If Phil Alvidrez had known that Ruben Ortega was in the audience, he might have said it differently.
Alvidrez, news director of the ABC affiliate in Phoenix, was describing the futility of his station's freedom-of-information lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He was one of several panelists invited by the Arizona League of Cities and Towns last September to discuss censorship.
KTVK-TV had sued the government to obtain a most interesting document--a videotape of Chief Ortega's remarks to law enforcement officials on the drug war.
"We spent nearly two years and over $20,000 in legal fees to get that tape," Alvidrez told the attentive assembly of 100 or so municipal bureaucrats.
The DEA dodged every effort by Channel 3 to inspect the videotape, Alvidrez explained, until the agency finally drew the wrath of U.S. District Judge Charles Hardy. When the DEA claimed it "could not locate" the videotape and gave the court only an audio portion to inspect, Judge Hardy ordered full disclosure.
In his written opinion, Hardy revealed the innocuous, if potentially embarrassing, contents of the tape. "Chief Ortega," the judge wrote, had merely described on camera his antidrug programs, both real and imagined, like "sending narcotics squad officers to `nicer cocktail lounges and social places,' conducting sting operations near schools . . . , [designing] a sting operation in which officers sold low-grade cocaine to users and then arrested them for possession . . . and drug testing for all arrested persons who were believed to be users."
Insiders familiar with the case attributed the DEA's stonewalling to Ortega's insistence on playing hardball. The Chief simply didn't want the feds to release the videotape and let TV viewers see his silly performance. Although it forked over a copy to Channel 3, dropped its appeal and paid the station's legal fees, today the DEA says it can't find the tape.
"Sure, we won the lawsuit," said Alvidrez, leaning toward the microphone so his point would not be missed. "But by the time the government released the tape, it was too late to do a story."
A voice from the crowd suddenly interrupted the speaker. It emanated from a small man in lime-green golf slacks. All eyes turned toward the familiar, pock-marked face and instantly recognized the otherwise unmarked cop.
"So maybe you didn't win," snapped Ruben Ortega, Phoenix's chief of police. And by hurling that one curve ball Ortega revealed more of himself than could a thousand affidavits. Arrogance, petulance, contempt for the law--these were the watchwords of Ortega's faith.
Any history of the Ortega years will reveal a compulsion for managing the news. That stems from Ortega's early tenure as head of the department's "community relations bureau," otherwise known as its in-house public relations firm. There he learned to manipulate the news to his best advantage and keep the public blissfully unaware of events that might prove embarrassing.
Propelled by a maniacal mix of ambition and pomposity, Ortega never understood the importance of checks and balances. Or, for that matter, open government and better informed voters. Such things could only soften his dominance over the mayor and city council, ultimately eroding his authority to pull triggers and end lives.
Ortega's antics as chief would only be amusing if they were confined to a textbook study of one man's advanced egocentricity. But when his obsessions with controlling the news and exercising absolute authority also become roadblocks to understanding police activities in Phoenix, they take on a more ominous hue.
Every media organization in town can tell war stories about their skirmishes with Ortega. At New Times, our stories have spotlighted official lies and injustices that the Chief would have preferred not seeing in print. Ortega's reaction has been to stonewall or lash out.
For years the Phoenix Police Department--like most agencies around the country--has allowed citizens to participate in "ride-alongs" with the cops. These evenings on the road give reporters an especially good look at what patrol officers are really seeing, unvarnished by a public relations professional.
After participating in several ride-alongs in 1986, New Times staff writer Paul Rubin wrote a story that showed the force's mixed reactions to Ortega's battles with the civil service review board. Rubin, the state's 1986 print journalist of the year, was told that he could no longer participate in ride-alongs last fall. Ortega's media man, citing the Chief's problems with the paper's "journalistic practices," brushed off Rubin's request.
Rubin and his editor went to the mayor to complain about the Chief's latest attempt to keep the paper at bay. Of course the mayor is powerless to curb the Chief, but finally the city manager roused a response from Ortega, however unsatisfying. The Chief assured New Times that the department's denial was "in conformity with" its policy: namely, "no reporters, print or electronic, will be allowed to ride along with on-duty officers . . . " If there hadn't been a policy prohibiting media ride-alongs before Rubin made his request, there was one now.
This was typical. From Michael Lacey's 1984 expose of the shooting death of Standley Wesley--a black youth who was shot in the back by Phoenix police, not from the front as Ortega had announced--to this week's cover story by Deborah Laake on gay-bashing, New Times has raised questions Ortega refused to answer.
Last month Laake asked the Chief's media relations sergeant some basic questions about crimes against homosexuals in Phoenix. Refusing to discuss the subject, Sergeant Kevin Robinson instructed Laake to put her questions in writing.
When Laake submitted a list of ten written questions to Robinson--basic inquiries like how many indecent exposure arrests have been made in the Valley during the last two years--she received a curt yet predictable response from the Chief's office. Containing but one sentence, the June 7 letter said Ortega saw "no significant value" for the department to respond to her inquiries.
Little wonder. As this week's cover story discloses, Laake learned that the Chief recently joked about there being "not enough" gay-bashing going on in town.
Still, so long as there are voices expressing the terror revealed in Laake's story this week, so long as Ortega jokes about there being "not enough" gay-bashing in Phoenix, the choice is easy--We print the news.
