RTD Police Department Dogged by Controversy : Transit: The agency’s chief defends her officers, saying the complaints are exaggerated by a few malcontents.

The photographs show young policemen in uniform. Standing in groups of three or four in front of a van that is supposed to be used for surveillance, the officers are having a party, posing with beer cans and showing off their revolvers.

If the problems within the Southern California Rapid Transit District police force were confined to such conduct, the 1989 party might be nothing but an embarrassing footnote in the agency’s 13-year history.

But in many ways, it is emblematic of the controversy within the police agency assigned to protect a five-county bus system carrying 1.3 million riders daily.

Public records and interviews with current and former members of the RTD force raise troubling questions about such fundamental activities of the agency as hiring and firing, internal discipline and its ability to control excessive force by officers.

For example, the department’s 192 officers include at least six who either had troubled histories at other police agencies or retired on disability pensions claiming they no longer could perform police work. One sergeant joined the RTD only months after he left the Los Angeles Police Department after an off-duty standoff with two SWAT teams in Long Beach. Another sergeant was hired by the RTD after she was forced to leave Hawthorne Police Department on a stress-related pension. Her former chief testified that she had pointed a gun at him.

A third officer, who was among those photographed at the 1989 party, is under investigation by the district attorney for the first fatal shooting in RTD police history.

In addition, court and police records show several current officers have been involved in off-duty violence--one was recently arrested on charges of wife beating and another is under a court order not to contact his ex-wife after assaulting her. No discipline has been taken against the two officers and internal investigations are pending.

While the officers photographed at the 1989 party have been disciplined for unprofessional conduct, the action came only after the photos were broadcast by Fox 11 News. Today, as the officers appeal their suspensions and/or demotions, department officials say they still do not know if the party occurred on or off duty.

Meanwhile, a number of former officers are suing the agency, alleging favoritism, discrimination and unfairness in hiring, promotion and disciplinary processes.

“The RTD police is to law enforcement what the appendix is to the human body--useless,” said one of those former officers, Michael Mendoza.

Defenders of the force point to department statistics that show that in the last five years, RTD officers have responded to 58,262 calls, made 5,047 arrests and have had only 55 complaints lodged against officers for matters ranging from alleged discourtesy to excessive use of force. Fourteen of those complaints have been substantiated, the department says.

RTD Police Chief Sharon K. Papa contends that the agency’s biggest problem is public relations, not professionalism.

“You can look at any law enforcement agency out there and point your finger to one or two officers in question,” she said. “That does not mean it’s not a credible agency.”

In her view--and that of many other current officers--the department is as professional as any other police agency. Its problems, they say, are exaggerated by a few malcontents and fired officers who hope to tarnish the RTD’s image as they pursue lawsuits.

“No one likes to terminate officers,” said Papa, an 11-year veteran of the department. “But officers have been terminated from this department for various reasons. And quite frankly, they are the ones who run to the press, run to the media (and say), ‘Look at me. Poor me. Look at this.’ ”

While many of its officers are graduates of the well-regarded Rio Hondo Police Academy, the department has over the years hired officers let go by other departments for various reasons including alleged tendencies toward violence.

One, Officer Richard DeMartino, is the subject of a $10-million civil lawsuit and a district attorney investigation.

In April, 1990, DeMartino shot and killed Alejandro Bodan, 24, of Los Angeles after a pursuit of a pickup truck downtown. While the LAPD and RTD refused to release their reports on the case, a coroner’s report says Bodan, the driver of the pickup, was shot twice after apparently reaching for something under the front seat.

The shooting was the third in DeMartino’s three years with the RTD, which has reported only five on-duty shootings since 1986. No one was injured in the two previous shooting incidents. In the two earlier shootings, DeMartino reported seeing the suspects with guns although no guns were recovered.

DeMartino’s first attempt at a law enforcement career occurred in 1986 when he was hired by the Simi Valley Police Department. He was let go when he failed his probationary period, according to a department official there who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I’m not surprised at what happened” at RTD, said the officer. “(DeMartino) wasn’t here long enough to get into trouble using force. It was more the statements about the use of force . . . it was a concern about what might happen in an event. It was a case of immaturity. He had sort of television attitude about what police work was all about.”

DeMartino did not return phone calls seeking an interview.

As of Tuesday, the district attorney’s office said it is still probing the fatal shooting, disputing Papa’s claim that she has been told no charges will be filed.

The family of Alejandro Bodan has filed a $10-million lawsuit against the RTD.

While declining to discuss the DeMartino shooting, Papa said she would not second-guess his hiring--or the employment of officers let go by other agencies--before she became chief in March, 1990. (Her predecessor, James Burgess, was chief from the department’s inception until 1989, when he resigned amid allegations of ticket-fixing and nepotism.)

“I can’t explain why someone was hired” before her time as chief, Papa said. “I can only tell you this person works here. They do a good job. And I’m not going to discuss personnel packages publicly. . . . I mean, I can’t do that. But I can tell you they are good employees.”

But some current and former officers contend the agency’s definition of “good employees” over the years has been flawed.

Former Officer Simon Hairston said he was threatened with firing early in his nine-year career for reporting that two sergeants had beaten a handcuffed transient with flashlights in a patrol car parked outside RTD headquarters. Hairston, who quit the department in 1989, said a lieutenant who remains with the RTD not only ignored his brutality complaint but admonished young officers to “keep their . . . mouths shut” about such incidents.

The sergeants, he said, have since left the agency on their own after other alleged cases of brutality.

