Dismissal of Ex-Officers’ Claims Upheld : Civil rights: Judge ruled that they failed to prove discrimination in Santa Ana Police Department.

An appeals court has upheld a federal judge’s decision not to allow a jury to hear discrimination charges against the Santa Ana Police Department in a highly controversial civil rights lawsuit over the treatment of Latino officers.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon was not “incorrect” when he decided in 1985 that three former Santa Ana police officers had failed to prove the existence of a discriminatory atmosphere in the Santa Ana Police Department.

Kenyon had thrown out a lawsuit by the former officers, Jesse J. Sanchez, Victor Torres and Robert Caro, who claimed that they had been forced out of the department by racial and ethnic attitudes that violated their civil rights. Kenyon said at the time that the suit “by and large constituted a serious abuse of the judicial process.”

Attorneys for the plaintiffs appealed the ruling, claiming that “enough evidence was presented so that a reasonable jury could have found the existence of a hostile work environment.” However, Kenyon dismissed the lawsuit before the evidence could be presented to a jury.

In an opinion written by Chief Justice Alfred T. Goodwin, the appellate court said the plaintiffs’ claim was a “mischaracterization of the record.”

Sanchez, Torres, and Caro had joined the Santa Ana police force during a minority recruiting effort in 1975 and 1976. The recruiting effort was in response to a federal job discrimination suit, which ended in a 1976 court finding that the city had systematically discriminated against Latinos. At that time, Latinos constituted 26% of the city population, but only 9% of the police force.

The former officers filed an explosive, wide-ranging lawsuit in 1979 charging that the Police Department had violated their civil rights by instigating improper personnel actions against them and by allowing harassment from Anglo colleagues.

Sanchez and Torres claimed that they were forced to resign and Caro alleged that he was wrongfully fired.

Later in the year of Kenyon’s ruling, a federal court jury in a separate action awarded Sanchez $900,000 and found that he was denied due process of law when he tried to collect back wages from the city.

Meir J. Westreich, the attorney for the three former officers, could not be reached for comment.