Chief Recalls Request by Wright: ‘Have Your Officer Call In Sick’

The Simi Valley police chief has told investigators that Assemblywoman Cathie Wright asked him to void a speeding ticket for her daughter last year and when he refused, she suggested that the officer who wrote the citation call in sick the day the matter went to court.

In a letter to the Ventura County district attorney’s office, Simi Valley Police Chief Lindsey (Paul) Miller recalled being told by Wright (R-Simi Valley) that her frequently ticketed daughter, Victoria, would lose her license unless the May 18, 1988, speeding citation was dismissed.

Wright’s alleged action occurred less than a year after the state Legislature passed a law making it a misdemeanor for a police officer to dismiss a ticket before it is decided by the courts. Wright voted for the measure.

The disclosure has arisen as part of an investigation by Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury’s office into reports that Wright improperly intervened with judicial, police and state Department of Motor Vehicle officials to keep her 24-year-old daughter behind the wheel despite 27 traffic tickets since 1981. Miller reportedly wrote the letter after Bradbury asked him whether Wright had sought to fix any tickets.

An upset Wright “indicated that her daughter was going to lose her license,” Miller reported in his March 2, 1989, letter. “She then asked if we would ‘take back the ticket.’ ”

Miller wrote that he responded by citing a law passed in June, 1987, that said that anyone who “alters, conceals, modifies, nullifies, or destroys” a ticket before it is filed with the court is guilty of a misdemeanor.

According to Miller’s letter to Bradbury, Wright then “expressed words to the effect, ‘Well, why can’t you have your officer call in sick?’ ”

A traffic ticket is usually dismissed if the police officer who issued it fails to respond to a subpoena to appear in court. Police may face disciplinary action from superiors for failing to answer such a subpoena, law enforcement officials say.

The May 18, 1988, ticket was not withdrawn by the police. But it never led to a court hearing. Municipal Judge Bruce A. Clark dismissed the citation along with a subsequent May 22, 1988, speeding ticket on the condition that Victoria Wright attend traffic school. Clark has reportedly been questioned by investigators about a visit that Cathie Wright made to his Ventura home to discuss Victoria Wright’s pending traffic offenses.

Comment Withheld

Wright, a conservative eight-year Assembly veteran and former Simi Valley mayor, declined to comment Monday. In the past, she has denied doing anything improper for her daughter.

Chief Miller, asked about the May 18 incident, said, “Mr. Bradbury asked me to not make comments on it until such time as his report is released.” Bradbury has declined to discuss details of the inquiry, which is expected to be completed next month.

But Bradbury’s chief deputy, Vincent O’Neill, said Monday that Miller contacted him last spring about a phone call from Wright. Although O’Neill said he could not recall the conversation in detail, he said it concerned “Cathie Wright asking the chief to take what appeared to be inappropriate action on a ticket.”

O’Neill said his recollection was that Wright’s request did not break any laws “or we would have taken other action.” He added that Miller “was in no way even hinting that he had any inclination” to do what the lawmaker had asked him.

Simi Valley Police Officer Glenn Peterson, who issued the May 18 ticket to Victoria Wright for going 53 m.p.h. in a 40 m.p.h. zone and not possessing a vehicle registration, declined comment.

Wright’s alleged phone call to the police chief occurred during a period when she was apparently especially active on her daughter’s behalf. A month earlier, Judge Herbert Curtis III had fined Victoria Wright for two speeding tickets and placed her on three years’ probation with a 30-day suspended sentence for driving without a license.

Curtis, a Democrat, has told Bradbury’s investigators that last spring Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) called him at Cathie Wright’s behest and told him that Victoria “was a good person trying to get her life in order and deserved a break in the case,” said an official familiar with the probe.

License Suspended

Victoria Wright’s license was eventually suspended for six months after a DMV hearing her mother attended in June, 1988. But, after Cathie Wright wrote to DMV Director A. A. (Del) Pierce requesting an administrative review, a hearing officer sent from Sacramento to Van Nuys granted Victoria a restricted license to travel to and from work. That license was revoked March 9 after she received three more convictions.