Health Problems Given as Reason : Corona Officials Retire Embattled Police Chief

City officials this week retired their beleaguered police chief, Bob J. Talbert, 11 weeks after he and his deputy were acquitted of conspiring to obstruct justice.

Two council members and the city manager, who took the action, gave health problems as the reason.

Talbert, 57, suffers from ulcers and a hiatal hernia, City Manager James Wheaton said Tuesday. The former chief will collect a tax-exempt disability pension of more than $34,300 annually.

The city has not announced plans to replace Talbert, who rose in the department during 27 years of service.

Sam Lowery, a chief deputy sheriff, has been the acting chief of police in Corona since last August, when Talbert and Deputy Chief Ed Sampson were indicted by the Riverside County Grand Jury and placed on administrative leave of absence.

Sampson, 43, is a 19 1/2-year veteran of the Corona force. Shortly after he was indicted last year, he asked city officials for a stress-disability retirement. He remains on paid leave, pending a psychiatric examination next month.

‘Chronic, Continuing Disability’

Talbert’s retirement was decided by Wheaton and council members S. R. (Al) Lopez and Dick Deininger, “based an a medical report of chronic and continuing disability,” Wheaton said. “It does not require the employee’s consent” and is not subject to review by the full City Council.

“What we have,” Wheaton said, “is Bob’s understanding and realization that having received the medical report, the city had no other course of action. . . .”

Talbert, who has a workers’ compensation claim still pending against the city, would not comment on the retirement decision “on the advice of my attorney,” he said Tuesday.

His attorney, Felix Smith of Ontario, was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Had Talbert returned to his post for another year, he would have qualified for the maximum pension of 75% of his highest annual salary, Wheaton said. But that pension would have been subject to state and federal income taxes.

Instead, the former chief’s tax-free disability pension will equal about 73% of his last year’s salary. “It’s more than the 75% would bring him, even if he stayed around and got two (more) raises,” Wheaton said. “. . . It costs the city nothing.”

Year of Bitter Conflict

Talbert and Sampson’s trial was the culmination of more than a year of bitter, often public conflict between members of the Corona Police Department and their chief officers.

The acrimony was most evident in a five-day walkout by patrol officers, sergeants and lieutenants in November, 1983; an overwhelming vote of “no confidence” in the chiefs by their subordinates last summer, and a list of 18 complaints about police management the subordinates brought to the City Council a year ago.

Those complaints included the charge that led to the chiefs’ indictment and trial for allegedly conspiring to delete information from the police report of a fatal traffic collision.

Since a Riverside County Superior Court jury found the pair not guilty in May, police officers have been holding their breath for a decision on who will lead their department. Now, privately, some of the officers have indicated a sense of relief that the conflict they expected to return with Talbert apparently has been avoided.

The 63-officer department’s leadership problems are far from over, however. Capt. James Valle and Lt. Gary Salyer have been taking leave from their duties since early June, when they filed disability claims for stress and gastrointestinal problems.

Sgt. David Sparkman also has been on sick leave since early June, and Sgt. Mark Dobbs was granted a disability retirement, effective July 1, for an upper back and neck injury he suffered in an altercation with a prisoner, bringing to six the number of officers missing from the chain of command.

While Wheaton believes the department “continues to work professionally,” he sees Talbert’s retirement as “a chance now to take a step forward and to go to work on healing some of the wounds. . . .

“I’m going to miss Bob,” Wheaton said. “He was, in my opinion, an effective part of the management group here.

“What he’s been put through, nobody should have to go through,” the city manager said. “He behaved courageously through the whole thing.

“It’s too bad it was his health that had to take the licking.”