Ticket Fixes Routine, Ex-Traffic Chief Says

A former head of the San Diego Police Department traffic division said Wednesday that he routinely dismissed without investigation citations for moving and parking violations sent to him through the office mail by Chief Bill Kolender and his top aides.

“It’s a situation where you’re in a position where you take care of these things,” said retired Capt. Pat Rose, who supervised the traffic unit between 1978 and 1981. “When you get them from the chief’s office, you dismiss them. I had a job to do, and I did it. . . . What was I going to do?”

Kolender and Assistant Chief Bob Burgreen declined to return phone calls Wednesday to answer questions about the Police Department ticket-fixing practices, which are being investigated by the city manager’s office.

A Times investigation has revealed that Kolender and his aides often used flimsy or fabricated excuses to dismiss thousands of parking tickets and at least 30 moving violations for friends, family members, influential businessmen, law enforcement personnel and the media.

Burgreen said Monday the department’s top brass dismissed moving violations only after conducting thorough investigations. But The Times reported Wednesday that at least six police officers who wrote those citations said they were never contacted before the tickets were canceled.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor said Wednesday revelations by The Times about ticket dismissals have created a “credibility problem” for Kolender and his top assistants.

“It’s disturbing if the chief says they talk to the officers and the officers were never approached . . . ,” O’Connor said. “Now, there’s a real credibility problem.”

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said prosecutors do not intend to begin a criminal investigation. Instead, the district attorney is waiting to see what City Manager John Lockwood uncovers in his administrative investigation, which Lockwood estimates will take a couple of weeks.

“We do not have an investigation of this matter under way at this time, nor do I anticipate one being started in the immediate future,” said district attorney spokesman Steve Casey. “Obviously, we’re aware of the situation . . . but we see at this point no reason to launch a criminal inquiry.”

In other developments:

- Two sources at City Hall told The Times Wednesday that, shortly after O’Connor was inaugurated in July, at least two of the mayor’s staff members and her brother, Shawn, were approached by a police officer who said he could have tickets “taken care of.”

The sources said the offer came from Officer Michael O’Neill, who is assigned to protect council members during public meetings.

“It wasn’t a direct offer, but it was made clear that if there was a problem with a ticket or something that it could be taken care of,” said one source. “I came away with the feeling that I knew what he meant.”

O’Neill said he recalls offering help only to O’Connor’s brother, who parks in a white passenger loading zone when he drops the mayor off at City Hall. A motorist can park for only three minutes in a white zone, and O’Neill said he could help O’Connor’s brother with any complaints, including receiving parking tickets.

The officer said he told the mayor’s brother: “If the citation is in error, you’ve only been there three minutes, let me know, I will take care of a problem in regard to that.”

O’Neill said his comments were not a “carte blanche” offer to have tickets fixed. “I don’t have the ability to cancel somebody’s citations,” he said.

- The president of the Police Officers Assn. said he does not want to second-guess Kolender and police administrators for dismissing tickets.

“If someone voids a traffic ticket, it’s not my position to pound on the chief’s desk and ask for an explanation . . . ,” said Lt. A.L. (Skip) DiChercio. “The chief of police does not owe police officers an explanation for those kind of actions . . . There has to be some kind of trust upwards and downwards.”

DiChercio said the rank-and-file officers remain in complete support of Kolender.

“Every single call that I’ve received has been in support of the chief. I don’t feel they have lost confidence in him. If this situation was managed improperly, it wasn’t done in any way to hurt the community or police officers. If there is a problem with this policy, it will be corrected immediately and I believe that that is good.”

- Management at KCST-TV (Channel 39) said Wednesday that the station plans to repay parking tickets the Police Department had dismissed for its reporters.

“KCST’s policy has been and will continue to be that we will pay for all traffic tickets incurred on duty,” station manager Bill Fox said in an editorial aired Wednesday. “Without station management knowledge or approval, 11 parking tickets were dismissed by the Police Department in the past year. . . . 39 Alive calls on the Police Department to end this practice completely to eliminate abuses.”

Channel 39 joins the Reader, a weekly newspaper, as the only media organizations in San Diego that will repay the parking fines to the city. Other news executives have urged the Police Department to stop its practice of dismissing tickets for the media, police said. Officials are expected to announce a new policy regarding parking dismissals for the media soon.

- Kolender and Burgreen, who usually are available to the media to respond to any or all questions, referred calls Wednesday to Cmdr. Keith Enerson, head of the police public affairs unit.

Burgreen said on Tuesday he could not explain how the chief’s office could dismiss moving citations without contacting the officer who wrote the tickets. “I can’t give you an answer now and I’m not going to,” Burgreen said.

On Wednesday, Enerson said the department would have no comment on the matter.

“The city manager has been directed to do an investigation,” Enerson said. “That investigation has been commenced. It really would be inappropriate for any of us to say anything until the investigation is completed.”

Enerson, who succeeded Pat Rose as head of the police traffic division in 1981, said when he dismissed tickets for the chief’s office he assumed someone had already investigated the circumstances.

“We processed it through,” Enerson said. “I didn’t do anything with it. I didn’t make a value judgment normally on it.”

In the four months since he has been assigned to the traffic unit, Capt. Dave Hall said, he has yet to receive a dismissal request from Kolender or Burgreen. He said that such tickets have probably been handled by a traffic lieutenant or sergeant.

Rose, who retired from the Police Department in 1984, said Wednesday he believed he would have been transferred out of his job if he had balked about routinely dismissing the citations from the chief’s office. He said he dismissed “a handful” of moving violations and “numerous” parking citations during his tenure as head of the traffic division. He said other officers in the division also dismissed tickets for the chief’s office.

When Rose first received a dismissal request from Kolender, he said he asked around the office and learned that his predecessors had fixed the citations without asking any questions.

“I was replaced in traffic by another captain,” Rose said. “I’m sure the same thing happened to them. It wasn’t something that was invented while I was there.”

Rose said he doubted that Kolender or Burgreen initiated thorough investigations before directing him to dismiss tickets for family members, friends and influential San Diegans.

“What they are trying to do right now,” Rose said, “is pass the buck to the lower levels (by saying) ‘Oh, I gave it to him and told him to check it out.’ That is bull.”