By Tracey Kaplan
SAN JOSE -- Ammir Umar was
yanked out of his pre-calculus class at Evergreen Community College three years
ago on suspicion of selling people empty boxes stuffed with wood he claimed
contained TVs, and locked up for almost a month.
The 18-year-old faced more than
six years in prison on grand theft and other charges. But prosecutors released
Umar 29 days later and dropped the charges after he proved he'd been working at
Wal-Mart at the time and that the sworn affidavit by the lead investigator
contained misleading statements.
Now, the San Jose City Council
is poised Tuesday to approve paying Umar and his lawyers $190,000 to settle a
lawsuit he filed claiming those statements by Sgt. Craig Storlie led to his
false arrest and imprisonment.
"I hope this is a wake-up
call for SJPD," said Umar, 22, who now works at a car rental agency and
hopes to open a body shop someday. "I was terrified. I told them I had
nothing to do with it and they said, 'If you keep lying, you'll do more time.'
"
Storlie is currently one of the
two officers in charge of the Police Department's Internal Affairs unit, which
investigates allegations of misconduct against cops. He also is one of two
chief investigators in the rape-allegations case against officer Geoffrey
Graves.
A settlement is not an
admission of fault; in risky cases, the City Attorney's Office will advise
settling to reduce the city's financial exposure. As a result, Storlie's
connection to the Umar matter is not expected to have any effect on Graves'
case.
"We don't believe Storlie
was negligent and certainly not deceptive," City Attorney Rick Doyle said.
But the settlement comes after
U.S. District Judge Howard R. Lloyd denied the city's request to reject the
case for lack of merit rather than allowing it to proceed to trial. The judge
ruled that "a genuine dispute exists as to whether Storlie engaged in
judicial deception causing Umar to be arrested pursuant to an invalid warrant
and without probable cause."
San Jose has paid about $27.8
million in the past 10 fiscal years ending in July to settle lawsuits. Claims
against police account for about $18 million of that, or 65 percent, according
to the City Attorney's Office.
In his six-page order, the
judge laid out the series of events that led to the two misleading statements
in the affidavit. During the robbery, one of the thieves gave victims a phone
number he said they could use to reach him if they had any problems with the
purported TV. Storlie tracked the number to a man named Umar Well, who turns
out to be linked to paternity cases involving two children, including Ammir
Umar.
But Ammir Umar has had
virtually nothing to do with Well, who is his father, since Well left the
family when Umar was 5 years old. When Umar was 10, he and his younger sister
were put into foster care and eventually adopted because of his mother's mental
problems, he said.
Although the phone number was
linked to Umar Well, Storlie claimed in the sworn affidavit that it was
"registered" to Ammir Umar. Well, who is considerably older than the
robbers described by victims, is apparently known by several aliases, including
Amir Umar, which he spells differently than his son.
Then a photo lineup using five
DMV photos, including one of Ammir Umar -- but not of Umar Well -- was put
together. Storlie claimed in the affidavit that a witness positively identified
Ammir Umar by recognizing his smile.
However, the witness asserted
in a sworn declaration submitted in the lawsuit that he only said Umar's smile
resembled that of one of the suspects. The witness claimed he repeatedly told
Storlie and another unidentified officer that Ammir Umar was not the guy who
swindled him. He said the swindler's complexion was "much darker"
than Umar's.
Had that information been
included in the affidavit, the judge wrote, "A neutral magistrate may well
have not found that probable cause existed, and the warrant would not have
issued."
