Personnel Panel to Consider Fired Deputy’s Appeal

April C. Falwell used to be a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy until an admitted drug dealer alleged she sold him cocaine several times before she joined the force, according to court records.

After an investigation, Falwell’s superiors fired her in August, ending her four-year career as a deputy.

Falwell is scheduled to try to undo the damage this morning by appealing her termination to the county Civil Service Commission.

The case began when Todd Eric Kates, 29, accused Falwell of selling cocaine to him several times in 1983, before Falwell became a deputy, according to court papers filed earlier this month to compel Kates to talk to the commission.

Kates was sentenced to serve six years at Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy after he pleaded guilty July 20 in Ventura County Superior Court to possessing cocaine for sale and transporting or selling narcotics.

Assistant County Counsel Noel Klebaum said Falwell “was terminated because of the lack of candor regarding her prior history” on her job application in 1985. “There are other reasons, but again, to preserve the integrity of whatever decision the commission might make, I can’t discuss those with you further.”

Assistant Sheriff Richard Bryce, head of personnel of the Sheriff’s Department, said his staff conducted “a very long, extensive investigation” into Falwell’s past, which lasted “a number of months” before she was fired Aug. 24.

But neither Klebaum nor Bryce would discuss the allegations against Falwell.

And her attorney, Paul Goyette of Santa Monica, declined to comment, except to say that Falwell “absolutely” denies the charges made by Kates.

Goyette made an unsuccessful bid late Tuesday to have the hearing closed, but Superior Court Judge Bruce Thompson denied Goyette’s request for a temporary restraining order. The commission, however, could decide to grant the request to close the hearing.

Falwell, 30, could not be reached for comment.

Bryce said his department is forgiving of police academy candidates who admit during the monthlong application process that they experimented once or twice with cocaine or marijuana more than a year before applying.

But “if it goes beyond mere experimentation, they’re excluded from the process,” Bryce said. About one-third of all applicants to the Sheriff’s Department “are rejected for prior drug use,” he said.

Bryce said his department would never rely solely on one outsider’s allegations in firing a deputy accused of drug violations.

“If it’s just merely the deputy’s word against another person, we would give the deputy the benefit of the doubt every time,” he said. “It would take more than just conflicting stories.”

Falwell began as a deputy in the Ventura County Jail in early 1986, Klebaum said.

She went from there to the sheriff’s East Valley station in Thousand Oaks, where she worked for about two years as a patrol deputy until she was fired, Klebaum said.