Torrance Officer in Lawsuit Had Been Fired in ’80

A Torrance police officer accused of brutality in the videotaped choking and beating of a 20-year-old man last May had been rehired by the City Council seven years ago despite a recommendation by the chief of police that he be kept off the force because of “a propensity toward overaggressive behavior.”

The Torrance City Council voted on May 12, 1981, to return Officer James Lynch to duty, nine months after Police Chief Donald Nash fired him for what he called “a behavior pattern on the job which results in continuing incidents and the probability of future incidents of misconduct.”

Last week, Lynch and his partner, Officer Ross Bartlett, were accused in a federal civil rights lawsuit of using excessive force when they broke up a party May 15 and arrested six men, ranging in age from 20 to 26. The men released a videotape to the press that shows Lynch holding Thomas Tice, 20, in a chokehold until he apparently passed out. At the same time, Bartlett hit Tice repeatedly with a night stick.

Both officers have been restricted to desk duty pending a Police Department inquiry and a district attorney’s investigation.

Hugh Manes, the attorney for the six men, said the city was negligent in rehiring Lynch despite warnings that he was violent.

“They knew about this fellow,” Manes said in a telephone interview. “The fact that they took him back says that there is a lot of negligence all the way up and down the line, not only in the Police Department, but in the administration of the city.”

But City Council members defended their decision to rehire Lynch, and they and police officials asked that the public not judge the May incident solely on the basis of the videotape.

Lt. Robert Armstrong, head of the Police Department’s personnel division, said Lynch and Bartlett were repeatedly threatened and surrounded by as many as 35 men at the party, but he said the tape, which is about three minutes long, does not show that.

Richard Shinee, an attorney for the two police officers, agreed. “I think an investigation of the entire incident will vindicate the actions of both officers,” Shinee said. “The videotape shows only a moment in time, not what happened immediately prior to that or afterward.”

Lynch, 35, and Bartlett, 24, could not be reached for comment.

City administrators and police said they received more than 200 phone calls from around the country in protest of Lynch and Bartlett’s actions, after the videotape was played last Thursday on local and network news programs.

New questions have been raised this week with the revelation that Lynch had been fired by the department for misconduct.

Police Department and city records show that Lynch’s 1980 termination--which came after a brutality allegation and ensuing psychological evaluations--was controversial. Dozens of officers attended hearings and cheered Lynch on when he appealed to the city’s Civil Service Commission for reinstatement. And a city staff member, who requested anonymity, said City Council members were under “tremendous pressure” from the influential police officers union to give Lynch his job back.

According to city records, Lynch had a record of good citizenship that made him an ideal candidate to become a Torrance police officer. He was reared in Inglewood, Hawthorne and Manhattan Beach and attended Catholic elementary school before moving on to Hawthorne High School.

In high school, he competed in football and swimming and joined social service clubs, while working 20 hours a week after school in a cafeteria. Lynch continued to hold down a job while he studied at El Camino College, graduating in 1974 with a B average and a 2-year degree in criminology.

He applied that year, at age 21, for a job with the Torrance Police Department.

A pre-employment psychological evaluation gave the first hint that Lynch had some traits not suited to police work, Chief Nash said in a 1980 memo to then-City Manager Edward Ferraro. The psychological evaluation, quoted in later firing proceedings, said Lynch had “limited capacity to relate to people. He has questionable control over his emotions. He reacts in a rather hysterical manner.”

But the report went on to say that Lynch’s “overall picture is satisfactory,” and the department hired Lynch, believing that the shortcomings were due to immaturity and could be overcome, according to testimony by a police administrator at Lynch’s 1980 dismissal hearing.

In his first five years on the job, Lynch’s performance was average to above average, and colleagues who worked with him said they would be glad to do so again, a Civil Service Commission report says.

The series of events leading to his firing began when he helped make an arrest early in the morning of July 4, 1979.

Call for Assistance

Lynch responded to a call for assistance from two other officers who were trying to arrest suspects accused of using the drug PCP. Lynch said that he found the officers injured and struggling to handcuff one of the suspects. Lynch was forced to kick the man in order to subdue him, his lawyer said later. Three other officers at the scene agreed that they would not have been able to handcuff the man without the kick, the lawyer said.

