Guard Gets Paid to Stay Home

For the last 2 1/2 years, the California Department of Corrections has paid prison officer Shayne A. Ziska his full salary -- on the condition that he stay at home.

That is what he does, except for the day once a month when he drives 20 miles to the front gate of the Chino state prison and waits until someone appears to deliver his check. Then he returns home.

Ziska, 41, is not disabled, injured or ill. To the contrary, he is well-muscled from lifting weights and is an expert in taekwondo. He is, however, under criminal investigation by the FBI for association with members of a prison gang -- allegations he denies.

Ziska hasn’t worked since October 2000, when the California Department of Corrections suspended him, pending the outcome of the investigation. Because he has not been convicted or formally charged, prison officials will not fire him. So he sits at home, receiving full pay.

Other state departments follow a similar policy. But more corrections employees are on paid leave than all other departments combined. Ziska is one of 109 prison system employees who have been on paid leave for at least 30 days during the last year pending internal and criminal investigations. Ziska holds the distinction of being out the longest.

The issue came to the fore earlier this month during a legislative oversight hearing into the practice that prison officials call administrative time off. State senators who attended the hearing used a variety of other terms: taxpayer boondoggle, bad joke, platinum parachute.

“It is an administrative nightmare,” Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) said in an interview. “It speaks volumes about why people distrust government. They should do their investigation and make a decision: Either terminate the employee or reinstate him.”

Although federal authorities continue to investigate prison gangs, officials would not discuss any details.

Speier understands that prison officials would not want correctional officers to remain on duty while they are under investigation. She believes, however, the officers could be given some other work. They could, at a minimum, pick up litter.

At the oversight hearing, officials did not reveal the identities of employees placed on leave. But Ziska contacted The Times after his case was described in news accounts, saying in an interview that he has done nothing wrong and has nothing to hide. He described himself as hard-working, and called the investigation a “fishing trip.”

“The most difficult thing to fight is a lie,” Ziska said. “You cannot refute a lie.”

So he finds himself in limbo, barred from the job and unable to move on with his life. “Sure, I could quit,” he said. “Why would I quit? Then I would lose everything I got that job for in the first place.”

Since Ziska’s leave began, the state has paid him roughly $150,000. He has accrued vacation leave and is accumulating pension benefits. Under the state’s contract with the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the guards union, he has received raises -- from $4,674 per month when he was placed on leave to $4,795 now -- with the likelihood that he, with other prison officers, will receive a 7% pay hike in July.

Under rules governing paid leave, employees cannot get another job, and must stay at home during regular business hours to answer questions from investigators. In the oversight hearing, Speier and Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) pressed prison officials about how they know what employees are doing while on paid leave.

Officials replied that they are in regular phone contact with the workers.

Ziska said he follows the rules, spending his days at home on his computer, working with his pit bulls, lifting weights with his sons and teaching taekwondo in the evenings at a park in Riverside, for free. He said the prison never calls him.

“I’ve never heard from them,” Ziska said, adding that his only contact with the Department of Corrections comes once a month when he picks up his paycheck.

A prison official said last week there are exceptions to the rule, noting that the Department of Corrections, trying to avoid interfering with the FBI, defers action pending the outcome of the federal investigation.

“When the FBI asks us to stand down,” prison spokesman Russ Heimerich said, “we don’t have any contact with [the employees] at all except to pay them. That is why this guy hasn’t been contacted.”

Ziska was 22 in January 1984 when he joined the Department of Corrections. Over the years, he worked throughout Chino, a sprawling 2,500-acre complex that houses 6,300 prisoners.

Ziska learned he was under investigation when Chino’s internal investigations unit took his prison identification in October 2000 and ordered that he not return to work until further notice. Some months later, he said, an FBI agent interviewed him.

Based on the questions, Ziska believes the FBI suspects him of being involved with a prison gang, the Nazi Low Riders. A federal racketeering investigation into the white supremacist gang has been going on since at least 1999, resulting in more than a dozen members being indicted on charges of murder, drug trafficking and extortion.

Ziska said he knew Nazi Low Riders; there was no way to work the prison without coming into contact with members of the gang, he said. Indeed, his personnel file contains a 1993 commendation for his work gathering information about prison gangs.

Ziska bristled at the implication that he was involved in the gang or with drugs, given that he has three sons: “They’re crazy. They offend me. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t do any of that.”

Ziska said he was not universally liked at the prison, and he did have run-ins with other workers. One blemish on his record came in 1995, when he played what he portrayed as a prank on another officer who he believes was not pulling her weight. His pay was docked 5% for a year.

But Ziska is not without friends. He was running for president of the Chino chapter of the guards union when he was placed on leave. During an interview at a coffee shop in Ontario, an off-duty officer came up to Ziska, commiserated about his situation, and offered moral support.

“He was definitely an officer who would cover your back,” Gary Clark, head of the union’s Chino chapter, said in a separate interview. “He was a good cop. This was a shock to all of us.”

Even if exonerated, Ziska believes, his career is over. “Do you think they’re going to say, ‘Officer Ziska, just go back to work. ... We’re sorry we took your credibility’?”

Even if he is not fired, Ziska is unsure he would be accepted back into the ranks of prison officers. “Whether they liked me or not, they trusted me,” he said. “Are they going to trust me again?”

Prison officials said the state won’t open its own investigation into Ziska as long as the FBI has an open case. Nor will the state necessarily fire him if he is indicted. More likely, the state would act only if he is convicted.

“There is a due process provision,” said prison spokesman Heimerich. “The reality is that [the leave] will go on until such time as the investigation is completed.”