The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 301

LOS ANGELES TIMES FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1998 A3 California and the West Public Safety Workers' Legal Shield Debated Courts: CHP officers absolved of liability in death of a motorist they left unconscious in her locked car push issue into spotlight again. By DANIEL YI TIMES STAFF WRITER It was 2 a.m. when two California Highway Patrol "I am surprised they didn't break the window or something," said Gerald Arenberg, an official with the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police. "As far as I am concerned, it may not be a lawful requirement to assist, but ethically speaking and from training, it is your duty.

"When the courts say we don't have a legal duty, I think that gives some officers the idea that they don't have to be as ethical as they should be," he added. Despite such quandaries, courts have consistently ruled in favor of public agencies in similar cases. Earlier this year, a judge threw out a lawsuit filed by a woman against the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Investigation Section. The woman accused police officers of watching without taking action as a Northridge bar was robbed in order to catch the suspects after they committed the crime, needlessly exposing patrons to danger. "Unless they act and make the situation worse, they Please see CHP, A48 nearly four years ago fueled a courtroom battle centered on previous court rulings that say public safety workers have no legal obligation to render assistance to citizens in distress.

An appeals court reviewing a negligence lawsuit filed against the CHP by Harrington's family last month called the officers' actions appalling. But citing the law, the court nevertheless sided with the CHP. "We are completely at a loss to understand the conduct of the Highway Patrol officers in this case," wrote Justice William W. Bedsworth of the California 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana. Legal experts and even some police advocates share Bedsworth's disbelief at the officers' failure to help Harrington.

But they disagree about whether the law provides police with needed protection or simply gives them legal cover for lapses in judgment. "If a cop's duty is to protect and serve, then how can they simply leave somebody by the side of the road?" asked Andy Clarke, a Memphis, Tenn. -based civil rights attorney who specializes in police misconduct cases. officers came upon a Mazda parked on the shoulder of the freeway with its hazard lights blinking. Inside, Kristin Marie Harrington was sprawled Blackout Was Only a Warning for the Latte Dependent across the front seat, unconscious.

The officers tapped on the car's window, but getting no response, drove away without taking further action. The 43-year-old Cypress woman was discovered dead two hours later by a passing tow truck driver from what the coroner's office later determined was a brain hemorrhage. The officers' actions or inactions that morning 1 8:17 Tuesday morning, San Francisco A went dark. No electricity. No traffic signals.

Trains not running. Cable cars -dead in their tracks. Flights diverted to Seattle and Salt Lake City. Schools with no hot lunches. Stores shut tight.

(During the holidays yet.) No air conditioning. TV transmission kaput. Elevators stuck. For six hours, San Francisco turned into an tArhish village. 1 believe this was no accident.

I believe this was a warning to that city of sin to stop all of its Merlot wine drinking, medical marijuana smoking, sourdough eating gluttony and 24-hour-a-day, we-never-close-Los Angeles-bashing, because The End Is Near. In other words permanent darkness. Those poor fools up there, they are trying to pin the blame on a crew from Pacific Gas Electric Co. for the blackout. Yeah, sure.

A guy named Buzz accidentally pulled a plug. We know better, don't we? We know who's really responsible. This a message to demon San Franciscans and their ilk that their way of life must end. It won't surprise me if by next Tuesday, the whole city is laid to waste by fire, flood or a whole mess of shakes. Believe me, they have known about this terrible darkness coming to San Francisco for years.

That's why they built Candlestick Park. Search Intensifies for Oregon Boy Helicopters skimmed the treetops and searchers fanned out on the ground Thursday in the biggest push yet to find an 8-year-old boy who vanished during a Christmas tree hunt last weekend near Rocky Point, Ore. Family members, including the boy's father, Robert Engebretson, left, have launched a search of their own. They held onto dimming hopes that Derrick Engebretson would be found alive after five frigid nights in southern Oregon's Winema National Forest. "I think he's alive right now," said Ben Davis, the boy's grandfather.

"But we've got to get him today." The helicopters, equipped with heat-sensing gear, roared over the slopes while about 100 volunteers marched in grid lines through a six-mile-long crescent. Nicknamed "Bear Boy" by his family for his skill as a hunter and hiker, the third-grader was last seen carrying a small hatchet and was dressed warmly. Associated Press i 'if i 2 Prison Reform Plans Seek to Boost Guard Training 1 don't know how many horror stories you have already heard from Tuesday's blackout, but here are just a few of the things that happened Dec. 8, 1998 to those poor dim San Franciscans, sittin' in the dark by the bay. Macon A.

