South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 16

16A Sun-Sentinel, Sunday, May 1, 1994 COPS nn. a a PS i FROM PAGE 1A n. i taken this approach a step farther by offering housing subsidies to cops who take up residence in housing projects. The plans to expand the program to give housing grants to police who live in crime-prone neighborhoods outside the projects. Yet the conversion to this new style has been difficult for some departments.

The Broward County sheriff's office was known in the 1980s for its aggressive style. Sheriff's oifij-cers appeared on the nightly news and TV police shows storm ing into the dens of drug dealers and hauling inhabitants into the stark lights of a mini-camera, Now the new sheriff, Ron Cocby tan, is pushing the community policing style of the 1990s, i "I've got a difficult conversion here," Cochran says. "Many of these people didn't get into police work for community policing. They want the excitement. They want to kick ass and take names.

But Cochran says he wants federal money to help pay for more community cops in neighbors hoods and in schools, not to patrol the halls but to work with stur dents and establish respect for law and order. The Senate bill would provide grants to states and locales to hire 100,000 officers over five years. The House version would provide for 50,000 new officers. House leaders already have indicated they will concede to the Senate version. --y'z.

'W-'r tHi i-i'M11 -ll! Nil! ill fill Even with the best of tactics and intent, nobody is promising that these new officers can overcome the economic and social forces that generate the nation's high crime rate. "If the officers are used in the proper way, I think they can make a difference," says Ste phens, the innovator who now works in St. Petersburg. "But in the long run, housing issues and education issues and drug treaty ment are critical to our long-term success. "You have to create an environment where crime and violence are not inevitable." based in Washington.

"If you put a police officer on a horse and he reverts to the same reactive style of policing, all you've done is change his mode of transportation," Greenberg says. Police in Newport News began experimenting in the early 1980s. Then-Chief Darrel Stephens, now chief in St. Petersburg, discovered, for example, that police had been called to one convenience store more than 500 times in one year. "The way the store displayed cigarettes and beer made it easy to steal," Stephens recalls.

"And next door was a gathering place where disturbances and fights would break out." Police persuaded the manager to rearrange the displays, and the store and a local housing authority built a fence to close off the gathering place. Police calls the next year dropped to 150. Departments across the country have been developing more sophisticated tactics, and the quiet revolution has spread to Florida. In Delray Beach, police opened three substations amid crack houses at Carver Estates, Atlantic Gardens and Delray Estates. It scattered drug dealers and helped establish relationships with the neighborhoods' kids.

"When I first became a police officer, we were taught to handle most anything. And if you had to keep coming back to handle it a hundred times, you just did Delray Police Lt. Scott Lunsford says. "Now we teach people to try to resolve it once and for all." "We teach guys to organize the community; We meet with landlords. We try to teach them how to go about looking for good tenants, so they don't just get the cocaine cowboys.

We try to organize groups like Mad Dads to join in foot patrols." Delray Beach police have helped neighbors repair windows, paint houses, landscape lawns, remove abandoned cars and clean up litter to create an environment less conducive to vandalism and crime. The federal government has Staff DhotoROBERT DUYOS stand on the sidelines, ready to serve as score-keepers or referees or, with their nearby marked squad car, as a deterrent. Broward County Deputies Gary Palmer, left, and Rick Tarrant are at basketball games at Modello Park on Wednesday nights. They Hoping to revive something like the old connections between police and the community, many departments have revived foot patrols or put officers on horses and bicycles. many black neighbors felt victimized by police and when cops found themselves in the middle of conflicts over race and the Vietnam War.

"I remember being on the street one day and seeing this little child, his diaper hanging down to the ground," Bernosky recalls. "He looked up at me and said, 'Hello Mr. He said it with love. He didn't know what he was saying, really." Hoping to revive something like the old connections between police and the community, many departments have revived foot patrols or put officers on horses and bicycles. But to be fully effective, community cops will have to be specially trained at crime prevention, says Sheldon Greenberg, associate director of the Police Executive Research Foundation, "When you looked up, oh my, he was 20 feet tall, his feet were two feet wide and he weighed 300 pounds.

When he gave you a pat on the head, he seemed like a God." That era ended when urban areas sprawled and the nation became more violent. Police resorted to swift cruisers and radios to cover more ground. In the process, they lost the personal connection with those they served. Community relations further deteriorated in the 1960s when riots flared in inner cities, when Suspect has long arrest record Mental problems blamed on motorcycle crash injuries "Just money for more policing won't work," says U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

"But money for sound community policing, to-cusing on targets in the communi- "i -li i. i ti ly, win mane a major impact. A community cop looks like Broward County Deputy Rick Known as Rick or Rich to the residents of northwest Dania, Tarrant works out of a pink stucco housing project. When they can't find him in his office, residents dial Tarrant up directly on his cellular phone. Tarrant tries to look approachable.

Note his shirt: Rather than a stiff button-up, it's a white, short-sleeve knit pullover with a gold star stitched over the pocket. "It's a softer look," he says. Tarrant, 44, is not all soft. There are times for breaking down doors and busting law breakers, he says. "But there are also a lot of other people who look up to you.

