Firing of Deputies in Cross-Burning Incident Upheld

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department acted properly in firing two deputies who allegedly burned a cross in a Men’s Central Jail module where members of the Crips, a black street gang, were housed, a Civil Service Commission hearing officer concluded Tuesday.

The fired deputies, Brian E. Kazmierski, 25, of Whittier and Richard D. Bolks, 24, of Long Beach, had appealed their dismissals, maintaining that neither had burned a cross. They also testified that they were merely playing around with an inmate when Bolks stuck two pieces of tape to a control booth window.

Hearing officer Huey P. Shepard found, however, that the cross burning did take place sometime in late December, 1987, or early January, 1988, and that Kazmierski and Bolks “were participants in the act.”

Firing the deputies “is appropriate under the overall circumstances of this case,” Shepard concluded in his 47-page recommendation. “The significance of such an incident to the community at large is of such gravity that for the department not to act would be an indication of the department condoning such acts.

“Law enforcement officers must be free of any evidence of bias, and the conduct of the (deputies) brought discredit upon themselves, their department and endangered inmates and sworn personnel.”

A Civil Service Commission spokeswoman said the panel will consider Shepard’s recommendations at its Jan. 31 meeting.

The deputies testified at their appeals hearing that the incident grew out of horseplay with an inmate who flashed a swastika sign. Bolks, they testified, stuck two pieces of tape to the control booth window to “X-out” the inmate’s swastika, much in the same way one gang might X-out a rival gang’s insignia on a wall.

Bolks and Kazmierski 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 outside the glass booth.

Both, however, denied allegations that the tape stuck to the window had been set on fire to create a makeshift burning cross.