Probe of Police Reveals Only Petty Offenses : Law Enforcement: Investigators ‘dug real hard’ but found no serious corruption by San Diego officers. City officials say that’s a ringing endorsement of the department.

For more than two years, rumors of corruption ripped through San Diego police headquarters.

There were titillating tales of police involvement with prostitutes, a cover-up of the shooting of the Chargers star quarterback, allegations of police killing a female informant for testifying against officers. And much more.

Now, after two grand jury investigations, a probe by a special law enforcement task force and an internal examination within the Police Department itself, the results are in: Investigators have found no evidence behind the most sensational allegations.

With the exception of a few officers involved in relatively minor misdeeds, there is no proof of wholesale corruption within the department.

The investigations have concluded that, at worst, a dozen officers in the mid-1980s were involved in what has been characterized as isolated instances of misconduct.

Of those, Police Chief Bob Burgreen said, five officers will be disciplined. He said the rest of the charges are unfounded. No evidence surfaced that could lead to criminal charges, he said.

“To me, all of this falls under the category of petty corruption,” Burgreen said. “We’re not talking about somebody hauling off $100,000 in a suitcase or having a yacht given to them by drug dealers. What we’re talking about is nickel-and-dime types of misconduct, very petty corruption.”

Those outside the department also have found the results encouraging.

“For such a large metropolitan police department to be investigated for such a long time and to find so few who had culpability is interesting to me,” said Arthur Ellis, chairman of the Citizens Review Board on Police Practices. “I think they’ve gotten to the bottom of it.”

The allegations of corruption and misconduct were major stories in the media for well over a year after county grand jury testimony was leaked to a local newspaper.

Witnesses testifying before the 1989-90 grand jury accused officers, including then-Chief Bill Kolender, of sexual involvement with prostitutes. The grand jury heard testimony that police protected the call-girl operation of Karen Wilkening, who kept a Rolodex of powerful clientele that officers had “sanitized” during a raid at her home.

When some grand jurors said they were outraged by some officers who allegedly lied and gave “incredible” testimony, the siege of the department continued.

In all, the grand jury listened to testimony from 53 witnesses, 44 of them police officers. A special branch of the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force helped the 1990-91 grand jury finish the massive probe by talking to 80 officers, 10 informants and 100 other witnesses.

Now, unless task force investigators can link the death of one prostitute and the disappearance of another to the Police Department--a likelihood law enforcement sources say is remote--then the investigation, officials say, will have resulted in very little.

Recent investigations of other big-city police departments have yielded far more evidence of corruption.

In Miami, for example, three police officers were indicted last year for taking more than $1 million in cash, 110 pounds of cocaine and a ton of marijuana from drug dealers. In 1989, six members of its narcotics unit were indicted on charges of chasing down a drug dealer and beating him to death.

Last March in Los Angeles, seven former sheriff’s deputies were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two years to five years for stealing $893,000 during narcotics raids.

But, in San Diego, investigators over two years “dug real hard and turned up very little,” said Harry O. Eastus, president of the Police Officers Assn. “They put everything they had into this. If there had been something ugly, they would have found it.”

“Probably no other large department in the country would show so little corruption after such a large investigation,” said Everett Bobbitt, an attorney who represents San Diego police officers.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor said the results of the investigations show that “99.9% of the Police Deparment has an excellent record, and we can take heart from that. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some isolated problems . . . but the chief is looking into it and will take care of it.”

Speculation about possible police corruption surfaced in 1987, when vice officers raided Wilkening’s call-girl operation and seized a Rolodex said to include a list of prominent San Diego customers from her Linda Vista condominium.

The 1989-90 grand jury spent a year investigating Wilkening, the possibility that Kolender was involved with her or her business, police favoritism involving the San Diego Chargers and other issues.

Without enough time to resolve the issues, the jury turned over its findings to the 1990-91 grand jury, which enlisted the help of the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force.

The task force, a group of investigators from the Police Department, the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office, had been formed in September, 1988, to investigate a series of prostitute slayings.

At first it focused on the murder of Donna Gentile, a prostitute and police informant killed in June, 1985. Gentile’s death drew particular attention because she had testified before Civil Service commissioners that she had been personally involved with two police officers, Carl Black and Larry Avrech.

Gentile was discovered nude and strangled in East County. Rocks had been stuffed in her mouth, indicating that she may have been silenced because of her testimony. Black and Avrech said they had nothing to do with her death.

The 1990-91 grand jury, aided by the task force, determined in June that there was no evidence that San Diego police officers or Kolender were involved with Wilkening or her employees. They found no evidence that officers perjured themselves in testimony about raiding Wilkening’s condominium or covered up drug use among members of the Chargers.

The name of one officer, Chuck Arnold, was found in the Rolodex, sources said. Arnold has told investigators that he had hired one of Wilkening’s employees for a party and was not sexually involved with anyone from her business. Sources said Arnold is one of the five officers who Burgreen said will be disciplined.

A branch of the task force, led by Deputy State Atty. Gen. Gary Schons, handled the rest of the police corruption probe. Last week, Schons’ team concluded that members of the narcotics street team committed “wholesale irregularities” by having “casual sex” with informants and allowing them to keep small portions of narcotics used in drug buys.

Sources identified Sgt. Sal Salvatierra and Officer John Fung as those who had sex with Cynthia Maine, a police informant and prostitute who disappeared in 1986, shortly after her release from jail. Salvatierra worked the gang detail and Fung the narcotics street team at the time. The two are the focus of a Police Department internal affairs investigation.

Detectives John Gener, with the special investigations unit, and Eugene Bojorquez, with the narcotics task force, are also under investigation for their role on the street team in the mid-1980s, sources said.

A “former narcotics officer,” identified by sources as Dennis Sesma, was supervising sergeant of the narcotics street team and allowed informants to “chip off” portions of drugs for themselves during “controlled” drug buys, the homicide task force said.

Sesma, who also entered into a “criminal conspiracy” with Fung to blackmail an informant, resigned from the department in 1989 in the midst of an internal affairs investigation. Criminal charges were not filed against him or Fung because the incident happened six years ago and was past the statute of limitations.

The task force also determined that the Police Department did not impede the sheriff’s initial investigation into the Gentile slaying, nor did Kolender and Burgreen order an investigation into alleged drug use by former Channel 10 newsman Michael Tuck.

“We went back and ended up looking at most of the credible allegations of misconduct that surfaced in the past 10 years,” Schons said. “We’ve exposed them and put them to rest. There is not endemic corruption here. Particularly at the command level, in fact, there is a strong urge to root out these things.”