Tub Case Officer Asked Woman if She Liked to ‘Jacuzzi,’ Board Told

Two Los Angeles police officers accused of throwing a hot-tub party with two women while on duty last year also detained a local school official after she made an illegal U-turn, with one officer asking her if she “liked to Jacuzzi,” according to testimony Friday.

Helen Chernow, who is a junior high school dean of students, was called as a witness at a misconduct hearing by the Los Angeles Police Department in an effort to show that motorcycle Officer Kelly (Clickety) Klatt has a pattern of socializing while on duty. Chernow filed a complaint against Klatt after the incident in September, 1986, but no evidence of misconduct was found, officials said.

Chernow said she was “furious” after being detained by Klatt and his partner, John Nichols, for several minutes before being allowed to go without a citation.

Klatt shined a flashlight on her legs, Chernow said, asked about her husband and the family photos in her wallet and finally requested the address of a friend whom Chernow said she had just been visiting.

Same Night

The friend, Paulette Davis, a counselor at Banning High School, testified that Klatt showed up at her apartment in uniform the same night and asked whether she knew Chernow.

Davis said she invited Klatt in and, after he assured her that Chernow was safe, she chatted with him for more than half an hour about police work and schools and reminisced about the 1960s. Nichols patrolled on a motorcycle up and down her street, she said, and joined Klatt in her apartment during the last few minutes of the visit.

Davis said she was not offended by the visit but suspected that Klatt was there “to check me out.”

The next day, Davis said, Klatt again stopped by on his police motorcycle, but by that time she had talked to Chernow and had decided “he wasn’t going to get in my house.”

Both women testified that Klatt asked them whether they “like to Jacuzzi,” but that he never requested their phone numbers or asked them for a date.

Klatt, speaking after the hearing, said the testimony, and the hot-tub party accusations made by the key witness, Laura Ann Bisho, “are just not true, and my wife and family are suffering very emotionally from all this.”

‘Reacted Negatively’

Klatt’s representative in the Police Department hearing, Sgt. David Gossman, said later that Chernow overreacted to Klatt’s style, “which is that he is one of our really friendly officers.” Gossman said Davis reacted negatively because she was influenced by her friend.

Gossman said the officer went to the apartment in part to verify Chernow’s story and that it was later that Klatt, the department’s most prolific traffic citation writer, decided not to issue a ticket.

Meanwhile, Gossman and Sgt. Harry Ryan, who represents Nichols, continued to question the credibility of key witness Bisho, who claims that she had sexual relations with both officers while they were on duty and became Nichols’ girlfriend for several months.

Bisho has related a tale of innumerable one-night stands with various policemen, and has presented two calendars on which she claims to have kept a tally of her encounters.

Police have so far been unable to substantiate many of her claims. She filed battery charges against Nichols at one point but failed a lie detector test, according to police. She has also been convicted in Fullerton of impersonating a social worker and of harassing Nichols’ son.