BANNED `HOGTIE' RESTRAINT TO GET ANOTHER LOOK IN L.A.

Byline: Patrick McGreevy Daily News Staff Writer

Just months after Los Angeles officials settled a lawsuit involving the death of a suspect who was hogtied by police officers - by agreeing to pay $750,000 and abolish the practice - a case in San Diego has cast doubt on whether the restraint technique is dangerous at all.

As a result, City Council members and Los Angeles Police Department officials are asking their attorneys to explore whether they can resume the practice of restraining a suspect's arms and legs behind the suspect's back by connecting handcuffs on the wrists to a chord around the legs.

The technique, formally called ``hobbling'' by the LAPD, was outlawed by the City Council in July as one of the conditions of settling a lawsuit with the family of Bruce Klobuchar.

The council also agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of Klobuchar, who died in Sunland in 1995 after LAPD officers hogtied him during a scuffle with police.

``LAPD was not pleased with no longer being able to use what was a tool that the LAPD had found to be very effective as an alternative to use of force,'' said City Councilwoman Laura Chick.

Chick said LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks met with her staff this week and said the LAPD would like a re-examination of the decision to prohibit officers from hobbling suspects.

Parks could not be reached for comment, but Chick released a council motion she plans to introduce Tuesday that would ask the City Attorney's Office to explain its recommendation of settlement and examine whether hogtying can be reinstated.

The city decision to settle was based in large measure on a finding by the L.A. County Coroner's Office that Klobuchar died as a result of multiple drugs in his system, including cocaine, and because of ``restraint asphyxia'' caused by being hogtied.

``We relied a great deal on the medical evidence, including evidence from the Coroner's Office,'' said Timothy McOsker, the chief deputy for City Attorney James Hahn.

``In light of that medical evidence, it was a reasonable settlement position,'' McOsker said.

However, a federal judge dismissed a wrongful-death lawsuit involving hogtying in San Diego last week after a leading medical expert, confronted with new medical evidence, reversed his longstanding position that hogtying suspects can result to death, according to San Diego County Counsel Ricky Sanchez.

Donald Reay, the medical examiner for King County, Wash., has testified as an expert witness in cases that exercise, including struggling with police officers, decreases blood oxygen levels and that hobbling suspects prevents the levels from rising again and hinders suspects from breathing, Sanchez said.

However, Sanchez commissioned a study by a University of California, San Diego, physician who concluded that exercise does not lower blood oxygen levels and hogtying suspects does not affect the levels or significantly hinder breathing.

``In other words the impairment is so minor that it does not lead to asphyxia, and in fact has no practical significance,'' wrote U.S. District Court Judge John S. Rhodes.

Sanchez said the court decision and the medical study should lead Los Angeles officials to question the assumptions they have used in past decisions.