In a civil suit that has yet to come to trial, former Officer Joseph Travers claims he was fired by the department in retaliation for complaining about the 1987 arrest of a black bus passenger by two RTD officers. The bus rider, Anthony Guydon, has also sued the RTD, alleging he was wrongfully arrested and subjected to racial epithets.

The department has denied the allegations by both Travers and Guydon.

That incident has drawn attention within the department because it involved Sgt. Sharon Barberic, a five-year veteran whose promotions suggest she is a model officer but who some current and former officers describe as too aggressive.

Barberic, one of the two officers who arrested Guydon, joined the RTD after three years with the Hawthorne Police Department, where she was forced to take a stress pension in 1984 amid a string of brutality claims that were ultimately dismissed in the courts.

During a 1986 trial of a $1-million wrongful termination suit she filed against Hawthorne, Barberic’s former chief testified that she pointed a loaded revolver at him when he told her she was no longer fit for police work. Barberic won a $50,000 judgment in the suit.

Since joining RTD, Barberic has not only been sued in the Guydon case but also by an RTD bus driver, who claimed he was beaten by Barberic and another officer investigating claims that he pocketed $2 in fares. The bus driver and RTD have since reached an out-of-court settlement.

In an interview, Barberic defended her record at RTD and blamed criticism of her work on former officers whose firings, she said, prove they could not make the grade as police officers.

“You have to understand what is happening here,” Barberic said. “These people have an ax to grind and they are going to do whatever they can to make the department look bad.”

Barberic also expressed frustration that her departure from the Hawthorne Police Department continues to be cited by her critics. “I’m getting really tired of going over the same thing over and over. This stuff has been around since 1983 and none of it has been substantiated,” she said, noting that no claims of excessive force have been filed against her since joining RTD. (Guydon’s lawsuit does not allege excessive force and the bus driver, while suing RTD, never filed a claim of excessive force.)

Several current and former officers assert that RTD police sometimes refuse to accept citizen complaints and that favored officers have been protected over the years.

Said former Officer Donald Sanchies: “It was not beyond RTD to kiss off complaints for officers they liked. I don’t think they would throw a formal complaint in the trash, but they would make sure it was not substantiated.”

Papa dismissed such claims, insisting they are nothing more than the vengeful attacks of officers fired by the department. “I don’t know how to respond other than to say that cases are judged on facts, not on who’s involved,” Papa said.

Still, in several cases, department memos and interviews suggest that outspoken officers risk discipline as harsh as those accused of serious misconduct.

In August, 1988, Sanchies and Mendoza, both vocal critics of the department’s personnel practices, were ordered in writing not to make negative comments about the agency or risk charges of insubordination. The next month, the agency asked the district attorney to charge Mendoza with theft for using a photocopying machine without permission.

The request was rejected by prosecutors, who recommended the department handle the matter administratively. That incident, RTD officials said, is the only one in recent years where the department sought to bring criminal charges against an officer for any reason.

More recently, veteran Lt. Sterling Putman was relieved of his duties overseeing RTD’s dispatch system after writing a report--for a college class--on its shortcomings. The September, 1990, report found that it took an average of 14 minutes to dispatch a patrol car after the dispatch system received an emergency call from a bus driver. One delay spanned four hours.

Putnam’s report recommended, among other things, that the RTD police exert more authority over the dispatch system.

When asked about Putman, Papa denied seeing anything but a draft of his report and insisted his reassignment was based on inattention to the dispatch system, not his findings.

Putman declined to discuss his reassignment or release a copy of his report. “The report contains information which I feel would be detrimental to the good harmony of this department,” Putman said, without elaborating.

Regardless, in May, a deranged bus passenger killed another RTD rider before being killed herself by police in a tragedy where, tape recordings show, dispatchers made several mistakes including sending officers to the wrong location.

“(Putman’s report) was ignored and now we have two people dead,” said one RTD officer. . . . If we had our own dispatch system, I can’t guarantee it would have been prevented. At least we would have had some control” over the incident.

While the department’s shortcomings have rarely drawn such public attention, some law enforcement officials have questioned the professionalism of the RTD police.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Herb Lapin, who for years monitored RTD’s operations for the district attorney’s Special Investigations Division, claimed recently that two criminal investigations were compromised by RTD police.

An 1988 undercover probe of thefts at an RTD cash room had to be abandoned, Lapin said, because someone in the department apparently disclosed the existence of the investigation. “They asked us for an undercover operative . . . but somehow within two days, everybody knew we were there,” Lapin said.

That same year, Lapin added, an investigation into thefts of bus parts was abandoned after two RTD officers did not know how to prepare search warrants and could not match evidence with specific locations that were searched. “It was exasperating,” Lapin said.

Lapin’s overall impression of the RTD police? “Basically, that there were some people who were qualified and a lot that weren’t,” he said.

RTD’s Transit Police

Facts and figures about the Southern California Rapid Transit District’s police force:

Chief: Sharon K. Papa.

Size: 192 police officers, including the chief, two captains, eight lieutenants and 17 sergeants. Current budget allocation calls for hiring 52 more officers.

Jurisdiction: Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Mission: Protect the RTD’s buses and bus routes. Can patrol anywhere buses travel, including city streets and freeways.

Authority: Transit officers have the same arrest powers as the LAPD and the county Sheriff’s Department.

Salary: $2,600 to $3,219 a month starting pay for individuals with no law enforcement experience; $2,844 to $3,526 a month for those transferring from another law enforcement agency.

Side arm: 9-millimeter Beretta, same weapon used by LAPD and Sheriff’s Department.

Training center: Rio Hondo Police Academy, Whittier.

Budget: $12 million for fiscal 1992, up $3 million from previous year.