Ex-Policewoman Appeals Dismissal in Drug Probe : Fear Prompted Actions, Fired Officer Says

A Los Angeles policewoman, fired in February for allegedly becoming romantically involved with a high school football player during an undercover drug investigation, asserted Wednesday that she merely befriended the student to bolster her undercover identity at a time when she feared for her safety.

Sharon Fischer, 22, who posed as a student last fall at Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, said she befriended the 17-year-old football player, who police said was not a drug suspect, after being “assaulted” in a school corridor by a male student.

In addition, she said, students involved in drug sales at the school were beginning to suspect she was a “narc,” and she hoped her friendship with the player would convince students that she was one of them.

But a police spokesman said she wrote notes to the student that reflected “an attempt to establish a prohibited relationship.” Police allege that the pair had a “romantic, not sexual” relationship.

Fischer, who appealed her firing, presented her case to a Police Department hearing officer on Monday. The hearing officer will present his findings to Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, whose final decision on the matter could come by the end of the week, Cmdr. William D. Booth said.

Booth would not disclose the hearing officer’s findings, but Fischer’s attorney, Michael P. Stone, said the hearing officer sustained the charges against Fischer.

Fischer, a probationary officer who had completed a year of her 18-month training period when she took the undercover assignment, gave her first public defense Wednesday at a press conference at Stone’s Wilshire Boulevard office. She said she wanted to explain her actions because “the public, the press and the department . . . made me out to be a bad guy, and I just felt it was time for me to tell my side of the story.”

As part of the police “school buy” undercover program, Fischer posed as a student named Sharon Odell and pretended to be a 17-year-old with “a healthy appetite” for drugs, Stone said. The investigation at Kennedy High School resulted in nine arrests, but the cases were dropped because authorities feared any prosecution would be tainted by Fischer’s “bad judgment,” Booth said.

The police spokesman would not discuss in detail the department’s evidence in the case.

Fischer and Stone, who is general counsel for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, alleged that much of that evidence comes from “rumors” culled from interviews with students, along with several notes the officer wrote to the football player at school.

Neither side made public the content of the notes, but Stone acknowledged that some of the banter in them “is of a sexual nature.” However, he said, “the tone of the letters is light.”

Fischer said the notes were merely part of her effort to befriend the student.

But the Police Department maintains that the notes, which were presented to investigators by the student’s mother, were improperly suggestive, Stone said.

Booth indicated that they are, indeed, central to the department’s case, saying, “The nature of them constitutes powerful evidence and confirms that there was an attempt to establish a prohibited relationship.”

Stone said the Police Department also alleges that Fischer made an improper telephone call to the student’s home. Fischer said the call also was part of her attempt to establish a friendship, and that it largely concerned her assumed drug problem, which she said concerned the student.

The fired policewoman said she consulted her superior officer before seeking the student as a friend. The request came after another male student pulled her into an alcove at the school, manhandled her and tried to kiss her, Fischer said.

Tells of Breaking Away

She said she broke away, but was shaken by the incident, and figured an alliance with “a big man on campus” would protect her. She said she also was worried that some students were suspicious because of her frequent drug buys, and questioned whether she was too old to be in high school.

“After the friendship began . . . I stopped being called an undercover officer,” she said.

The football player eventually became enamored of Fischer, asking her to meet him after Friday night football games. But Fischer gave excuses to avoid him, she said.

According to Stone, the student falsely told some of his friends that he had a sexual relationship with her.

Fischer said she regrets having deceived the football player and other students.

“I didn’t anticipate the hurt that he felt,” Fischer said. “It was not the best feeling in the world, no, but I was there for a purpose and I accomplished my job . . . to buy drugs.”