Welfare-Fraud Investigators Fail to Meet Standards

San Diego is the only populous county in the state whose welfare-fraud investigators fail to meet the minimum state requirements for sworn peace officers, casting doubts on the legality of some prosecutions, officials said.

Failure to meet state standards has left the county in the perilous position of having investigators working for the Department of Social Services who might have conducted criminal inquiries without legal authority.

A state official also said the county could be exposing itself to civil lawsuits by using unqualified investigators to examine welfare-fraud cases.

The problem is nothing new to local officials. The state has been reminding the county Department of Social Services since 1980 of the need to have its 30 investigators meet the minimum standards. A law passed that year extended peace officer status to welfare-fraud investigators.

The department was reminded again in March, 1989, in a memo written by a state official.

Specifically, the county has failed to conduct background checks of its investigators, submit their fingerprints to the state Department of Justice and FBI for clearance and has failed to subject them to a medical and psychological screening. These, and other more routine requirements, are mandated by state law for sworn peace officers.

Ruth Ann Zaid, who supervises the welfare investigators, said Monday she is taking steps to make sure each investigator meets those state requirements. Zaid, who assumed command of the investigative unit in January, said she does not know why the department failed to abide by the law.

“I recognized that we hadn’t done the fingerprinting. . . . I saw it as being a problem and moved to correct it,” Zaid said. “Background checks are also being currently done. I can’t tell you why it wasn’t done in the past. As for psychological screenings, we’re in the process of doing that.”

Rick Tibbitts, an official with the Fraud Management Bureau of the state Department of Social Service, said that San Diego County’s failure to require its investigators to meet minimum standards “is indeed unusual.”

“It’s the law,” he said. “Search warrants can only be served by sworn peace officers. This could make their warrants defective.”

Tibbitts said that sometimes smaller counties, with one or two investigators, fail to meet the standards.

“But this is unheard of in larger counties,” he said.

Background checks are “especially crucial,” said Tibbitts, “because you want to know who’s working for you when you have him in a job that provides access to law enforcement records.”

In a June 19, 1985, memorandum made available to The Times, an employee warned then-chief investigator Carol Bauer of the agency’s continued failure to require its investigators to meet minimum state standards. The author, who was not The Times’ source for the memo, complained that “we may have no more authority than private citizens.”

“Any investigator not meeting the minimum standards . . . cannot legally sign affidavits for search warrants, or serve search warrants; cannot legally conduct criminal investigations and may be civilly liable for conducting them without having the legal authority to do so,” the memo stated.

Several other memos made available to The Times by former investigators repeated the warnings.

Several defense attorneys said the county skirted the law by having investigators with the district attorney’s office sign search warrant affidavits in criminal cases.

Marsha Duggan, who has represented dozens of defendants charged in welfare-fraud cases, said she never saw a search warrant affidavit signed by an investigator from the county Department of Social Services.

“If there ever was a search, the D.A. investigator usually obtained the search warrant. I don’t recall ever seeing an affidavit signed by a DSS investigator,” Duggan said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ralph Fear, who supervises welfare-fraud prosecutions, said the welfare investigators’ failure to meet state standards will not affect any past convictions.

“This has no bearing on their ability to interview a witness and gather evidence to get a conviction. . . . I don’t know where this would void any conviction,” Fear said.