Police Union Criticizes Hahn but Says It Urged Him to Run for D.A.

At a news conference Wednesday in which they blasted City Atty. James K. Hahn as a poorly performing public official, leaders of the Los Angeles Police Protective League acknowledged that just last year they had urged Hahn to run for higher office.

Cliff Ruff, the police union’s president at the time, acknowledged that the organization’s board of directors had urged Hahn to challenge Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

Ruff said that action was prompted by a pragmatic calculation: Hahn could do officers less damage as the county’s top prosecutor than he could in his current job, which includes responsibility for defending officers in lawsuits brought by people who say they have been mistreated by police.

“The position of the board at that time was to ease Jimmy out of the office [of city attorney] as gracefully as possible, and not have to go through this confrontation,” Ruff said, referring to the league’s decision to endorse Hahn’s challenger, Ted Stein, a San Fernando Valley lawyer and developer.

“Our civil litigation problems are horrendous . . . due to the poor quality of representation,” Ruff said. When Hahn decided not to run for district attorney, Ruff said, the league endorsed Garcetti, who won by a narrow margin.

Matt Middlebrook, Hahn’s campaign manager, called the union’s position “silly. It’s like saying Al Gore is doing a bad job as vice president, so let’s make him president.”