Coffee Caper Grinds to Halt:

Police Don’t Get a Break

The San Diego Police Department is having trouble all over the place.

Several dozen prostitutes have up and gotten themselves dead and nobody knows why. A serial killer is stalking the women of Clairemont.

The city had a record 125 homicides through September, many drug- and gang-related. Cops seem to be shooting their guns with deadly abandon, often at people armed only with trowels and tomato stakes.

Amid all this murder and madness, the department found enough manpower and equipment to bust open the Great Coffeegate Scandal.

A hidden camera was installed for several weeks at the Eastern Division headquarters on Aero Drive near Montgomery Field to see who was filching from the coffee fund.

Internal affairs got involved. Now the division commander has the careers and reputations of three sergeants in his hands.

The three were found to have gone in arrears to the coffee fund. Grand total: about $10.

The coffee fund is like that in millions of offices across the country. You put in a buck and take some change to buy some coffee or a candy bar from the vending machines.

Somedays you’re broke, but you’re still hungry or thirsty. You take some change and make good on it later.

When the undercover investigation was over, the sergeants were hauled in and read their Miranda rights.

The three are street cops, with an average of 13 years in the department. They’ve got experience on the SWAT squad, the homicide squad, the sex-crime unit and street patrol.

The case was sent to the district attorney’s office, which declined to press felony charges. The case was sent to the city attorney’s office, which is reviewing possible petty theft charges.

Don’t look for charges to be filed. A deputy city attorney laughingly says that if coffee-fund filchers start being prosecuted there won’t be an office in San Diego left untouched, including his own.

The P.D. is also getting in its licks. The commander has the authority to put nasty letters in the cops’ files or mete out suspensions.

Nasty letters tend to haunt a cop at promotion time. Suspensions cost money.

I talked to one of the sergeants. He’s humiliated and twisted in knots by the whole sorry episode.

He wonders why the department didn’t simply post a sign over the coffee fund box warning cops not to float penny-ante loans. Good question.

A police official says the amount of money involved is irrelevant. Theft of money, even in piddling amounts, is a serious matter and should be dealt with severely, he says.

Why does that remind me of “The Caine Mutiny” when Capt. Queeg orders an investigation into a missing quart of strawberries?

Restful Workout

Speak for yourself.

* Fitness revolt.

At the National Assn. of Real Estate Investment Trusts convention at the Hotel del Coronado, today’s agenda lists a “Fun Walk and Run” for 7 a.m.

Also listed is an alternative organized by Lou Garday of San Diego’s Burnham Pacific Properties: “Fun Sleep In with complimentary coffee and juice delivered to your room.”

* Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas) had some lapses this week during a candidates’ forum in Rancho Bernardo.

She was asked about ethics in Sacramento in the wake of the vote-selling convictions of Paul Carpenter and Joseph Montoya. She drew a blank on Carpenter:

“Has he been convicted?” (Yes, a month ago.)

Later she couldn’t recall Propositions 131 and 132:

“I’m suffering from Alzheimer’s at the moment.”

The comment drew silence from her audience of 50 or so residents at the Casa de las Campanas retirement home. Average age: Seventysomething.

* The Marine Corps needs a few good dental assistants.

Camp Pendleton is looking for civilian volunteers to work in clinics for dependents and retirees. All uniformed dental assistants are on toothache duty in the Mideast.