Ticket-Fix Inquiry Result to D.A. Today : Witt Says ‘I Don’t See Anything’ Criminal; Police Union Backs Independent Counsel

San Diego City Manager John Lockwood is expected today to forward to the district attorney’s office some of the documents compiled during an administrative investigation into ticket-fixing and other alleged improprieties by Police Chief Bill Kolender and his top assistants.

But City Atty. John Witt said late Monday that he finds no criminal violations in any of the documents.

“In my quick perusal of it, I don’t see anything,” Witt said. “But I think that’s the D.A.’s call.”

Lockwood said he will publicly disclose the findings of his investigation by releasing a written report at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Today, however, his office will be handing over to Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller documents that pertain to “five issue areas” covered by the administrative probe, said Jack McGrory, an assistant to Lockwood. McGrory declined to identify the five areas.

Witt said Monday that his office has evaluated the documents. The fact that the city is turning over the paper work to Miller “doesn’t mean a thing,” he said.

“We’re not through looking at them, but we would automatically turn them over to the D.A. anyway,” Witt said. “The district attorney is going to have to exercise his independent judgment of the thing.”

Asked whether the documents would cause him to retract a comment he made to a newspaper reporter that the allegations of ticket-fixing by Kolender were “penny ante,” the city attorney said: “No.”

Lockwood began his investigation earlier this month after The Times discovered that Kolender and his top assistants had dismissed hundreds of parking tickets and at least 30 moving violation complaints since January, 1985--many of them for friends, relatives and influential San Diegans.

In many cases, the written excuses for the dismissals were fabricated and several police officers who wrote the traffic tickets were never consulted, contradicting assertions by top officers that thorough investigations had been conducted.

Other allegations Lockwood included in the administrative probe include a report that Assistant Police Chief Bob Burgreen used city equipment to videotape a private fishing trip for an outside business venture; that Kolender sent San Diego police detectives to Riverside County to find a truck that was at the center of a dispute in his wife’s family, and that Kolender used his position to help a friend buy a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer P-226 pistol in 1985 without waiting out the 15-day “cooling off” period mandated under state law.

To help with the investigation, the city manager’s office has paid two private investigators $3,000 to probe the more “complex” allegations, such as the gun sale and the Riverside trip, McGrory said.

He said the investigators, Nicholas Lore and Jacob Schmidt, are former FBI agents who were hired last Tuesday. Schmidt recently retired from his job as an investigator for the San Diego city attorney’s office, McGrory said.

Both Lockwood and McGrory declined to comment on the findings of the investigation.

While Lockwood was wrapping up his investigation, the Police Officers Assn. on Monday sent a letter to Mayor Maureen O’Connor and City Council members supporting a proposal by the Civil Service Commission to use outside counsel, instead of the city attorney’s office, for the commission’s separate investigation.

The commission voted last week to begin a probe of its own after POA attorney Patrick J. Thistle filed a complaint alleging that the department intimidates officers who file disability claims. Thistle’s complaint criticized advice given to police by the city attorney’s office, which also serves as the legal adviser to the commission.

Concerned about the appearance of a conflict, commissioners voted last week to ask the City Council to hire outside counsel for the probe.

Witt resisted the move, saying the City Charter gives his office the responsibility to advise the commission. Witt threatened that, if an outside attorney was hired, he would sue the commission and the council and instruct the city auditor not to pay the outside counsel.

The POA’s letter supports the commission’s stance.

“It is our belief that the hearings and investigation should be conducted in a manner which guarantees an appearance of fairness and equity in areas involving the City and departmental responses to applications for disability benefits and appeals to disciplinary matters,” the letter said.

Witt said Monday he will continue to fight the move.

“It fails to recognize that an attorney can come in and allege misconduct on the part of one of our deputies and knock us out of every case,” Witt said. “I think that’s ridiculous.”