THIRD IRVINE OFFICER IS
REINSTATED:
OFFICER'S CREDIBILITY IS HEADS ABOVE HIS ACCUSERS
The faithful readership
of PORAC News will recall articles in recent issues about two Irvine
officers who were ordered reinstated after former Police Chief Charles
Brobeck terminated them in a purge of the department’s Special
Enforcement Team (SET). The third officer terminated in that purge,
17-year veteran Gerald Head, received an order for reinstatement with
full back pay, benefits and interest by retired Orange County Superior
Court Judge John Flynn. On January 13, 2002, nearly two years from the
day after he was fired, Head was officially reinstated to duty, his
reputation vindicated. Attorney Robert M. Wexler, a partner in the Santa
Monica firm of Silver, Hadden & Silver, represented Head in all
phases of his case.
Head began his career as
a police officer with Irvine in July 1983, after serving as a reserve
police officer with the City of Tustin. He served as a patrol officer,
narcotics detective, field-training officer, auto theft detective,
burglary suppression officer, and finally, as one of the original
members of SET. Head is a skilled officer who was twice selected by the
department’s management (from among 160 sworn officers) to receive the
Meritorious Service award, Irvine’s equivalent to the
Officer-Of-The-Year Award, including for the year he was fired.
On January 27, 1999, SET
was shut down and an audit was conducted after a complaint by one member
about the unit’s supervisor, Sergeant Brian Clifton. Clifton was, for
many years, the outspoken president of the police officers’ union and
a vocal critic of Brobeck’s regime. When the complaint against Clifton
was made, Brobeck and his staff must have been salivating at the
opportunity to get Clifton. An investigative team that could only be
described as "overkill" was assembled. Under the leadership of
Commander Jim Blaylock, a lieutenant, a sergeant and one senior officer
were relieved from all duties and assigned full-time to conduct the
investigation of the unit. Numerous other investigators were also
assigned to the case, including the chief’s personal attorney and two
captains from other agencies who were hired on a contact basis. These
people participated in the questioning of employees and in the
oversight, management and deliberative aspects of the investigation. It
became clear to Head that the chief’s handpicked hit squad either
expected him to provide information concerning Clifton’s alleged
misdeeds or they would target him for "protecting" Clifton.
Head chose to side with the truth.
The evidence showed that
officers assigned to the SET unit were permitted tremendous flexibility
in the accounting and utilization of their work time. Their workweek
consisted of four 10-hour days each week, but the nature and demands of
the job required officers to work unorthodox schedules. As a result, the
department’s management permitted two significant practices to endure.
First, officers in SET were allowed to conduct a reasonable amount of
personal business during working hours, without having to make
adjustments to their time slips (a practice that continues to this day).
Second, officers were permitted to accumulate "memory bank
time", also referred to interchangeably as "black book
time" or "flex time". Under this practices officers would
work without compensation on one day, "bank" those hours in
their memory, and utilize those banked hours for paid leave on another
day.
Many of the witnesses,
including the lieutenant and the two sergeants in charge of the SET
unit, testified that Commander Blaylock, the same individual that had
initial oversight of the investigation, knew about, and condoned, the
memory bank time practice. The testimony also showed that this practice
was used outside SET, including in the detective bureau and in internal
affairs. Even one of the leaders of the investigative team knew about,
and employed, the practice in the auto theft unit. Why the investigative
team ignored this fact and concluded that "memory bank"
overtime did not exist, when they availed themselves of it, is
unexplainable.
The conduct of the
investigation ranged from inexcusably sloppy to downright disingenuous.
As an example, the city charged Head with having taught officer survival
courses for his secondary employer on March 24 and 31, 1998 while
receiving compensation from the City of Irvine. Head never denied
teaching on those dates, nor that the payroll records show that he was
compensated by the city for those dates. What the city inexplicably
omitted from the charges, however, is that the investigation determined
that Head worked without compensation on March 28, 1998, making up for
either the 24th or the 31st. The evidence that exonerated Head for the
second date was also in the investigator’s possession throughout their
investigation, and they either overlooked it or they purposely concealed
it. Specifically, the records for March 10, 1998, showed that Head
worked 10.5 hours that day without compensation, thus making up the time
away from work on the second of the charged dates.
Another example of the
city’s single-minded attempt to get Head was their imposition of
discipline for submitting slips for compensatory time off (CTO) when, in
the department’s interpretation, overtime should have been
appropriately paid. There was no dispute that Head did the work and was
entitled to be paid; the only issue was whether he should get cash or
CTO. The investigative team ignored the fact that Head’s supervisor
signed the CTO slips and/or the corresponding time sheet, in each
instance except one. As the sergeant assigned to the investigative team
conceded on cross-examination, in his 18-plus years as a supervisor he
has examined thousands of overtime request forms as part of his
supervisory responsibilities and would correct errors by simply telling
the officer it was incorrect, having the officer make the modification,
or make the modification himself. No one form the city could point to a
single instance where it initiated any kind of disciplinary action
against any employee for mistakenly completing a CTO request form.
Ultimately, the judge
determined that the city failed to prove that Head submitted requests
for CTO that were knowingly in violation of the MOU, or that such action
would even constitute a disciplinary offense. In fact, the judge
methodically and completely overturned each and every charge against
Head. He concluded that there was no misconduct committed by Head and
that no discipline should be imposed. He recommended full reinstatement,
awarded back pay, benefits and interest and determined that Head’s
file should be purged of all negative references to the allegations. The
new city manager, who was not associated with this debacle, agreed and adopted
the judge’s recommendation as her decision. Head was elated. "I
am looking forward to resuming my career under the new police chief
(that replaced Brobeck)," he said.
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