Thousands of Canceled Parking Tckets Indicate Clout Pays Off : Who You Are and Who You Know Matter

San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender and his top administrators routinely dismiss parking tickets for friends, family members and former police officials, a Times investigation has found.

The Times found 78 parking tickets canceled through the chief’s office in the last 22 months, including citations against Kolender’s wife and son and Asst. Police Chief Bob Burgreen’s daughter.

Kolender and Burgreen frequently left the tickets for subordinate officers with the understanding that those officers would fabricate excuses and dismiss them. Kolender’s wife, for example, received two tickets in the 1200 block of Prospect Street in La Jolla, one of the busiest shopping areas in the city. In one case, the dismissal slip said “parked in front of his own driveway”; the other said, “Driver was unaware of parking restrictions. Signs not obvious.”

Kolender admitted during an interview Friday that he had improperly “taken care of” tickets for his wife and himself and said the practice would stop immediately.

“I should not have done it,” Kolender said. “I did it.”

Burgreen was more blunt about “picking up” a ticket for his daughter, who had parked in a red zone.

“That’s wrong,” Burgreen said. “I shouldn’t do that, and I won’t do it anymore. I deserve to be chastised for doing it.”

From now on, citations will be dismissed out of a central command in the department’s traffic division, according to Kolender and Burgreen. They said requests for cancellations will no longer be accepted in the chief’s office.

“Perhaps what we have been doing is not defensible,” Burgreen said. “We will have to reestablish some credibility in this area, and it will start at the top . . . any possibility of personal abuse in terms of friends and relatives, that needs to be completely eliminated. If we’ve made mistakes, we will not make them again.”

Extending favors for friends by fixing tickets is “never permissible,” said Coronado Police Chief Jerry Boyd, who teaches police ethics at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Academy.

“I wouldn’t dismiss one even if I thought my son was absolutely dead right,” Boyd said. “I just wouldn’t do it because it opens you up to too much criticism. I don’t think there is any way in the world you can defend that kind of action.

“To protect my reputation and the department’s and just to keep it clean, I’d tend to say ‘Hey, go to court.’ ”

Mayor Maureen O’Connor said she was “very surprised” to learn that Kolender and Burgreen personally dismissed tickets for friends, family and former police officers.

“If it’s true, I’m disappointed,” O’Connor said in an interview last week. “Obviously, the city manager would have to take a look at it and do something about it, if in fact they violated (city) policy.”

Kolender and Burgreen said they typically would dismiss a ticket by giving it to Lt. Charles Ellison without an explanation. Kolender confirmed that Ellison, who is assigned to the chief’s office, would then fill out a dismissal form and make up an excuse such as “driver gone for change” or “vehicle inoperative.”

Burgreen said, “We’ve been handing it to our staff, and . . . we know full well what the reason is, and we just don’t bother to tell them. On the way out, we say, ‘Have this one dismissed,’ and the staff is forced to guess . . . and (a staff member) doesn’t want to go to the chief of police and say, ‘Hey give me a reason.’ ”

Even Burgreen conceded an excuse such as “driver gone for change” is flimsy. “It’s going to take that parking controller a few minutes to write that ticket. How long does it take you to get change?”

In some cases, Kolender and Burgreen insisted that tickets were canceled for legitimate reasons. But they conceded that the appearance of a relative or friend going to the chief’s office to get a citation dismissed “looked bad.”

Kolender’s wife, Lois, has had three tickets dismissed since April of last year.

“I asked Lois,” Kolender said. “One of them was a busted meter, and the other two I took care of.”

Lois Kolender was cited in June, 1985, for parking in a red zone in the 1200 block of Prospect Street in the La Jolla shopping district. That ticket was canceled because the driver “parked in front of his own driveway,” according to the dismissal slip.

Chief Kolender said he and his wife have never lived on Prospect Street.

In April, she was cited for parking too long in a one-hour zone in the same block in front of The Collector, a La Jolla jewelry and art store along one of the most congested and strictly enforced parking areas in the city. This time Ellison wrote: “I received this from Chief Kolender. Driver was unaware of parking restrictions. Signs not obvious.”

