enforcement [matter], it’s a personnel [matter] too. Employees have rights too, so they need to be notified."
National Seashore spokesman John Dell’Osso on Wednesday said that he had not heard anything from Washington, but his understanding is that once the report is received by National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher, it will be released to the public.
How incident began
The rangers pepper-sprayed the brother and sister after the siblings walked up to ask why two sailing instructors from the Inverness Yacht Club, Will White of Marshall and Emile Kempf of Inverness, both 18, were in custody.
The lengthy pepper-spraying occurred in front of the former Chez Madeleine Restaurant next to the Green Bridge.
Ranger Mayo took Kempf and White into custody a couple of hours after they went to the Point Reyes Sheriff’s Substation and National Seashore headquarters to complain about his bullying them earlier during a traffic stop at White House Pool, which is also not within federal parkland. The ranger told White he had been stopped because his car lacked a front license plate.
After Mayo went to a home on the levee road, where the sailing instructors were visiting, he took them into custody and cited the instructors on charges of "threatening behavior."
Ranger called threatening
Kempf has told the press, public, and authorities that they never attempted to threaten anyone and that it was rangers who threatened them. After driving Kempf and White to Point Reyes National Seashore headquarters, where he cited them, Mayo and ranger Gregorio drove them back to Point Reyes Station to release them.
After the Park Service patrolcar stopped in front of the former Chez Madeleine restaurant, Jessica Miller walked up with her hands over her head and Chris Miller followed with his hands in his pockets, both of them trying to show they were not trying to intervene.
When the siblings asked why their friends White and Kempf were in custody, Mayo responded by ordering them to sit down. When they instead began to back away, rangers Mayo and Gregorio began pepper-spraying them and kept it up after the teens were restrained on the ground.
The Park Service has denied that either was pepper-sprayed after Jessica was handcuffed, but Janis Ceresi, an adult who lives across the street, witnessed the pepper-spraying and has said the Park Service isn’t telling the truth.
Miller attorney skeptical
Attorney Gordon Caupp, who represents the Miller family, said he was skeptical of the validity of the Park Service’s internal investigation since it was conducted without interviewing Jessica and Chris.
"We spoke with [agent] Crawford, and tried to set up a meeting time," Caupp said, "but he blew it off, and as an alternative said to send him a [written] statement." Caupp’s law firm sent a letter of complaint to Supt. Neubacher on the Millers’ behalf.
Caupp said that although Neubacher led the public to believe the park had asked the county to conduct a parallel investigation of the rangers, the park in fact asked the DA and Juvenile Probation department to prosecute the pepper-spray victims, saying their internal investigation would supply the evidence.
What the DA said
"We’re not an investigating agency," assistant DA Ed Berbarian, told The Light after reading press reports about Neubacher’s public statements about a DA’s investigation. Jessica has now received a letter from Juvenile Probation saying she is being investigated on charges of "resisting arrest."
An investigator from the DA’s office has attempted to supplement the Park Service’s evidence against Chris by interviewing additional witnesses, of which there are many.
UCLA professor of Law Eugene Volokh, temporarily teaching at the Stanford University Law School, said that while the Millers don’t have a legal right to be interviewed by the investigators, if the siblings sue the Park Service, as they are expected to do, the Park Service’s failure to take testimony from them probably won’t cast the Park Service in a positive light.
Siblings’ right to ask to have a lawyer present
"If it comes out in the trial that the Park Service used an incomplete investigation, the jury might use it against the Park Service," Volokh said, adding that in his opinion the Miller’s insistence of having a lawyer present in any interviews with the Park Service is a reasonable one.
"The chief reason is so the attorney can tell them what questions they should or shouldn’t answer," he said. If their lawsuit comes to trial, the law professor said, their testimony to the investigator could be used against them.
Last month The Light sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of the Interior in Washington requesting copies of the rangers’ reports on the July 28 incident. The reports presumably give the rangers’ side of the story, but The Light was told that the FOIA appeal was still being reviewed by the Department of the Interior’s solicitor’s office.