Block Rehires Deputies in Racial Incident

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block said Saturday that he rehired two white deputies who were fired last year for burning a cross in a Men’s Central Jail module where members of a black street gang were housed.

Block said he made the decision believing that he did not have sufficient evidence to uphold the firing of the deputies in a Civil Service Commission appeal hearing.

The deputies, Brian E. Kazmierski, 26, and Richard D. Bolks, 25, were rehired in September. Kazmierski is stationed at the sheriff’s Temple City station. Bolks is working as a jail attendant at Biscailuz Center, a county lockup in East Los Angeles.

A commission hearing officer in January concluded that Block acted properly in removing the two deputies, but the full commission ordered a new hearing.

Block emphasized that the commission, in calling for the new hearing, “rejected its own hearing officer’s findings.” The hearing officer determined that the deputies, in an attempt to intimidate the inmates, held a match to an aerosol can, creating a makeshift blowtorch that set a paper cross on fire.

Block said he had informed the commission that, in the event of a second appeals trial, the case against the deputies would be weakened because “several key witnesses” would not be available. Block said that the commission disregarded the warning.

“This department was placed in a position where it could no longer prove the allegations (against Kazmierski and Bolks)--that I believe to be true,” Block said in a statement read by a department spokesman.

While awaiting a second hearing, the Sheriff’s Department settled the case by reinstating the two deputies, sheriff’s spokesman Bob Olmsted said.

“I had no alternative but to impose a lesser discipline than I believe appropriate,” Block said.

Block made the comments after published reports suggested that he had made a quiet arrangement to reinstate the deputies, and to award partial back pay for the time between their firing in June, 1989, and their rehiring. The reports included comments from civil rights activists who condemned the decision, characterizing it as being based on allegedly racist attitudes held by Block and several Sheriff’s Department personnel.

“I am outraged by reports in the media that imply the recent reinstatement of two deputy sheriffs is due to racism,” Block said. “I want it clearly understood that racism has never been, is not now, and never will be tolerated in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”