Krust, a pastry baker from Daly r-Cjty, was driving his black BMW toward the Balden Gate Bridge when all of a sudden, a traffic Signal went dark. He drove through a red light, Jinder the bridge and into the water, where only I Jy quick thinking did he save his life, using dozens of croissants as a flotation device. Jeff Boyardee, a marinara maker from tSausalito, was driving his black BMW in the Zyicinity of Union Square, when the entire street turned unexpectedly dark. His car struck six performing mimes, all of whom pretended to be hurt. Rainey said.

"It is high time we stop collecting dead bodies, and start providing correctional officers with professional training." David Quintana, an aide to Rainey, said Thursday that the Department of Corrections is making a separate budget request to add as many as 18 weeks of training. Cal Terhune, the corrections director, confirmed that he is seeking additional funds in the next budget to expand training, but he has not discussed his proposal with the Davis transition team. The cost of adding training is estimated at $500,000 per week at the department's academy in Gait, south of Sacramento. Terhune, who recently revised the department's shooting policy, is seeking more training to focus on the way officers use force and the ethics of Please see PRISONS, A50 Capitol is to ensure that guards no longer shoot at inmates engaged in fistfights and melees. Sen.

Richard K. Rainey (R-Walnut Creek), who sat on one of the legislative committees that last summer heard testimony on brutality at Corcoran State Prison, has introduced a bill to expand training by 18 weeks. Rainey, a former Contra Costa County sheriff, said "the hearings taught us that much of what is wrong in our prisons" can be addressed by guards being held to training standards that parallel those of police officers. The lawmaker says that additional training could have prevented many of the 50 serious and fatal shootings that took place at Corcoran from 1989 to 1994. "When McDonald's takes more time to train a kid how to flip a burger than California takes to train its correctional officers to run a prison full of violent felons, you end up with situations like Corcoran," Violence: Proposals for increasing the academy course from six weeks to 24 weeks aim to decrease use of force and shootings of inmates.

By MARK GLADSTONE and MARK A RAX TIMES STAFF WRITERS SACRAMENTO In the wake of hearings detailing the climate of violence in state prisons, the incoming Davis administration is being asked to support a significant increase in training for correctional officers, from the current six weeks to as many as 24 weeks. A major goal of two proposals being pushed in the Z- Henry E. Panky, a confectionist from Carmel, Former Museum Official Craig C. Black Dies attempted to climb out of a stalled elevator on the 27th floor of a downtown high-rise. He slipped fell, dropping 26 stories and nearly being killed before being caught at the last possible 'second by Jerry Rice.

All true stories. Or may lightning strike me, the next time I go anywhere near Willie or Jerry Brown. Oakland apparently was not affected by Tuesday's power outage, having clearly stocked up on a really good supply of AA and AAA batteries for the winter. According to investigators, San Francisco's big blackout which paralyzed the city until jnidafternoon was caused by a four-person crew launched a drive to attract donor and urged staffers to apply for federal grants. He led an overhaul of museum management, merging its foundation trustees with the county-appointed board of governors.

He traveled frequently to places like Kenya and China to participate in conferences and raise the museum's profile. "This museum was very much behind the times when Craig got here," Janet Fireman, chief curator of history, said during Black's turbulent last year as director. "He brought the museum up into the '80s standards from the sleepy state it had been in before." By the early 1990s, however, he was grappling with budget cuts, and layoffs loomed. Anxiety gripped the staff, many of whom had spent a lifetime at the museum developing highly specialized Please see BLACK, A50 Powell, who succeeded Black as director of the Natural History Museum. The last few years leading to Black's 1994 retirement were stormy, however, as budget cuts and plans to shift the museum's direction created divisions among longtime staffers.

Critics of Black spurred an investigation of the museum's finances, but Black was cleared of serious wrongdoing. Black was born in Beijing, where his physician father taught pediatric medicine. A graduate of Amherst, he went on to receive a doctorate in biology from Harvard University in 1962. He began his museum career as an associate curator at Pittsburgh's natural history museum in 1960 and in 1975 became its director. When Black was lured to Los Angeles in 1982, attendance at the museum here had lagged so low that supporters called it "the best-kept secret in town." Black quickly By ELAINE WOO TIMES STAFF WRITER Craig C.

