8 Officers Disciplined for Padding Ticket Reports : Probe: One officer, fired after investigation, logged more than 200 tickets that could not be verified, San Diego police sources said.

Eight San Diego police officers have been punished after an internal investigation concluded that they padded their daily activity reports with scores of traffic citations that did not exist, a police commander said Friday.

The investigation into the department’s traffic division, initiated last spring, has concluded with disciplinary action ranging from “termination to written reprimands,” Cmdr. Dave Worden said.

“Eight different officers assigned to the traffic division took credit for work for which we couldn’t find source documentation,” Worden said. “They wrote warnings and citations without documentation, and we took action.”

Because state laws protect officers’ personnel records, Worden said he could not reveal who was disciplined, nor discuss individual punishments that might help identify them.

But sources close to the investigation said one officer has been fired, one has resigned, one has been suspended and one has been recommended for termination, all for allegedly padding activity logs with notations of citations they did not write.

Four other officers were recommended for transfer after allegedly recording warning citations in their activity logs but failing to ticket motorists or file copies with the department.

The four were given written reprimands, instead, after arguing that many officers routinely record the warnings in their log books but do not hand the citations to motorists or the department because it is considered a waste of time and increases paperwork, sources said.

Sources said Saul H. Valdez, who worked in traffic operations, was fired after the investigation. Police spokesman Bill Robinson confirmed that Valdez, 34, had worked in the department for 13 years before he was dismissed Nov. 21, but did not know whether Valdez’s departure was connected to the investigation.

Valdez logged more than 200 tickets that could not be verified, sources said. Valdez has appealed his discipline. He did not return two telephone calls left at his home Friday.

In November, Sanford C. Byerley, 34, a 10-year motorcycle officer, resigned rather than be fired for padding the activity logs, sources said.

The other officers disciplined have not been identified. One, whom officials recommended be fired, admitted to his supervisors that he padded his logs with about 250 tickets that did not exist, but said he did so because superiors insisted that quotas be maintained, sources said.

While being questioned during the investigation, the officer cited mounting pressure to write 20 to 30 tickets a day and said maintaining the quota helped win promotions, raises and other favors. He is appealing his punishment, sources said.

Police administrators have said they found the discrepancies in ticket logging after doing a routine Traffic Division audit, which turned into a larger investigation.

The audit included police supervisors inspecting daily activity logs submitted by each traffic officer over a three-month period and making note of the identification numbers recorded for each citation.

The identification numbers were entered into a computer, and, when many did not show up, supervisors searched by hand for every citation written during those 90 days. In some cases, the officers had recorded the numbers of tickets that colleagues had written.

“Our response to what happened here, launching a major investigation, is an indication that we considered this a pretty serious matter,” Worden said. “These are some very stiff disciplines. Even a reprimand is a factor in promotions and evaluations. It sticks to a record permanently.”

Administrators recommended that four officers be transferred because they did not write warning citations, even though they recorded the tickets in their logs. Worden said department policy requires that, if warnings are issued, copies must be handed to motorists and also filed with the department.

Because the practice is not always followed, the officers were given written reprimands and were not transferred.

Worden said superiors considered “mitigating factors” in lightening the discipline.