Oceanside Police Plotted Against Helicopter Critic, Jury Is Told

A clique of Oceanside police officers conspired to set up a vocal critic of the city’s helicopter program, arresting and roughing him up for shining a flashlight at a police helicopter two years ago, the man’s attorney told a jury Monday.

Four weeks of testimony in Vista Superior Court prove that Oceanside officers targeted James Jensen for his continued complaints about helicopters buzzing over his house, attorney Tom Adler said during closing arguments.

On the night of the arrest, Oceanside police pilots flew over Jensen’s house. Minutes after Jensen trained a flashlight on the helicopter, 15 police officers were on the scene. One minute later, Jensen was hogtied and carted off to jail.

The helicopter program, now discontinued, was controversial in the city because of its expense and questionable merit, Adler said. Some of the officers involved in Jensen’s arrest either were helicopter pilots, sought entry into the program or were friends of pilots, he said.

“These people knew each other,” Adler said. “A few days before this incident, the word was out: That’s the guy who keeps calling in. They went up there hoping to provoke some activity. (They thought:) ‘Let’s see what this guy does. Let’s buzz his house and have some fun.’ ”

The officers say Jensen left them no alternative but to arrest him because he temporarily blinded the pilots with the flashlight and, when he was approached in his back yard, acted in a hostile and irrational manner. Police say there was no conspiracy.

Jensen, a 37-year-old architect, and his wife, Mili Smythe, a 34-year-old graphic designer, were having dinner with another couple when the helicopter flew overhead. Jensen grabbed a Black & Decker “Spotliter” flashlight, aimed it at the copter and raised his middle finger in protest.

Several minutes later, officers walked into their back yard on Rockledge Street and ordered him to lower the flashlight. The officers said Jensen fixed his flashlight on them, yelled obscenities and reached for something on a table. The cops drew their guns.

Jensen walked back into the house with Smythe and his neighbors, and officers gathered in front of the house. Police said they thought Jensen might have been mentally deranged and a danger to those inside.

When he opened the front door, they said, Jensen pulled one of the officers inside and twisted the officer’s arm out of its socket. Jensen said he grabbed nobody and that, when he opened the door, five or six officers piled inside and pinned him to the ground.

During Monday’s closing argument before the jury and Superior Court Judge Tony Maino, Adler laid the groundwork for what he said was a conspiracy against the Jensens, which started days before his arrest.

At that time, an Oceanside officer who did not identify himself stopped by Jensen’s home and told him that the chief of police had asked him not to call again about the helicopters. Jensen had called a number of times to complain.

The night of the arrest, a reserve Oceanside police officer called in a complaint about a loud party several blocks away in which 200 people were flooding the streets. The police found no party but sent the helicopter above several neighborhoods. When it passed over the Jensen house at about 800 feet, Jim Jensen shined the flashlight at the “Eagle One.”

Adler said that, shortly before the arrest, radio transmissions were switched to a channel that is not recorded and that police units from throughout the city swarmed the Jensen house.

“This was World War II,” Adler said. “Everyone got there, and, a minute later, they were in the house.”

Police bound Jensen’s feet, cuffed his hands and carried him on a police baton like a roped steer, Jensen said. He was dropped three or four times on his chin and arrested for assaulting and obstructing officers. Smythe was arrested for obstructing justice.

Prosecutors refused to charge either with a crime.

“Unfortunately,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Bell wrote, “there is no crime for someone shining a light up at a police helicopter.”

Officers spent hours putting together their arrest reports, but none of those who testified during the trial said they ever spoke to one another about what to write. Adler suggested Monday that they came to a general agreement of what should be said, considering that all all the officers were gathered in one room to fill out their reports.

Days after the arrest, police briefly began training police dogs in the canyon behind Jensen’s home. Adler said it was done to intimidate Jensen into not complaining about the incident.

The Jensens and Adler believe that the trial’s most damaging testimony against the city and the officers was that of Carol Kohlstedt, the former wife of one of the officers involved in the raid.

Kohlstedt said Dave Larson, her ex-husband, and another officer, Les Lang, told her that the arrest had been planned and that officers laughed about having set up Jensen. Larson did not dispute Kohlstedt’s testimony. Lang said it was not true.

“What she said is scary,” Adler said. “If what she said is true, this is indeed a scary situation.”

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations today in the trial, which accuses the Oceanside Police Department of civil rights violations and excessive force.