Deputies Appeal Firing, Deny Jail Cross-Burning

Two fired sheriff’s deputies denied Thursday that they burned a cross in Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, where members of the Crips, a black street gang, were housed about two years ago.

The two, Brian E. Kazmierski and Richard D. Bolks, testified at a Civil Service Commission appeals hearing that they were merely playing around when Bolks stuck two pieces of tape to a control booth window to “X-out” a swastika sign flashed by an inmate called “Red.”

Both former jailers admitted lighting spray from an aerosol can and using the flames to kill cockroaches in the control booth. They also said they pointed the “flame throwers” at an inmate who was spraying water at them from beyond the control room glass.

“There was nothing racially motivated,” Bolks insisted. “These two pieces of tape were hung in a window by myself, and I immediately pulled the tape off the window. . . . My intention was simply to denounce his (Red’s) act.”

Both Bolks and Kazmierski denied the tape was ever set on fire.

After a lengthy probe by sheriff’s investigators, the two former jailers were accused in letters of discharge of burning a cross in Module 4800 on the evening shift sometime between Dec. 26, 1987, and Jan. 11, 1988.

“The module lights were dimmed and heavy-metal music, which is considered as ‘devil worship’ or ‘satanic’ music by the Crips, was played and racial remarks . . . were also made over the loudspeaker system,” the letters said.

“The incident incited the inmates to such a degree that some inmates talked of taking a deputy hostage in retaliation for the racial tones of the incident.”

Bolks and Kazmierski were accused of first admitting to supervisors that a cross was burned and then denying it to investigators. They were advised that by their action they had forfeited their rights to be sheriff’s deputies.

Hearing officer Huey P. Shepard took the case under submission Thursday after attorney Richard Shinee, representing Bolks and Kazmierski, and Sgt. Susan Weekly, Sheriff’s Department advocate, decided to skip oral or written argument.

In an opening statement, however, Shinee said a cross was never burned in the Crips module and that “horseplay” by his clients had been exaggerated by inmates “to get the deputies in trouble.”

Reports that crosses had been burned in Men’s Central Jail surfaced in January at a Civil Service Commission hearing for Eugene A. Harris, a probationary black deputy who had been fired for allegedly stealing one inmate’s candy bar and taking another’s hair brush.

During the hearing, George Ricks, a black deputy with 18 years service, testified under questioning by Harris’ lawyer, Laurence B. Labovitz, that crosses had been burned at the jail.

The Sheriff’s Department launched an investigation soon afterward.