Judge rejects more jail time in bribery case
Rejecting a prosecutor’s call for more jail time, a Superior Court judge on Tuesday reinstated probation for a former Los Angeles Housing Department clerk typist convicted of bribery.
Eun Chavis, who had pleaded no contest to a felony charge, was accused of violating her probation this summer for making what prosecutors claimed were threatening phone calls to witnesses involved in the investigation.
At a hearing Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Dana Aratani pushed for Chavis, 58, to serve additional time in jail, but he failed to persuade Judge Edmund Clarke, who characterized the calls as “annoying, perhaps intimidating” but not criminally threatening. “She made some stupid phone calls,” Clarke said.
Chavis, a Korean American, was originally charged with 11 counts of bribery for allegedly taking illegal payments from multiple Korean-speaking landlords facing city inspection and construction issues. In an agreement with prosecutors, she pleaded no contest to a single count of bribery last year.
She served a total of 27 days in County Jail — 12 when she was first arrested last year and 15 for the allegedly threatening phone calls. After the December plea bargain, jail officials let her serve her one-year sentence under home confinement.
Chavis’ case was the third to surface in recent months in which L.A. city employees were accused of taking advantage of the immigrant communities they were supposed to serve. An ongoing FBI probe is seeking to determine the extent of corruption in the Department of Building and Safety, where two former inspectors have pleaded guilty to bribery charges.
Chavis’ case was unusual because she had no real authority — other than being the first point of contact at the counter at the Housing Department’s Koreatown office. Several elected city officials complained that they learned of the case only last week when the Los Angeles Times reported it.
On Tuesday, two City Council members troubled by the Chavis case introduced a motion calling for several city departments, including housing, to explain how they deal with language barriers. Councilmen Ed Reyes and Eric Garcetti also asked the departments to explain how they track financial transactions involving non-English-speaking residents.
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