Unrest, Pressures Take Toll : Police Chief of Seal Beach Leaves on Doctor’s Orders

A day after his officers were to have been polled on problems in the department, Seal Beach Police Chief Stacy Picascia cleaned out his desk Friday, saying his doctor has told him to retire from law enforcement.

The 43-year-old Picascia, also president of the Orange County Police Chiefs Assn., said he had asked Seal Beach City Manager Robert Nelson for a three-month medical leave Thursday afternoon after being told by his doctor that job-related hypertension could kill him.

It was the second abrupt departure of an Orange County police chief in as many weeks.

Detective Mike Vasquez, president of the 39-member Seal Beach Police Officers’ Assn., said a questionnaire had been prepared to poll officers on their concerns and problems in an effort to solve them. He said the survey--prepared with Picascia’s knowledge and help--was not meant as an attack on Picascia so much as a fact-finding study.

“I feel bad that the chief is leaving, and I hope his health is better,” Vasquez said Friday. “I think everyone wishes him the best. I think it will be better for his health. He had been advised of this before, and he just wasn’t listening. And I think now he wants to get out before it does kill him.”

Asked about conditions inside the Seal Beach Police Department, the three--Nelson, Vasquez and Picascia--characterized the city’s police force as understaffed and its employees overworked, with officers putting in an average of 100 hours of overtime a month just to maintain safety in the beach city.

Picascia said he was distressed that crime was increasing in Seal Beach at a time when law-enforcement strength was declining. He said he watched in frustration as his officers suffered at home and at work.

“When I came on the force 10 years ago there were 45 sworn officers,” Picascia recalled. “Up until last year there were 28. The decreases were done through attrition because of no money. Last year I requested two officers in the budget. It was reaching a point in the last several years where we’ve been paying overtime to maintain a minimum deployment, especially for officer safety.

“Things have reached a (point) where the officers are burned out, and one of the problems every organization faces, and it goes further than that, is communication. And there was a problem with communication that I recognized.”

Vasquez said: “I think he felt for us that there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel on this.”

Sought Other Jobs

Picascia is an attorney and had a reputation among other county police chiefs as articulate and ambitious. In recent months he had unsuccessfully sought appointments as police chief of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.

Asked if he felt his ambition rubbed officers the wrong way, Picascia said, “It may have.

“Sure. You’ve got to look at motivation. I’d like to do more with this department. But it’s like trying to feed a family, and you keep looking at the checkbook, and there’s no money there. You get distraught. And I continue to see the anxiety and strife of the officers, and I feel for them.

“That has contributed to the problem I now have.”

Picascia said he assumed that the hypertension would mean the end of his police work. He said he will decide in September but has considered practicing law or pursuing a judgeship.

“I’m a cop, and I would like to keep being a cop,” Picascia said. “But my doctor has not left me with much of a choice. The medicine combinations we’ve tried after four years just haven’t lowered my blood pressure. It’s that simple.”

Numbness in his fingers and general fatigue have plagued Picascia since the hypertension began, although he said Friday that most of members of his force were unaware that he had suffered from the stress since 1983.

City Manager Nelson said that if Picascia’s anticipated medical retirement becomes a reality in three months, the acting chief, Capt. William Stearns, will be considered along with other applicants for the $61,660-a-year job.

Picascia’s leave followed by a week the resignation of San Clemente’s police chief, Kelson McDaniel, who received an overwhelming no-confidence vote from his officers. McDaniel resigned last Thursday at the request of the San Clemente city manager. Nelson and Vasquez said a no-confidence situation was never a factor in Picascia’s leave.

“This is completely different to what San Clemente had,” Vasquez said. “We were nowhere even close to calling for a confidence vote. It wasn’t even addressed on the survey. The questions were (like): ‘If you could name any one problem in the department, what would it be and how would you suggest fixing it?’ ”

Vasquez said Picascia’s medical leave had at least temporarily delayed the survey, which was to have been distributed to officers Thursday morning.

“In the last six months, we’ve had a lot of injuries, and a department our size being down that much--six officers--created an ungodly amount of overtime for us,” Vasquez said. “Then, we felt like maybe the chief and the city administrator weren’t listening to our cry for help.”

Picascia said communication problems came to his attention a few months ago, prompting him to set up a program he called Team Building, in which a professional facilitator helps employees discuss their feelings and concerns--sometimes with their supervisors.

Cleaning Out Desk

His paid medical leave is “kind of a procedural thing,” Picascia said Friday. “You kind of give it time, but the prognosis yesterday from the doctor was: ‘Do you want to go home or to the hospital?’ I’m going to have to retire. And I’m cleaning my desk out today.”

He said his retirement would mean resignation from the Orange County Chief of Police Assn.

Figuring that his disability pension will be nearly $31,000, about half his current salary, Picascia said he will probably have to find work.

“I’m not married; I have no kids. I have some options. I used to teach karate years and years ago,” he said laughing.

The practice of law--he handled civil litigation as a Seal Beach police captain with City Council approval--may also be in his future, Picascia said.

“Or quite frankly, I was really looking at becoming a judge.”

Have there been offers?

Picascia, a registered Republican, said “the application process” to the governor’s office or a campaign for a judgeship are possibilities.

Running for Judge

“I have been talked to by a couple of people off and on about going through the election process,” Picascia added.

Picascia was studying electronic engineering at Cal State Long Beach in 1968 when he abandoned that field and became a patrol officer for the Inglewood Police Department. Before he left that department nine years later, Picascia had made sergeant and had earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and administration from Cal State Los Angeles, a master’s degree in education from Chapman College in Orange and a degree from the School of Law of the University of West Los Angeles, Culver City.

He joined the Seal Beach department in 1977 as a captain, and in 1980 he was appointed chief.

“No matter how you cut the pie, the president of a corporation, the editor of a newspaper, the chief of police, they have to take responsibility, and they are going to take the brunt for whatever is going on. And that added to my frustration,” Picascia said.

Seal Beach “was and still is a neat city. A really, really neat city. . . . I’m going to miss it.”