Will anyone listen to new controller?
What won what where
When Giovanni Ramirez attended the first game at Dodger Stadium in April — his first ever — fans asked for his autograph or to take a picture with him. A television crew taped an interview. "Of the all the 56,000 fans who bought tickets for opening day at Dodger Stadium," writes J.P. Hoonstra in the Daily News, "it's possible that none were treated as well" as Ramirez. That's because he's the bald guy with tattoos who originally was arrested in the beating of Giants fan Bryan Stow the previous opening day.
"It was interesting," Ramirez said in the story.
Now he's threatening a lawsuity against the city. The visit to Dodger Stadium was thought up by his legal team.
Ramirez's life was predictably affected by the public reaction to his arrest. At the time, he said, he was about to start work at a tattoo parlor. Now the 31-year-old father of one is looking for work again. He said the tattoo parlor doesn't want him."My family and friends were given the cold shoulder at work just because they were associated with me," he said. "It caused a lot of damage. It was very stressful. A lot of grief. A lot of time lost.
"That's almost a year of my life I lost."
Jose Romero, one of Ramirez's attorneys, said that filing a civil suit against LAPD is a possibility. He said the statute of limitations for suits against a government agency expires sometime in the next two months.
"There's two aspects of the (potential) civil suit," Romero said. "There's false arrest and the defamation aspect of the case. Giovanni was vilified and made out to be public enemy number one in the city of Los Angeles for a long time. It's that stench of labeling that still harms him today. You do Internet searches, despite the fact that he's exonerated and had nothing to do with that tragic beating, he's still looked at as the villain, as the bad guy. That will affect him for the rest of his life. Employment, background records will haunt him forever."
At the very least, Ramirez said, Beck could apologize.
As for the game, Ramirez says it was boring.
Photo: Hans Gutknecht/Daily News