COVER STORY : Police Force Under Fire : UCLA’s 59-Member Department Maintains Peace Everywhere on Campus Except Within Its Own Ranks

For almost two years, UCLA Police Officer Charles Harold has languished in administrative limbo, collecting his regular $3,600 monthly paycheck for doing . . . nothing.

His former partner, UCLA Officer Terrence Duren, has been paid $3,500 a month since October not to come to work.

A third man, Albert Melendy, who served for 10 years as a UCLA cop, has collected $1,300 a month in disability pay from the University of California system for a decade as a result of a legal settlement. What is his disability?

“They never said,” Melendy replied. “Stress, I guess.”

All say they are willing and able to do their jobs, but have been kept from working in the University of California system because they filed grievances and in some cases lawsuits against the university alleging various forms of harassment and discrimination by the UCLA Police Department. In court papers, the university has generally denied any wrongdoing, but some of the allegations of sexual harassment raised by at least one officer have been upheld by UCLA’s own fact-finding efforts.

The status of the three officers, eyebrow-raising in its own right, only hints at the sour labor relations dogging the 47-year-old UCLA Police Department, a 59-member force that patrols the 419-acre Westwood campus and the UCLA Medical Center.

At least six other former and current employees have lawsuits pending against the department, and there are hints of more to follow.

Although many of the complaints center around problems that may have existed for years, legal documents and other sources describe a dedicated but emotionally drained rank-and-file that perceives key supervisors as inept and unfair, particularly with regard to their treatment of minority workers.

Despite the Police Department troubles, the university reported last month that overall crime on the campus declined in 1993. The largest drop was in property crimes, which dipped from 1,626 incidents to 1,444. Violent assaults, however, soared from 31 reported incidents to 65.

There is concern that low morale and other problems could eventually lead to a deterioration in service.

Citing “decaying operations” and “a continuous lack of leadership,” the union for campus police officers earlier this year directed a vote of no confidence against Karl Ross, acting chief since the retirement of John Barber last November.

“We all agree that his actions have fallen well short of his intended goals and do not believe in the direction he is guiding the department,” the 50-member University Peace Officer’s Assn. said in a Feb. 28 letter to Administrative Vice Chancellor John Curry, who oversees the department.

Ross did not return phone calls from The Times.

Curry suggested that the no-confidence vote was fueled by several factors beyond Ross’ control. Among them, he said, were fears of impending budget cuts, discontinuity caused by the retirement of the former chief, and frustration within the ranks with the slow pace of reforms promised by the administration.

The university is now evaluating a handful of finalists for the permanent chief’s job.

“We are very aggressively going to work on the department in all the right ways,” Curry said.

Perhaps the most visible sign of that effort was the recent hiring of an outside consultant, a move that Curry says was prompted in part by the no-confidence vote. The consultant is surveying and evaluating the entire Department of Community Safety, which includes parking, health and safety and fire prevention staff as well as police and student security guards.

Results of the consultant’s survey obtained by The Times show a high level of dissatisfaction among police in virtually every job-related category. For example, on a 4-point scale in which 1 equals “definitely disagree” and 2 equals “inclined to disagree,” the statement “Communication from the Administration is Always Honest” produced an average score of 1.32 among 25 respondents. “Internal Affairs are Conducted in an Ethical Manner” polled a 1.42.

Many of the department’s labor disputes seem destined to be played out in court.

During the past year, three former civilian dispatchers have filed federal civil rights complaints against UCLA, alleging on-the-job sexual harassment and racial discrimination. Additionally, six officers, including Harold and Duren, have filed lawsuits in Santa Monica Superior Court against UCLA.

Former Officer Harold is at the center of the storm, creating a veritable blizzard of grievances and court complaints against the university and openly helping other disgruntled colleagues do the same.

In a 1992 grievance, he accused then-Lt. James Vandenberg of repeatedly making offensive racial and ethnic jokes, bringing pornographic material into the station, and questioning the sexual orientation of one officer.

