$6,000 Lost From Huntington Park Police Chief’s Safe

Police Chief Geano Contessotto has disclosed that about $6,000 in cash is missing from a safe in his office. He also said that officers had repeatedly been paid bonuses based on falsified marksmanship records.

Contessotto made the statements in an extensive interview with The Times last month.

In subsequent interviews last week, Donald L. Jeffers, the city’s chief administrative officer, and all five council members said they had been told of the missing cash. However, Jeffers and the council members learned from a reporter of the separate problem involving officers being paid bonuses under false pretenses. All said the chief had never told them of these payments.

“Now that the City Council has been made aware of it, we will investigate it and whoever is responsible will take the consequences,” Mayor Herbert A. Hennes said.

Contessotto this week said his department is investigating the missing cash. He said the department also is reviewing department records to determine which officers benefitted from marksmanship scores that the chief said were “altered” and “manipulated” by his former secretary, who left the department in 1985.

The secretary, who now works in another city, confirmed in an interview that she altered the records. She said she did it “just a few” times at the request of officers who told her they had lost their scores or were within points of qualifying for bonuses.

In the interview, Contessotto repeatedly refused to say that his former secretary is a suspect in the department’s separate investigation of the missing money.

Under its marksmanship regulations, the department requires that officers qualify on a shooting range each month. If they pass the test, officers are paid $25 each month. If they fail the test twice in one year, they are docked a day’s pay, Contessotto said.

Contessotto said scores were altered numerous times during the secretary’s tenure so that officers were paid for their marksmanship, even though they had not passed the test.

The department has since instituted a new policy of having a sergeant verify that officers have passed the test before any payment is made, Contessotto said.

After realizing that cash was missing, the city instituted new accounting procedures that include the daily logging of money received by the Police Department and a listing of employees who have access to the money. Prior to that, days had elapsed before city finance officials were informed of money received by the department, Jeffers said.

The city has paid between $500 and $1,000 to replace money that was confiscated from prisoners and later found to be missing from the chief’s safe, Jeffers said.

“We have had some problems over there with missing monies,” Jeffers said, adding that he is still not sure exactly how much money is missing. He said that this is the subject of an ongoing police investigation, and that “sometimes putting all the facts and evidence together and subpoeaning all the witnesses . . . takes some time.”

Contessotto in the interviews last week would not say when he began the separate investigations of the missing cash and the improperly paid marksmanship bonuses.

Contessotto disclosed the missing money and falsified marksmanship scores in an extensive interview in early January for a story on a sex discrimination lawsuit against the chief and his department. The suit was filed by Victoria H. Kuhn, who was fired last year by Contessotto after she worked for 10 years as the department’s only female officer.

During the interview, Contessotto sought to discredit his former secretary, Sharon Francis, who had testified in support of Kuhn in a city Civil Service Commission hearing in November.

At the Civil Service hearing, Francis testified that Contessotto is a sexist who frequently used gutter terms to describe Kuhn and other women. Contessotto has denied the charges.

Francis was the chief’s secretary from 1983 until August, 1985, when she resigned to take a job in another city. After Francis left, Contessotto discovered that $6,000 was missing from his safe, he said. Contessotto declined to be more specific about when the discovery was made.

Secretary Not a Suspect

Contessotto said in the interview in early January that only he and Francis knew the combination to the safe in his office. During the interview, however, he repeatedly refused to say that Francis is a suspect in the department’s investigation of the missing money. Francis denied any wrongdoing.

As part of the investigation into the missing cash, the department is looking into the loss of numerous bank deposit and personnel records that Contessotto said were under Francis’ control.

The missing records cover six months’ of monthly bank deposits made by police, Contessotto said. The missing personnel records list the people who sought jobs at the Huntington Park Casino and paid $25 to the police to be fingerprinted and undergo a background check, Contessotto said.

While Contessotto asserted that both the $6,000 and missing records were under Francis’ control, Francis denied it. In an interview, she said the records were kept in a filing cabinet in her office that frequently was unlocked. The chief and the department’s two captains also had keys to the cabinet, Francis said.

“Everybody had access to that office. It’s like Grand Central Station,” Francis said.

Note Missing From Drawer

Francis said she wrote the combination to the chief’s safe on a piece of paper that she kept in her drawer. The paper subsequently disappeared, she said. “There’s a lot of people who have access to the safe,” she said, maintaining that she did not know anything about the missing money.

Francis altered records for the required monthly shooting drills “dozens of times for selected personnel,” Contessotto said.

Contessotto said he found out about the falsified scores from two officers who came to him sometime after the secretary left her job in August, 1985. He said the allegations were rumors at that point that were not immediately investigated because “That was not on my list of priorities at the time.”

Asked last week to be specific about when he learned of the altered scores, Contessotto gave two answers, saying at one point it was in September, 1985, and later saying he found out around the month of July, 1986. He declined to clarify the discrepancy. He repeatedly refused to answer whether any officers were disciplined for the falsified scores.

The department is now reviewing shooting records to determine which officers profited from the falsified scores, adding that some of the records may be missing.

“I don’t know if the records are still available,” Contessotto said in an interview last week. “If they are we will certainly take the actions that are needed.”

Mum on Probe’s Beginnings

Contessotto last week refused to say when the investigation of the falsified scores began.

In several interviews over the last few weeks, Francis confirmed that she had altered marksmanship scores, saying, “I’m not going to deny that about the marksmanship. It was more of a hassle (to keep the books) when they didn’t qualify.”

“It’s a lax department, there are no controls,” she said.

She said she changed the scores “just a few” times to benefit about five officers in 1985, just before she left. “I just didn’t care anymore,” she said, adding that the officers asked her to do it as a favor, telling her that they had either lost their shooting scores or had come within a few points of passing.

Contessotto’s department is under investigation by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner. Two former Huntington Park police officers were held to answer this month for allegedly torturing a juvenile with a stun gun. Based on evidence found in connection with that case, Reiner has said he would investigate the practices of the entire department, which he said were “frankly embarrassing to all of law enforcement.”

The department, according to a Times survey last year, had the highest frequency of brutality claims in 1984 and 1985 in the Southeast Los Angeles County and Long Beach areas.