Police Work Stoppages Illegal, Court Declares

Work stoppages by police are illegal because they pose an inherent risk to public safety, a state appellate court ruled Thursday in a case involving the Santa Ana police.

The ruling appears to clarify a 1985 state Supreme Court decision that recognized public employees’ right to strike--a right that until then had been withheld by lower courts--as long as the strike posed no threat to public health or safety.

In that decision, the court noted that state law already prohibits firefighters from striking, and applying the public safety test to strikes by other groups would allow courts to restrict similar actions by law enforcement personnel. But it did not expressly prohibit strikes by police.

However, in the decision Thursday by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana, Justice David G. Sills wrote that holding police-work stoppages up to the public safety test is “an impossible task” because judges “are not blessed with clairvoyant powers--they cannot foresee an earthquake, a madman’s shooting spree or a riot.”

Santa Ana Deputy City Atty. Frank L. Rhemrev said the appellate court decision breaks new ground because “it relegates police officers to that class of public employees who cannot strike. . . . This says that any type of a (police) strike, be it the blue flu, long-term, short-term, whatever, is a (public) danger.”

The decision arose from a 1987 case in which dozens of Santa Ana police officers called in sick for 2 days to express their displeasure at the city’s refusal to accept their terms for a new contract.

‘Blue Flu’ Injunction

Shortly after the sickout ended, the city obtained an injunction in Orange County Superior Court that barred the officers from striking or engaging in another “blue flu” episode, and Thursday’s ruling upheld that decision.

Seth Kelsey, attorney for the Santa Ana Police Benevolent Assn., said that the new decision “left us confused” and that he would appeal.

“The way I understand it, it does make the blanket statement that police strikes are per se illegal,” Kelsey said. “Elsewhere in the opinion, it makes the statement that they’re supposed to be decided on a case-by-case basis.”

Kelsey said the police association’s appeal to have the injunction lifted was based on the contention that the sickout “was designed specifically to avoid a reduction or shortage of manpower” and therefore posed no threat to public safety.

The court ruled, however, that requiring officers to work overtime shifts to fill in for those who participated in the sickout constitutes an inherent threat to public safety because of their impaired effectiveness.

Overtime Use Called ‘Hokum’

“To argue that using officers who have already worked a shift constitutes adequate staffing is hokum,” the court said.

But police association president Sgt. Donald Blankenship said such reasoning supports one of the very points that the officers were trying to make when they staged their sickout: that the city’s failure to hire more police was unfairly burdening officers with thousands of hours of overtime each month.

“We were down a lot of officers,” Blankenship said. “That impairs public safety. . . . The whole intent is to have enough units, even more units than we have now, on the streets, and have the city pay for it.”