Ortega became chief of police in 1980, and before anyone could imagine the drug wars and white-collar crimes that would characterize the decade ahead, reporters in Phoenix knew things would not be the same.
In most large cities--like Phoenix before Ortega ushered in the Eighties--reporters remain free to speak with detectives about their cases. They walk among the cops at the station and exchange information about homicides, burglaries and the rest of the day's usual mayhem. Unlike the department's press flacks, detectives are closer to the crimes and invariably make better sources.
But when reporters started writing critically about Ortega, the Chief put a lid on any spirit of cooperation between Phoenix's press and police. Journalists were banned from the usual chats down at the station with the officers nearest to the news. Result? It's tougher for the press to get the story--unless it's Ortega's fable you want--while neighbors learn less about the crimes next door.
In his holster, free speech is a one-way street. He's got it, you don't. Whether he's bullying his own force in 1986 about being a bunch of "thieves, dopers and lazy officers," or firing seven off-duty cops who partied one night in 1982 beneath a Seventh Avenue bridge, Ortega's free to fire away.
But not without cost. After the Seventh Avenue Seven harangue, the officers were reinstated, two of them filed suit against Ortega for defamation, and the city was ordered in 1986 to pay $725,000. The Chief's popping off didn't do much for the cops' sense of dignity, either, although the money would help restore some of that.
1986 was a busy year for Chief Ortega down at the courthouse. On Valentine's Day, editor Rich Robertson, reporter Jim Torrey and the Arizona Republic filed suit against Ortega and the city over the Chief's refusal to release police reports under the Arizona open records law. Robertson also asked to see Ortega's "policy" barring public access to any records of matters "in the criminal justice system." Ortega's people never even examined the report in question before denying the newspaper's request. Ortega's unwritten policy turned Arizona law upside down, leaving his officers to resolve any doubts about disclosure in favor of secrecy, not openness.
When Judge Gloria Ybarra ruled for the press, it wasn't just her award of nearly $25,000 in legal fees that made headlines around the Valley. Weeks earlier, in the middle of trial, Judge Ybarra nearly held Ruben Ortega in contempt of court.
"I am extremely disturbed," Ybarra said, that Ortega's legal advisers would rely on a technicality to help the police chief evade service of process. Instead of testifying in Phoenix on a Friday afternoon, Ortega was practicing his chip shot in San Diego. The feisty Superior Court judge ordered Ortega either to appear in court voluntarily or make himself available for service of process--like all other public officials. Judge Ybarra's rulings rang loud and clear: Ortega, you're not above the law.
But as Ortega's "maybe you didn't win" comment last fall to Phil Alvidrez reveals, the Chief holds the law in complete contempt whenever it contradicts his will. Hence his attempts after the Republic lawsuit--attempts that might have succeeded but for the calm counsel of City Attorney Rod McDougall--to issue a new "policy" disregarding the court's mandate governing public access.
You can say this about Ortega: He keeps his eye on the prize. After all the trips to the city coffers his pigheaded "policies" have caused, Ortega finally figured out a way to stonewall the public while letting some other guy run the risk of a lawsuit. Ortega's new approach surfaced in his ill-fated drug investigation in 1987 of the Phoenix Suns, an NBA team known more for its melanin-lite mediocrity than coked-out nights in the Valley's fast lanes. Months of investigations and thousands of dollars on the case netted Ortega beaucoup headlines but put only one person behind bars--a restaurant waiter who drew thirty days for conspiracy to possess.
When the Mesa Tribune and Arizona Republic tried to inspect the department's offense reports to discover the "efforts, time and costs expended" by the Phoenix police on the Suns investigation, Ortega concocted a new way to avoid accountability. He claimed to have shipped all records of the misadventure to then-County Attorney Tom Collins, who of course wouldn't turn them over.
But Collins paid the price for carrying Ortega's water. Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Cates ruled against the county attorney and awarded the press $30,000 in attorney's fees. (An appellate court reversed the trial bench with a 28-page opinion--a tome that would overturn ninety years of legislative and judicial protection of open records in this state--and the newspapers have appealed.)
Ortega is his own worst enemy. He makes Ev Mecham's treatment of the press look like JFK's afternoons sailing with Ben Bradlee. Whether he milks last week's headlines for a successful mayoral bid or finds some other form of self-bloating, we can take comfort in his knack for doing himself in.
Consider this comment from Ortega to the Republic in the throes of his tinhorn Kissinger resignation tantrum last week:
"A policeman sometimes has more power than the president of the United States. He can stop you and pull you over. He can force you out of your car, and he can handcuff you. He can arrest you and put you in jail. And if he wants to, he can kill you.
"Only training and discipline can keep him from abusing his power," Ortega said, telling the city council to bear this in mind as it picks a new chief.
Ortega's simply clueless. He sees himself--the ultimate dispenser of discipline--as all that stands between good and evil.
But there is something other than the police chief that distinguishes good cops from Gestapo. In America, Chief, it's known as the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.
Arrogance, petulance, contempt for the law--these were the watchwords of Ortega's faith.
Propelled by a maniacal mix of ambition and pomposity, Ortega never understood the importance of checks and balances.
In Ortega's holster, free speech is a one-way street.
