Police Recommend Firing Former Task Force Officer : Crime: The 21-year veteran policeman and original task force member is alleged to have had sex with an informant.

San Diego police officials have recommended the firing of a 21-year veteran officer and original member of the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force who allegedly had a sexual relationship with a task force informant, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

Sgt. Harold E. Goudarzi, 43, was transferred to the department’s missing-persons bureau in October after an informant told task force investigators that she had a four-month sexual relationship with Goudarzi that began in mid-June.

The task force investigated the incident for several weeks, then turned its findings over to internal affairs, which spent four months examining the allegations.

On Friday, internal affairs forwarded its findings to Goudarzi in a 500-page, bound report that included drug tests, polygraph tests and an interview with his ex-wife, according to the source, who did not want to be identified because the recommendation is confidential.

Administrators in the homicide division, where Goudarzi worked before his transfer, recommended that he be fired, the source said.

Goudarzi left work early Friday and did not return a telephone call left at his office.

Under department regulations, Goudarzi will continue to work as a detective while the department conducts a series of hearings on the recommendation. The first hearing is before a commanding officer in the homicide division and then another before a deputy chief. If Police Chief Bob Burgreen upholds the recommendation, Goudarzi still can appeal his firing to the city’s civil service commission.

Assistant Police Chief Norm Stamper, who personally removed Goudarzi from the task force, said he could not comment on any disciplinary situation regarding an officer.

But he said the department would not tolerate an officer’s involvement with informants.

“We have a very firm and clear policy that requires a professional relationship between a police officer and a confidential informant,” he said. “Any other relationship is unacceptable.”

Allegations about Goudarzi reportedly stunned members of the task force because the group, assembled from the Sheriff’s Department, Police Department and district attorney’s office in 1988, was to be a collection of the best investigators from those agencies.

Some law enforcement officials said that Goudarzi’s removal from the task force hurt the agency’s credibility. One branch of the task force is investigating allegations of police corruption, and the group has been criticized in the past for having police officers investigate members of their own department.

Goudarzi was one of the original nine investigators assigned to the task force, which is examining the murders of 44 transients and prostitutes since 1985.

A Mira Mesa woman said she was recruited in June by Goudarzi to be a paid task force informant after telling officials she had knowledge of the case.

In October, Denise Loche, 36, a mother of two, told investigators she and Goudarzi had been having a sexual relationship. She said she had been paid $200 to work for Goudarzi, which included trying to find out who may have leaked confidential task force or grand jury information to news reporters.

Loche said she told investigators that Goudarzi drugged her during a date Oct. 13. Loche said that, while she hallucinated, Goudarzi showed her a Polaroid picture that showed him sporting ram horns.

Angry at Goudarzi, Loche said she called the task force two days after that incident, and investigators asked her to tape Goudarzi to confirm what happened that night. The following day, she taped a conversation with Goudarzi. He was removed from the task force shortly thereafter.

According to a top law enforcement official who asked not to be named because the task force policy is to operate in secret, Goudarzi acted largely on his own with Loche until others on the task force learned about her.

A task force policy mandates that at least two officials work with each informant to keep one from having too much control, the official said. Once it was determined that Goudarzi had sole authority over Loche, another task force member was assigned to help work with her, the official said.

Goudarzi joined the task force in 1988. When the group split into three branches--one to investigate the 44 murders, one to look at one particular prostitute murder and one to look at possible police corruption--Goudarzi stayed with the team looking at the overall series of slayings.

Before joining the task force, he worked in the Police Department’s robbery and homicide divisions. He also had worked in the Eastern Division, where officers dealt with prostitutes who worked along El Cajon Boulevard. Some of the prostitutes found murdered had also worked that street.