Lieutenant Denies Drunk Driving : Officers Took Him to Restaurant, Skipped Sobriety Test

The president of the San Diego Police Officers Assn. was stopped in February, 1984, by two fellow officers who saw him weaving across three lanes of the freeway. They intended to arrest him because they thought he was a drunk driver.

Instead of taking Lt. A.L. (Skip) DiCerchio to jail, however, the officers drove him to a restaurant for coffee, the two officers told The Times in separate interviews Thursday.

DiCerchio denied that he was drunk but said he went to the nearby Denny’s even though he didn’t know why he had been stopped. He was neither taken to a police station for a sobriety test nor charged with a crime.

“What these officers are telling you independently is just absolutely untrue,” DiCerchio said. “These guys are flat lying.”

The officer who made the stop said he later consulted with his supervising lieutenant, who told him not to write a report because the matter would be handled “administratively.” No report was ever filed, police officials confirmed.

Several police sources told The Times that the DiCerchio incident is indicative of the way the Police Department treats fellow officers who are stopped on any traffic violations. Former reserve officer Robert Sampson, one of the officers who stopped DiCerchio, said on several occasions he has pulled over fellow officers on suspicion of drunk driving and arranged for them to return home safely.

Assistant Police Chief Bob Burgreen said San Diego officers suspected of drunk driving are prosecuted the same as an average motorist, who faces at least a $675 fine for a first offense.

“There’s no favoritism,” Burgreen insisted. “If an officer is spotted driving drunk, he is treated the same as Joe Blow on the street. That is what we have been doing.”

Burgreen and Cmdr. Calvin Krosch, head of the police internal affairs unit, said they attempted to investigate the DiCerchio incident on two occasions but were unable to learn the names of the officers involved. The two administrators expressed surprise Thursday when The Times told them one of the officers said he had described the entire incident to an internal affairs investigator recently.

Burgreen said he would look into the case today.

A Times investigation revealed this week that Police Chief Bill Kolender and his top aides sometimes fabricated excuses when dismissing thousands of parking tickets and at least 30 moving violations, many for fellow police officers, friends, family members, influential businessmen and the media.

On Wednesday, DiCerchio gave Kolender a strong vote of confidence and said he was not aware of any examples in which police administrators doled out favors for friends who had their tickets dismissed.

But DiCerchio, who is head of the police narcotics task force, apparently received special treatment in the early morning hours of Feb. 25, 1984, after his vehicle was seen weaving erratically across three lanes on southbound Interstate 5 in downtown San Diego.

DiCerchio confirmed that he was stopped by officers and that he went to Denny’s, but said he denied he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

“In retrospect, if those officers had a problem . . . I should have gone downtown where I had the ability to prove my sobriety . . . they weren’t certainly doing me a favor. They were casting a shadow on me that I can’t clean up.”

DiCerchio, who was vice president of the Police Officers Assn. at the time, said he agreed to get coffee even though he contended the officers did not give him any reason for stopping his car.

“They asked me if I would mind having a cup of coffee before I continue. I simply agreed. The last thing I wanted to do was have an argument with police officers on the freeway . . .

“Any request is going to get my immediate compliance. I’m not going to ask questions, I’m not going to talk about my rights. I have to work with these people and it’s just not prudent. I’m cooperative with whatever they want me to do.”

The officers tell a different story.

One officer, who remains on the police force and asked not to be named, and Sampson, a seven-year reservist who left the Police Department last year, were transporting a man suspected of drunken driving to jail when they spotted a Ford sedan weaving in and out of lanes at Interstate 5 and Washington Street.

“When we turned the overheads (flashing lights) on and turned the high beams on, the vehicle continued acting as if it didn’t even notice us,” recalled Sampson, who is now a service adviser for a San Diego car dealership. “It continued and continued until it finally pulled over after a couple of siren blasts.