Black, who directed the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County for 12 years, has died in Albuquerque of complications following chemotherapy for lymphoma. He was 66. A Harvard-trained paleontologist who came to Los Angeles from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Black was known as an innovative administrator who boosted donations and attendance at the 88-year-old Exposition Park museum. Black, who died Dec. 5, also oversaw the building of the Petersen Automotive Museum, part of the Natural History Museum's holdings.

"He was responsible for putting the museum on the national and even the international map," said James Lawrence Los Angeles Times Craig C. Black in 1989 In Sunday's Times Davis Names 3 Officials to Staff of Pacific Gas Electric workers at a substation in San Mateo, where they either: (a) "forgot to -I remove two grounding rods, causing a blowout triggering a chain reaction that knocked generators off-line," or (b) "found a squirrel "-chewing on a microchip, having somehow it for a hazelnut." So far, a is the accepted excuse. These four workers three of whom were reportedly named Howard, the other named Fine were able to throw one of America's great I fcities into total chaos, as opposed to its usual semi-chaos. A reported 435,000 Pacific Gas Electric customers were left without, well, gas and electric. Nobody could make espresso for Hours.

I "Oops," I believe one worker was later quoted. i 1 1 0 an Francisco had no contingency plan during i3 the blackout, leaving Mayor Brown without an acceptable explanation and with no choice but to go right out and spend $299.95 at Home Depot for a backup generator. i believe San Francisco could go totally i dark this way, just because four guys from San Mateo couldn't tell their AC from their DC. 'I One local resident told reporters this could be i "a preview of the year 2000," when, as you know, every computer in the Silicon Valley is expected to go bzzz-grrrk-BOING and self-destruct. Me, I don't think so.

1 think this is the beginning of the end for San I I Francisco. And it's also the end for L.A., because everybody there will move here, if they can find their way out. 4T i -f i iL lamiim ffliirtii nl By DAVE LESHER TIMES STAFF WRITER SACRAMENTO Gray Davis on Thursday named a former White House attorney, Demetri Boutris, to be his legal affairs secretary. Boutris is a vice president and special counsel to Ronald O. Perelman, chairman of MacAndrews and Forbes Holding a New York company with interests in Revlon cosmetics, Coleman outdoor recreation equipment, First Nationwide Bank and Consolidated Cigar.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, LA. TIMES MAGAZINE Is He Next? Could millionaire Steve Soboroff, a doer with a bad temper, be elected L.A. mayor? TRAVEL On Key West Not even a hurricane could dampen the theatrics on the streets of the Florida island. REAL ESTATE Craftsman Cradle Garvanza took shape when artists of the Arts and Crafts movement settled there in 1890s. CALENDAR Boutris, 37, was national director of Greek Americans for ClintonGore.

He was subsequently selected to work in White House as counsel to U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor. Boutris and his family emigrated from Greece to California in 1972. He has lived in San Diego and Los Angeles and he attended Harvard Law School. "I am both honored and humbled that Gray Davis has asked me to join his team," Boutris said in a statement from the governor-elect's transition team.

Davis also named two other members to his upcoming administration Thursday. D. Robert Shuman, a counsel to the state Board of Equalization and 23-year aide in the state controller's office, was selected as deputy legal affairs secretary. Jane Crawford, former political director for the California Professional Firefighters organization and an aide to Davis' gubernatorial campaign earlier this year, was named deputy appointments SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIVING Sister, Sister Laura Diaz became a TV news anchorwoman, Nena her indispensable right hand. TV TIMES Fonda's 'Tempest' Last year he was Oscar nominee Peter Fonda.

This week he's Shakespeare star Peter Fonda. Hardly an Unsung Hero She may not be a household name, but Diane Warren is a very successful songwriter. For the Record State legislators A chart in Sunday's Times showing characteristics of the 1999 Legislature incorrectly listed the youngest member of the Assembly. The youngest is 28-year-old Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks). Mike Downey's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays Some features do not appear in ali editions.

and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or e-mail mlke.downeylatlmes.com.