Seal Beach Hit With Racketeering Suit : Law enforcement: The action, filed in federal court, accuses the Police Department of having a quota system for arrests and citations.

Angered at what he calls a police quota system of arrests and citations, a lawyer filed an anti-racketeering suit against the city Monday that seeks $20 million in punitive damages.

The class-action suit also seeks to have fines repaid to all people arrested or cited by Seal Beach police since Jan. 1 of this year.

Ernest J. Franceschi Jr. filed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles. It accuses Seal Beach police of violating federal laws against racketeering by what it characterizes as a requirement that officers reach certain levels, or quotas, of arrests and citations.

“I believe the quota action of the Seal Beach police is extortion, and that is what I am accusing them of under the RICO act,” Franceschi said in an interview.

At issue is a controversial police “productivity policy” adopted last Jan. 1. That policy says “officers whose productivity is below 80% of the adjusted watch average . . . will be informally monitored by the appropriate supervisor and counseled toward increasing his/her productivity.”

Franceschi’s suit claims that the “productivity policy” in effect compels police to make minimum numbers of arrests and citations. The suit says the city and its Police Department “have had in force and effect an official policy establishing an ‘arrest quota.’ ”

Seal Beach Mayor Frank Laszlo said Monday that he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it. He said he and the council are opposed to quota systems and added: “I’m not sure there is a quota system in the city. . . . I think what the police have is just a study.”

This action is the second RICO suit Franceschi has filed against an Orange County city. In May, 1990, he filed a $60-million anti-racketeering suit against Huntington Beach, charging that that city was operating an illegal speed trap.

The Huntington Beach suit is pending in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Martin Mayer, special counsel to the Seal Beach Police Department, said last week that the “productivity policy” is part of a larger effort to promote better work habits. “This is one small part of a total package of productivity objectives,” Mayer said.

But critics charged last week that the policy is a thinly disguised “quota system” and as such is a violation of state law.

Franceschi’s suit notes that state law says: “No state or local agency employing peace officers . . . may establish any policy requiring any peace officer to meet an arrest quota.”

The thrust of Franceschi’s suit, however, is the accusation that Seal Beach is breaking a federal law. Extortion is one of the crimes prohibited under the RICO law, and the suit claims that Seal Beach residents were “extorted” by police seeking to fill quotas.

In the interview Monday, Franceschi said he himself was cited by Seal Beach police in recent weeks. He said police stopped him for no apparent reason and asked him to produce his driver’s license. “I had an expired driver’s license, so I was cited,” he said.

Franceschi recently moved his law practice from Seal Beach to Los Angeles.

Franceschi said the federal suit asks that all fines paid by persons arrested in Seal Beach since Jan. 1 be repaid three times over. The RICO law allows for judges to order treble repayment of the original amounts of money lost to a “racket.”