3 Officers Suspended in Team Inquiry

After an investigation turned up what it called “substantial, credible evidence” that two San Diego police officers were sexually involved with a prostitute and drug user who disappeared in 1986, both men have been given 20-day unpaid suspensions and transfers to patrol duty.

A third officer, who has admitted to hiring an employee of former “Rolodex Madam” and prostitute Karen Wilkening for a bachelor party of a police colleague and whose name was found in her Rolodex, has been given a 10-day unpaid suspension.

No other officer is expected to be disciplined as a result of a 10-month investigation by the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, a multi-agency team of detectives that turned up “wholesale irregularities” in the way a police street team handled narcotics and informants in the mid-1980s.

County grand juries in 1989, 1990 and 1991 also examined some of the same allegations, before turning over their findings to the task force.

Police sources confirmed Wednesday that Sgt. Alfonso (Sal) Salvatierra and Officer John Fung, both 17-year veterans, had received 20-day suspensions without pay. Officer Chuck Arnold, a 10-year veteran, was given a 10-day suspension without pay.

Officially, the department announced that “an administrative investigation has taken place as a result of information referred by the task force, and in some of those cases, we did take disciplinary action,” Assistant Chief Dave Worden said Wednesday.

Worden declined to discuss how many officers were disciplined or disclose their identities, citing state confidentiality laws that prohibit the Police Department from discussing personnel matters.

Further details of the punishments will be disclosed only if the three officers decide to appeal the disciplinary action in civil service proceedings, which are open to the public. None of the men is expected to do so, sources said.

One ranking police official, who requested anonymity, said the suspensions do not seem severe, given the gravity of the evidence uncovered by task force investigators.

At the same time, he said, “there’s a real time lapse here. Some of these (allegations) are 5 years old. We can’t say we’re going to forget about everything. But it’s also tough to get rid of people based on this happening so long ago.”

Salvatierra, 43, was a member of the department’s gang unit in 1985, the time he is alleged to have had sex with police informant and prostitute Cynthia Maine, according to the task force. Salvatierra, now an officer with the department’s Eastern Division, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Maine worked as an informant for Fung, 42, setting up drug buys beginning in 1984, shortly after Fung arrested her for prostitution. Imprisoned in September, 1985, for passing bad checks, Maine’s sentence was reduced by two months after she gave police information linking officers and prostitutes, her relatives said. She was released in November, 1985, and disappeared the following February.

Members of Maine’s family told homicide task force investigators that she and Fung were romantically involved from the time of her arrest until she was jailed in 1985.

The homicide task force investigated Maine’s disappearance as part of a series of 45 prostitute killings that date back to 1985. Two suspects are in custody for three of the murders, and one man has been convicted in a fourth killing.

Last September, one branch of the task force, led by the state attorney general’s office, examined allegations that Fung and Salvatierra were sexually involved with Maine.

Fung, who works in the special operations division as special liaison to the county district attorney’s office, could not be reached for comment.

Word that Fung had received a 20-day suspension angered Maine’s mother, Lynda Coleman, who called it “a slap in the face of the taxpayers.”

Although Coleman said she has received no indication that her daughter was involved with Salvatierra, she criticized Fung for his alleged romantic involvement with Maine.

“Police officers are supposed to have better morals than the person next door,” she said. Fung “had a sexual relationship with someone who was working for him. He asked my daughter to wear (recording) equipment and do a policeman’s job. And he got way, way out of line with her.”

She said her husband, San Diego Officer Kenneth Maine, who served on the force for seven years and died in 1982, once got 20 days off without pay for trying to evade police during a high-speed chase.

“I think this is a lot worse,” she said of Fung’s alleged affair.

The task force, citing evidence of “pervasive mismanagement, misconduct and unprofessional activity” on the part of the department’s narcotics street team, including allegations that team members used informants for “casual sex,” concluded in July that police misconduct was rampant within the unit in the mid-1980s.

At the time, Police Chief Bob Burgreen announced that he and the department were embarrassed by the findings, and that four or five officers “would be held accountable for their actions and will be subject to appropriate action.”

Evidence against other officers under investigation was deemed unfounded.

The case of Chuck Arnold was part of a grand jury investigation in 1989 and 1990, in which information surfaced that Arnold’s name was found in Wilkening’s Rolodex, and that he had hired a Wilkening employee to dance at the bachelor party of a fellow police officer.

Arnold, 31, now a patrol officer in Western Division, did not return a telephone call.