A university complaint resolution officer determined in a January, 1993, fact-finding report that the complaints had validity. Vandenberg, now a sergeant, declined to discuss any of the complaints against him, referring such questions to his attorney, Michael Stone, who could not be reached for comment.

Vandenberg, however, did take a generalized swipe at his attackers, categorizing roughly a third of the department as bad hires who “bounce from department to department and bring their baggage with them.”

“The code of ethics is severely lacking with some of the people we have here,” he said, adding, “It’s time the people making the allegations were looked at.”

Following up that grievance and others, Harold contended in a Santa Monica Superior Court lawsuit that he was branded a troublemaker by supervisors and his service record was smeared with phony violations. Finally, he was placed on paid leave until his complaints were resolved, a move he alleges has denied him promotional opportunities and caused him emotional pain and suffering.

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Lawyers for the university have argued in court documents that the case, which has not gone to trial, should be thrown out, in part because the allegations are “uncertain and untelligible (sic)” and Harold has not yet exhausted all administrative remedies.

Harold has accused the university of a “big stall game.”

Employee grievances involve lengthy internal investigations and hearings and findings by university officials.

A university official acknowledged that one reason the grievance process is long and involved is to protect the institution from being dragged into countless costly court battles at the whims of disgruntled workers.

Alan Lieban, who recently departed UCLA’s Office of Insurance and Risk Management, told The Times before he left: “That has been part of our strategy. We approach every employment case that way.”

Still, Curry acknowledged that Harold’s case, and perhaps that of several others, have dragged on for an “unconscionably long” time.

“I think some of the grievances have not been dealt with expeditiously, and I intend to speed (the process) up to get that resolved,” he said.

Harold, now a private investigator, hopes it happens soon--for his sake, he said, as well as that of taxpayers.

“Fire me or put me back to work,” he declared in an interview. “I really don’t care, but make a decision.”

Harold’s former partner, Terrence Duren, is in a similar position. The eight-year veteran has been on indefinite paid leave since October. Duren said the leave resulted from an internal affairs investigation, in which he was accused of leaking to colleagues a confidential letter regarding a lieutenant.

Duren denies leaking the letter and insists the accusation was leveled to punish him for suing the department. In his Santa Monica Superior Court suit filed last August, Duren, who is black, alleges that supervisors uttered and tolerated racial slurs in his presence, subjected him to “numerous acts of oppression, fraud and malice” and even dismissed him without cause temporarily in 1990.

The university maintained in court papers that there is no grounds for the suit, but did not offer a detailed response.

“There’s a comedy of errors at that place, and it’s not the officers, it’s the administrators,” Duren said.

Patrick McNicholas, the attorney representing all six of the officers who have filed complaints, says the convoluted cases are the result of inconsistent employee grievance and disciplinary procedures throughout the department.

For favored officers, say department insiders, even serious misconduct is overlooked; other officers are sometimes punished severely for minor transgressions--or for speaking out.

The dispatchers, two women and a black man, endured “everything from name-calling to cartoons on the wall to work assignments and performance evaluations based on sex and race,” according to their attorney Patrick Thistle.

Thistle said two of the dispatchers were “driven out” of their jobs last year after they filed grievances against UCLA. “There was obvious retaliation against them for making complaints,” he alleges.

A third dispatcher, Thistle claims in court documents, was fired after telling a supervisor she had retrieved information from a computer reserved for sworn personnel only, even though an officer gave her permission to do so. “The supervisor took the information, said ‘thank you’ and fired her.” Thistle contends the computer incident was a set-up to give her bosses an excuse to fire her after it became clear she would not quit on her own. “We’re alleging it was subterfuge,” he said.

The university declined to comment on the cases, citing a policy against speaking about pending litigation. The dispatchers’ cases are pending in federal court in Los Angeles.

Al Melendy’s quarrel with the UC system never made it to court. He spoke out against alleged departmental abuses between 1970 and 1980, going so far as to help form the police association and ally it with a Teamsters local.

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After spending 10 years as an officer at UCLA and another four at the University of California at Irvine, he filed a worker’s compensation claim against the University of California system in 1983, alleging that supervisors at both campuses caused him “mental stress.”