But a supervising sergeant also on the scene said the suspect was already under control and that Lynch used excessive force. Sgt. Michael Hertica wrote a departmental complaint that said Lynch later admitted that he lost his temper during the arrest, and quoted Lynch as saying that was not unusual for him during physical confrontations.

Lynch denied the statements, said he had done nothing wrong and that Hertica simply didn’t like him, according to Civil Service records. But Chief Nash ruled that the allegation was valid.

In the 10 days following the accusation of excessive force, Lynch was cited for five additional incidents of “questionable conduct,” according to a report by his watch commander. The alleged incidents ranged from attempting to provoke a prisoner to fight to filing an inaccurate police report.

Psychological Evaluation

The accusations prompted Nash to order a psychological evaluation. Psychologist Alice Pitman recommended that Lynch be taken off patrol duty to give him “some breathing space and to emphasize the seriousness of the present dilemma,” according to a copy of her evaluation in the city’s records. He worked in the department’s radio room for eight months before Pitman said he was ready to return to patrol duty.

In July, 1980, nearly a year after her first evaluation, Pitman evaluated Lynch again and wrote in a letter to the Police Department that he had made little progress.

She called Lynch a “very bright young man,” but said he continued “to see authority figures as the seat of all his difficulties.”

Pitman wrote: “His immaturity, resentment, irritability, anger, lack of insight, overaggressive stance, lack of emotional controls and, most of all, his discomfort with people . . . are all deep-seated personality traits which Mr. Lynch is unwilling or unable to modify, even with psychotherapy.”

Pitman recommended that the department “consider termination.” She said that if firing was not possible, the department should put Lynch under a management plan that would outline strict objectives for his progress.

Chief Nash sent Lynch a letter Aug. 8, 1980, advising him that he would be fired. The recommendation was upheld by a panel of city administrators and by City Manager Ferraro.

Divisive Hearing

Lynch appealed to the Civil Service Commission, which held a hearing that extended over several weeks. Lynch’s attorney at the time, Laurie Belger, recalled in an interview that the hearings were the most divisive he has seen, with as many as 70 officers booing and hissing anyone who testified against Lynch.

“I had never seen anything like it and I have been doing this for a quarter of a century,” Belger said.

Belger said other psychotherapists had found Lynch fit for police work and that the vast majority of his fellow officers wanted him back on the force. An official with the Torrance Police Officers Assn. said the union canceled its 1980 Christmas party and instead spent the $5,000 to help pay for Lynch’s defense.

Despite the lobbying efforts, the commission voted 4-2 in March of 1981 to terminate Lynch.

His appeal reached the City Council on May 12, 1981.

“There was a tremendous amount of political pressure brought to bear on the members of the City Council by members of the police officers association,” said one city employee, who requested anonymity. The pressure was significant, the source said, because the police officers union often provides endorsements, precinct workers and campaign contributions to council candidates.

Two union board members, Sgt. Harold Maestri and Sgt. Paul Besse, said they do not recall lobbying by the association.

Psychologist Blamed

Belger argued to the council that Pitman was to blame for Lynch’s firing. He said the psychologist “maybe had a bad day and a chip on her shoulder” when she recommended that the department fire him.

Pitman died in 1981.

The council voted 6-1 to return Lynch to the force, putting him on probation for one year and recommending psychological counseling. Councilman Bill Applegate, who still serves on the council, cast the lone vote to keep Lynch off the force.

“I made that unpopular decision based on the facts that were there,” Applegate said in an interview this week. “It was a very difficult decision to make.”

He refused to fault the other members who voted to rehire Lynch, including Dan Walker and Mayor Katy Geissert, the only others who are still on the council.

Both Walker and Geissert said they do not recall any significant lobbying by the police association for Lynch and said their decisions would not have been influenced.

“It’s very unusual for the City Council to overrule a recommendation made by Chief Nash,” Geissert said, “but there were varying points of view on the irreversibility of officer Lynch’s behavior pattern, as it was described by the psychologist.”

Geissert and Walker said the council majority felt that Lynch could still be an effective police officer despite the misgivings of his superiors and the psychologist.

They do not regret their action to reinstate Lynch, Geissert and Walker said.

Police officials and council members said that Lynch has done well since his return to the department. He was promoted at least twice: once to training officer, overseeing and evaluating the performance of new and probationary employees, and earlier this year to detective.

Attorney Shinee said the promotions and Lynch’s performance prove that the City Council was correct in reinstating Lynch seven years ago.