Kolender’s son Dennis has had at least two tickets dismissed, one by his father in 1981 for parking beyond a 15-minute limit and another by Burgreen in February for parking his vehicle outside a marked space. The most recent dismissal form said, “Motor stopped running. Unable to navigate wheel.”

Asked if he fixed his son’s ticket, Kolender replied, “I don’t recall it, but I may have.”

Burgreen said that his ex-wife, Sonya, asked him to dismiss a ticket that their daughter, Laura, received in November, 1985, for parking in a red zone outside Horton Plaza. Burgreen said he agreed to cancel the ticket after his officers investigated his ex-wife’s claim that high-pressure sodium lights made it difficult for their daughter to determine the color of the curb.

“I don’t like to cancel tickets for my own wife, or ex-wife, so I asked that it be looked into and what I heard back was that her complaint was legitimate,” Burgreen said.

Burgreen said that despite the appearance of a conflict, he agreed to take care of the ticket because of the hardships involved if his ex-wife had been forced to go to Municipal Court.

“I know she would have had to take a day off work to do that,” Burgreen said. “She wouldn’t have been able to afford that.”

He said that if police traffic investigators had concluded the citation was a legitimate ticket, he would have told his ex-wife to “pay the 15 bucks.”

Kolender and Burgreen also dismissed five parking citations for KSDO radio sports announcer Ron Reina and four for Carl Sisskind, editorial director for KFMB-TV (Channel 8).

Reina, a friend of Kolender’s, said he has asked the police chief to fix citations out of “convenience.” Reina has had three citations canceled since last year and two others in 1980 for parking in a handicapped zone at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. The current charge for a ticket in a handicapped zone is $54.

“Either if I’m with Bill or see him or it comes up in conversation as a joke . . . Bill will say, ‘We take care of them for the media’ or something like that . . .” Reina explained.

He could not recall any details of the tickets. “It’s not a major thing with me. It’s not something I think about much.”

The Times obtained copies of two parking citations Reina received in September, 1980, for parking in a handicapped zone at the stadium. Reina wrote a note to Kolender that said, “Billy: Help. Reina. The Road Trip.”

Kolender dismissed the tickets by writing “Pls. cancel” on his personal stationery.

“I have assumed he told me he was on legitimate business and I took care of them,” Kolender said. “I did not take care of them because he was my friend. He has access to me just like other people. That is why I have (the tickets).”

Sisskind had one ticket dismissed by Kolender and three by Burgreen. The dismissal slips filled out by subordinate officers said “Gone for Change” on three of the tickets. Sisskind said he could not recall details of the four tickets but was certain that he had never gone for change.

Sisskind, who has a weekly talk show “Close Up,” said he considered having only four parking tickets canceled in 22 months “not bad.”

He added, “You can be sure the reasons were quite legitimate. It may have been I was covering a story or something. . . . I don’t ask for special favors. . . . If they were legitimate tickets, I would have paid them.”

Rather than sending Sisskind to the Police Department’s public affairs division like most journalists, Burgreen said he handled the dismissals because he and Kolender regularly deal with Sisskind.

“Carl Sisskind is more likely to work with me, or with Bill because he’s working at an editorial level,” Burgreen said. “And so when he has the same problem that (a reporter) has, he knows me (and) he knows Bill because I’ve been on his show three times and I’m sure Bill’s been on it, too.”

Burgreen also approved the dismissal of a ticket issued in April to former San Diego police officer Wally Yattes, who was driving a Mercedes-Benz owned by Padres President Ballard Smith. Yattes works for the Smith family.

“He was driving the car, he got a ticket, and got the ticket fixed unbeknownst to me and unbeknownst to my wife.” Smith said. “He’s a little embarrassed about it. He isn’t going to do it again. He’s been told that.”

At least one citizen who had no close ties to Kolender, Burgreen or any other police official got his parking citation dismissed through the chief’s office.

An angry Jerry John Felactu, a “simple carpenter,” stormed into the chief’s office in March demanding that the Police Department dismiss a ticket he received for parking overtime in a metered space on State Street. Felactu yelled and screamed and caused such a furor that Sgt. Joseph Costa agreed to take care of the citation.

Costa wrote, “Subject created a disturbance in the chief’s office. Because of the explosive situation, I picked up the parking cite. This helped to resolve the problem, and he left the office.”

Said Felactu, “I bawled them out.”