The complaint charged that he was intimidated and harassed, routinely buried in paperwork, assigned tasks that were impossible to accomplish, then reprimanded for failing to perform his regular duties. For a four-year span at UCLA, he recalls, his responsibilities included investigating all property crimes, a figure numbering into the thousands annually.

“It’s impossible; you can’t do it,” he said. “I asked for help and the lieutenant in charge said, ‘If you cannot carry five major cases in your head and at least 20 minor cases, you should not even be up here.’ ”

His superiors ordered him to see a psychiatrist, who, Melendy says, concluded that he was indeed mentally fatigued and in need of some rest, but was otherwise healthy. Melendy found himself out of job shortly after he filed his complaint.

The university settled his case for $30,000, plus $1,300 a month in long-term disability payments. “They bought my silence; that’s what they did,” said Melendy, now 53.

Melendy said he had hopes of returning to work but was never rehired and eventually moved to the Philippines where, he says, he spent eight years living as “a man of leisure, a gentleman” before returning to California last year.

He’s not surprised by the recent crop of lawsuits and says favoritism is pervasive at the University of California police departments.

“Most of the UC campuses have a split (police) department,” he said. “There are officers who are there to be promoted. They don’t do much. Then you have the others, outsiders, older guys often, working for a living. They’re the ones that take the heat off the other officers. You’re there to draw fire, and that’s all you’re there for. When you draw too much, you’re out of there.”

To some extent, the recent history of the UCLA Police is the story of Barber, who headed the department from 1978 until his retirement last year at age 57. He is remembered as a colorful figure with a bent for salesmanship and innovation, but officers point out that the discord now afflicting the department stems largely from problems that occurred during his watch.

Barber is out of town and did not return phone calls left with a woman who answered his home phone.

In previous interviews, he has defended his role, saying he worked hard to recruit and promote minorities. He also has said that his retirement from the $87,000-a-year chief’s job was unrelated to the litigation facing the department.

His temporary successor, Ross, though less flamboyant than Barber, is seen by many department insiders as a representative of the old system. Under Ross, critics complain, a few key administrators have assumed slightly different job titles, but the politics and personalities of the department are essentially unchanged.

That viewpoint was expressed in a Jan. 14 letter to Vice Chancellor Curry signed by 44 Police Department employees and written by Sgt. Rick Sanchez, a Latino whose 1993 lawsuit against UCLA alleges his career was thwarted on racial grounds.

“The department’s reorganization has left the same close-minded department heads in positions of ultimate authority,” Sanchez wrote. “These same individuals lack objectivity and discretion . . .”

“Morale has worsened in the past two months,” he added, “because the department’s restructuring hasn’t offered any viable changes.”

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The university’s budget crisis hasn’t helped. Aiming to cut costs by $86 million between 1990 and 1995, UCLA plans to impose an 11% across-the-board cut in department budgets. Probable staff reductions have the entire university on edge, and the Police Department is no exception.

Still, some of the litigants are cautiously hopeful that the police department consultant may bring change.

The consultant, Paul Obney, declined to comment on his work, but Curry said he has been impressed by the early results, which show a “cadre of professional police officers who want to get moving” with improving the department.

Still, some wonder how any department can operate safely and effectively in a highly stressful work environment.

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Harold warned, comparing the workplace to the U.S. Postal Service, where several disgruntled workers have gone on shooting sprees in recent years. “People are tired of being put down all the time.”

Melendy no longer worries about such matters. Now working as a private investigator in Desert Hot Springs, he is about to start collecting his $1,400-a-month university retirement package, complete with full benefits.

He is philosophical about his truncated career as a campus cop.

“The University of California, especially UCLA, has one of the best schools of management in the world,” he said. “But they don’t send their own people to it.”

On the Cover

UCLA Police Sgt. Rick Sanchez, who sued the university last year contending he has been passed over for promotion because he is Latino, on duty near Royce Hall. Sanchez is one of at least six current and former officers with suits pending against the university, which is trying to improve morale and other problems in the department. The university has disputed the claims in the lawsuits. Photo: Suzanne States.