Little kids. And older people who don't know who to turn to," he says. "Whatever they say their problems are, we try to solve them." Cooperation from neighbors helped Tarrant and other Broward deputies shut dowp six crack houses. But preventing crime by changing attitudes may be the more important, immeasurable result of their work. Every Wednesday night, dozens of neighborhood men and teen-agers gather to play at Mo-dello Park's outdoor basketball courts.

Most nights, drug dealers afflict Modello Park. But not on Wednesdays. Tarrant and fellow Detective Gary Palmer stand on the sidelines in blue jeans, ready to serve as scorekeepers or referees or, with their nearby marked squad car, as a deterrent. "Some little kids around here, they have the expectation that all cops are bad," says Jeonard Bacon, 17. "But Mr.

Tarrant and Mr. Palmer, they've changed their minds about all of that. They play Kiclrrtf K-11 tirifVi tin VioifA fnw urifVi i us." FROM PAGE 1A Inmate confesses, hopes to receive hospital treatment Though Ross has confessed to the murder, he has not been charged. "I'm very reluctant to take a confession I can't corroborate," said Lt. Tony Fantigrassi, head of the Broward Sheriff's Cold Case Squad.

"In this case, I haven't been able to do it. One of the reasons is because I can't identify the victim. "You have to identify your victims. That's how you make your cases. You see who their friends were.

I want to find people who knew this girl and speak with them. I want to know what she was all about and why she was here. I think once we know who she is, we'll know if his story is credible." Fantigrassi remembers Sept. 19, 1983, well. He was one of several detectives called out the day the skeleton was found.

He recalls walking through the woods, searching for clues. He remembers the heat and the humid air buzzing with mosquitoes. It was the kind of weather that causes a body to decompose quickly. There wasn't much left the bones of a teen-age girl and the little seashell necklace. The medical examiner could not determine how or when she died.

What was determined was that the victim was 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed about 90 pounds. Detectives checked missing persons reports to try to identify the victim. They gave out her description to the media and asked for publicity. Still, no one identified the girl. Six months later, a Colorado State University anthropologist re-created her face in a clay model and the image was published In newspapers and broadcast on television, A chart of her dental work was published in the Journal of the American Dental Association, Then-Broward Sheriff George Brecsher made a public appeal.

"She had to have parents or someone who missed her or loved her," he said. Still, no Identity. Then, last December, Ricky Ross called the Sheriff's Office collect. "He said he wanted to talk about a woman he killed," Fantigrassi said. Some good cops did these things long before Washington discovered "community policing." In many ways the practice reaches back to an era when the cop on the corner carried nothing but a night stick.

"I grew up in a very hard coalmining town in Pennsylvania, and I remember the beat cop talking to me on my way to school," recalls Police Commander William Bernosky, who supervises community cops in Sanford. KILLING 'Tm hearing these voices a lot these days. Hearing these voices has really created an inner turmoil for myself. .1 feet I'm dangerous." prison inmate Ricky Ross Ross told Fantigrassi about his desire to get out of prison and into a mental hospital. Fantigrassi made no promises, but listened to Ross' story.

Bit by bit, Ross began to recall events. In the fall of 1983, Ross said he met a cute teen-age girl in Fort Lauderdale who drove a green Ford Maverick. The girl said her name was Carolyn and she was from the Orlando area. She was living out of the car and liked to party. So did Ricky.

"Site had a nice personality," Ross said "And a sense of humor, too." They hung out for a couple of weeks, drinking and smoking crack cocaine. "She was supposed to be my girlfriend. But she kept doing things she wasn't supposed to do," Ross said. "She was selling her- "I'm very reluctant to take a confession I can't corroborate. In this case, I haven't been able to do it.

One of the reasons is because I can't identify the victim." Lt. Tony Fantigrassi, head of the Broward Sheriff's Cold Case Squad self for crack, and I didn't want her to." Ross got angry. "I was upset at the time because I kept hearing voices that told me I needed to take a soul to keep myself going," Ross said. "We started fighting." What happened next was given in a detailed confession to Fanti grassi and Detective Steve Wiley and the Sun-Sentinel: Ross said he took Carolyn for a late-night ride west on State Road 84, went north on U.S. 27 and stopped after a few miles.

While they sat in the car, Ross told her to take off her clothes. He grabbed a blanket and they went into the woods where they smoked crack and had sex. Then they began to argue again. He hit her. She hit him.

He said the "voices" told him to kill her. Then, he said, he strangled her. When she went limp, he listened for breathing but heard nothing. "I'm pretty sure she was dead," Ross said. Ross left the girl in the woods and took her car.

He abandoned it with the keys in the ignition near Riverland Road and State Road 7. There were details in Ross' confession that made Fantigrassi think Ross was indeed the killer of the girl whose remains were found in 1983. Ross told the detective that her hair was auburn, a fact that had not been made public. He described the location and crime scene in detail. He said the body was left nude, which also was never disclosed publicly.

Fantigrassi has been trying to identify this girl known as Carolyn. He and his detectives have searched missing persons reports around the country for anyone named Carolyn. They tried different spellings. They also checked drivers' licenses, traffic, citations. Ross told Fantigrassi he could not remember Carolyn's last name.