“When it did yield, we noticed it was a department vehicle. We’re going, ‘This is not going to be fun’ when we found out who it was.”

Both officers said DiCerchio jumped out of his car and berated them.

“He came out of the car and was very irate . . . “ Sampson said. “He was yelling and giving (the other officer) a real bad time . . . his speech was real slurred. We knew he had been drinking . . .

Said the other officer, “He came out of the car ranting and raving like who in the hell are you to stop me . . . he shows me his badge and ID real quick and puts it back in his pocket. He said, ‘I work for you people, too. I don’t deserve this treatment.’

“I said, ‘Lieutenant, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I already have somebody in the back I arrested for drunk driving. You obviously have been drinking. You can answer my questions the easy way or I can put you in the back seat and take you to jail.’ ”

From that point on, DiCerchio was very cooperative and conceded he had been drinking, the officers said.

The officers then decided Sampson would drive DiCerchio to a nearby Denny’s and lock his keys in his car so he would have to find someone to take him home.

“It wasn’t something we had to ponder over,” Sampson said. “We had decided within a matter of minutes . . . I guess it was more a courtesy to another officer.”

DiCerchio said the officers who stopped him should have called their supervisors and let them decide how to handle the situation. “If they are saying I was a (drunk driver), and they did not take me downtown, they are looking at discipline.”

The unnamed officer said he told his supervisor, Sgt. Mike Hodges, who between 1981 and 1985 was in charge of drunk driving enforcement.

In an interview Thursday Hodges said, “Obviously, his intention was to dry (DiCerchio) out. The impression I got was he (DiCerchio) was qualified to be taken downtown to be given a test.”

Hodges said he told the officer to write a report on the matter. But Hodges said he could not recall ever seeing a report.

An hour later, according to the patrol officer, he was ordered by the supervising lieutenant not to write a report because the incident would be handled “administratively.”

The officer, a member of the department for seven years, conceded that he at times wondered whether he made the right decision by taking DiCerchio to the restaurant.

“Should I have taken him down? Should I have caused him the embarrassment? In my mind, we were right. If it happened tonight, he would go down (to the station), no ands, no ifs, no buts. I’ve seen other officers go through the same thing and get fired (for not making an arrest). I don’t think it is fair to give someone in the higher-ups a break if they don’t give us a break.”

Hodges, a 14-year veteran, said patrol officers often face intimidation when they stop a ranking officer such as a lieutenant or above. He acknowledged that the department has an unwritten rule to protect fellow officers.

He said, “There’s enough discussion among officers that, yeah, you’re not going to take any action. As the rank gets higher, you’re going to do less . . .

Such “professional courtesy,” Hodges said, included members of other law enforcement agencies.

“We don’t want to upset another police agency that we want to be cooperative with.”

Hodges added, however, that some police officers have been arrested and cited for drunken driving.

The Police Department recently began an internal investigation after Sgt. Connie Zimmerman reported earlier this year that DiCerchio had received special treatment. As part of the investigation, the patrol officer who stopped DiCerchio said he was interviewed by Lt. Mike Clark of internal affairs.

Burgreen and Krosch said they were unaware than any such interview took place.

Zimmerman said Thursday she had reported the incident once before, shortly after it occurred, to her supervisor.

According to Zimmerman the supervisor said, “ ‘It’s none of my business; he doesn’t work for me.’ ”

DiCerchio could no longer be prosecuted because the statute of limitations has run out, Burgreen said. But the assistant chief said he plans to reopen an investigation into the traffic stop.

“I am very interested in why they didn’t report it . . . “ he said. “We have no names of any officers on the purported stop. We went through all our records, we talked to people on duty that night and we were never successful in finding out.

“I was operating on a rumor because he is in a very key position. I wanted to get to the bottom of it even though I had no specifics, no names . . .

“We never put out an announcement (that asked) ‘Did anyone stop Skip DiCerchio on drunken driving?’ We would never do that.”

Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino contributed to this story.