Convicted cop hired as police chief

A man who was convicted of theft and resigned from the Los Angeles Police Department was hired Friday night as the interim chief of the Maywood Police Department, an agency that has a reputation as a haven for misfit and criminal cops.

Despite fierce opposition from some rank-and-file officers and the city’s own attorney, Al Hutchings was selected for the position by the Maywood City Council in a 3-2 vote at a special meeting.

Hutchings’ unlikely ascension to the job comes amid ongoing investigations by state and local authorities into allegations of police corruption and brutality in Maywood.

The move stunned many city residents who viewed his consideration as another setback for the troubled Police Department, which patrols a gritty square-mile city south of downtown Los Angeles.

Last year, a Times investigation into Maywood found that at least a third of the officers on the force had either left other police jobs under a cloud or had brushes with the law while working for Maywood. Several officers in recent years left Maywood after being convicted of crimes.

Hutchings was one officer who was hired at Maywood in 2006 despite a checkered past.

Court records show that he had pleaded no contest to bilking the LAPD for bogus overtime pay while he was an officer. He has since received a court order expunging his record.

In an interview, Hutchings said that all of the overtime he worked was approved by a supervisor but that he entered the plea so as to quickly dispose of the case, which he said was filed in retaliation for reporting misconduct against a high ranking-LAPD official. Hutchings was also fired from Los Angeles Valley College in 2005, where he worked as a professor and was terminated for acts of dishonesty.

When Hutchings joined the Maywood Police Department, he said he found that many of his fellow officers were brutal, racist and corrupt. He cast himself as a whistle-blower, working to expose problems at the department.

Before his probationary year was finished, however, Hutchings was accused of misconduct of his own. Police and city officials said he agreed to resign from the Police Department after he was allegedly videotaped having an on-duty liaison with the female owner of a doughnut shop.

Hutchings, 45, has said the allegation was fabricated “to blackmail me into stopping the work that I was doing.” He said he voluntarily left the department last summer.

In an interview hours before he was hired, Hutchings said Maywood Police Department was a dysfunctional agency with incompetent officers and that he hoped to “shut the place down and bring in the Sheriff’s Department.”

He said he would donate his salary to the Catholic church and to people who had been victimized by Maywood officers.

Hutchings replaces another interim chief who was convicted of beating his girlfriend and resigned from the El Monte Police Department before being hired at Maywood. That chief’s conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was ultimately convicted of a lesser charge of making a verbal threat.

Known among law enforcement circles as a department of “second chances,” Maywood Police Department is one of nearly 50 independent police agencies in Los Angeles County. The department, whose officers are mainly white and Latino, serves a densely populated city of roughly 30,000 that is 96% Latino.

Hutchings’ return to the force, for a three-month period pending a search for a permanent chief, has outraged other Maywood officers.

In a letter to city leaders, the president of the Maywood Police Officer Assn. said Hutchings had “displayed a total lack of integrity and honesty in his career as a police officer.”

Some city residents questioned why City Council members would take on an interim chief with baggage.

Mayor Felipe Aguirre, prior to Friday’s vote, said he supported Hutchings because he believed he was an honest man who would reform the department.

“Nobody has the courage to clean this place up,” he said. “We need to hire someone who can right this department.”

matt.lait@latimes.com