They tried to find witnesses who might have seen Ricky and Carolyn together. Nothing. They tried to locate the Maverick. No luck. So far, there has been nothing to substantiate Ross' story, and Fantigrassi is frustrated.

"The main goal is to find the truth, not necessarily make an arrest," Fantigrassi said. "Our problem is that we don't know who this young lady is. What do we do with this? Our obligation is to get the truth, to find the family of this girl and let them know what happened to her." Until then, the murder that Ricky Ross has confessed to remains unsolved. To be found competent, Ross simply had to understand his legal rights and the legal process, which he did. i i 'v, 1 I1 Ross dropped his bid to be def clared mentally incompetent after learning he had a better chance at freedom if he served his time in prison, court records show.

If declared incompetent, he could spend the rest of his life in a state hospital. i So, he says, he pleaded guilty in the Fort Lauderdale case and got 25 years for sexual battery, 25 years for kidnapping and 15 years for robbery, all sentences to be served concurrently. In a letter to former Circuit Judge Thomas Coker, Ross asked for leniency, blaming his problems on a childhood full of emotional problems. "I want to be a productive mem1; ber of society some day," Ross wrote. He's been in prison serving his sentence since the summer of 1989 and has lost one appeal.

Ross now says pleading guilty was a mistake, and he plans to appeal his rape conviction again, i to lift the ban. Hammond argued that because she bought the cat after the ban was lifted, she should be able to keep it. Scheuerman determined the' board had legally lifted the ban and Hammond, as a result, can keep Sam. If the board loses again, all unit owners could be required to pajt both the association's costs and Hammond's. If the board wins; Hammond could be required to pay the association's costs.

i Hammond's attorney, Charted Morgenstein of Boca Raton; declined to comment on the lawsuit. Scheuerman, who supervises the condo and co-op arbitration program in Tallahassee, said he is surprised the board is appealing. Since the program began In 1992, only 15 of the about 250 cases heard have been "I'm sure the cat issue is very important to the parties involved; but the other appeals have been federal fair housing, discrimination and other meaty Scheuerman said, "Not a cat." get him out of prison and into a mental hospital. He is imprisoned at Union Cor-; rectional Institution in Raiford for raping a woman in a downtown Fort Lauderdale office building on Oct. 8, 1988.

It was a brutal attack. The woman was choked unconscious, her clothes ripped off, and her face cut severely. Several witnesses told police they saw a hulking, shabbily dressed person wearing a baseball cap backward flee the building. Police found Ricky Ross nearby and arrested him. His public defender argued that Ross was mentally incompetent.

Three psychiatrists examined him. All agreed Ross suffered from chronic mental problems and had a history of psychotic episodes. But being found legally competent to stand trial was another story. One doctor said Ross was competent, another said he was marginally competent and one said he was not competent. CAT on Mrs.

Hammond," association president Michael Moss said. "We polled the ownership and they voted 27 to 7 to file the lawsuit." Mark B. Schorr, the Fort Lauderdale attorney who represented the board at the arbitration hearing, said, "The time and energy and expense are over more than just a cat. Boards of directors in condos and cooperatives have to enforce the rules that govern their buildings. If they don't, you have anarchy." The board's lawsuit appeals a decision by Bureau of Condominiums arbitrator Karl M.

Scheuer-man on March 13 that Hammond can keep her cat for the rest of its "natural life." Scheuerman's ruling was based on the board's Jan, 12, 1993, decision lifting the building's ban on pets and on evidence that Hammond didn't buy Sam until then. On Jan. 30, 1993, three weeks after lifting the ban, the board reversed itself, voting again to ban all animals except caged birds. The board argued Hammond shouldn't be allowed to keep her cat, saying it didn't really mean By KEVIN DAVIS Staff Writer Ricky Ross has spent most of his adult life in prison. In fact, much of his young life was spent in insti tutions as well, from juvenile detention centers to mental hospitals.

From the age of 12 he was stealing cars, doing drugs ard getting in fights with police, interviews and records show. Ross He moved out of his parents' house when he was about 16. He complet-; ed only eight grades of schooling. Ross was in a motorcycle wreck as a teen and thinks some of his mental problems, including bouts of amnesia, are a result of his crash injuries. Ross, now 27, recently confessed to killing an unidentified teen-age girl in Broward County in 1983.

He hopes that his cooperation might FROM PAGE 1A Building resident, board of directors battling over cat ing the lawsuit against her, isn't giving her a choice. She hopes she wins and the judge makes the board pay some of her costs, she said. "If I'm asked to pay I'll have to come up with the money somehow," Hammond said. Hammond, who has had cats most of her life, said she tried to end the case several times. At one point, when she had to borrow money to pay her lawyer, she offered to get rid of Sam, sell her apartment and end the dispute if each side would pay its own attorney's fees.

The board, however, insisted she pay its fees in addition to her own. She didn't have the money and was forced to continue, she said. For the board, the issue isn't the cat, it's the principle. "This isn't a thing where the board of directors has ganged up.