Police Chief Is Cited by Officer in Bias Lawsuit : Racial tensions: Alhambra’s Russell Siverling is serving as a representative of law enforcement in talks with minority leaders about use of force.

Russell Siverling, the Alhambra police chief who is a lead representative for a delegation of Los Angeles County chiefs in federally sponsored talks with minority community leaders over police conduct, is a defendant in a racial bias lawsuit filed by one of his four black officers.

Bradley Sheffield, a seven-year veteran, claims in his suit that during a two-year period, he was addressed with racial epithets by fellow officers, that his locker was spray-painted black, watermelons or objects resembling them were left for him and that fellow officers threatened to revive the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate him.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks an injunction to stop the defendants from harassing and intimidating Sheffield and also asks for unspecified damages.

In April, two days after Sheffield declared his intent to file the suit, he was ordered by Siverling to undergo a psychological examination. Later, based on a report by the psychologist that Sheffield was “not recommended as fit for duty at this time,” Siverling put him on unpaid leave, where he remains.

Sheffield’s lawyer, Joe Hopkins, and friends say the trouble began when it became known that he had had an affair with a white police clerk.

The suit adds that “on one or more occasions,” Sheffield learned of a police radio dispatch identifying a crime in progress as an “NIA,” or “Niger in Alhambra.” The racial slur, states the suit, suggested that “the mere presence of black persons within the city constituted probable cause for their detention and/or arrest . . . “

Siverling said that city rules prevented him from commenting on the allegations. But, he added, “It is clear to me that the media is being used to lever the city into a favorable position (toward Sheffield).”

Drew Bridges, a lawyer representing Alhambra and its Police Department in the matter, said: “I can say that race played no factor in any action taken by the city with respect to Mr. Sheffield. I’m confident that the city’s position is correct and that its position will be vindicated if and when Mr. Sheffield requires that it (the case) be tried.”

Bridges also represented Alhambra recently in reaching a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice under which the city agreed to re-test black and Asian applicants whom it had refused to hire for police and firefighting positions. The city also agreed to spend up to $180,000 to settle claims by applicants who contended they were not hired on account of racial bias.

Siverling has been the representative of the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Assn. in contacts with the Community Relations Service of the Justice Department that led last week to a two-day meeting and an unprecedented agreement to form a permanent working group of police chiefs and minority leaders to discuss ways of easing tensions over police use of force in the county.

Just last Saturday, he was among those who proclaimed the meeting a success, saying it was “remarkable how many areas we did agree about.”

Hopkins said, “I think it’s an absolute insult to the whole Los Angeles community to have this chief heading up the chiefs’ delegation when it is clear that his own department is highly involved in race discrimination itself.”

Emerging as an important side issue in the Sheffield matter is the validity of the psychological report that suggested he was unfit for duty.

The five-page report addressed to Siverling was prepared after a battery of tests and a single personal session with Sheffield by Encino psychologist Susan Saxe-Clifford, who said in an interview that she works for about 30 police agencies in the Southland, preparing such fitness evaluation reports.

The Saxe-Clifford report declared, in part, that the test profile of Sheffield indicated psychotic tendencies “with such symptoms as emotional flatness and inappropriacy (sic), delusions, hallucinations and looseness of associations. This is apt to reflect a primary thought disorder and a current disorganization of intellectual functioning . . . “ However, the psychologist acknowledged in a Times interview that these were not her words, but represented an analysis by Dr. Alex Caldwell, an expert in interpreting the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test that she had administered to Sheffield. She did not mention she was quoting from Caldwell in her report.

Caldwell said that he never deals directly with patients but performs analyses of psychological tests only when retained by psychologists or psychiatrists.