Police Union Wins $350,000 to Settle Suit : Award: Oceanside City Council approves payment to officers’ association, which alleged series of civil rights violations in 1990 lawsuit.

With the threat of a long trial looming, a divided Oceanside City Council agreed Thursday to pay $350,000 to its police officers’ union to settle a 1990 civil rights lawsuit.

On a 3-2 vote taken in closed session, the council offered to settle the suit filed by the Oceanside Police Officers Assn. in August, 1990, which alleged a series of civil rights violations.

Allegations included the denial of promotion to a black sergeant and engaging in a systematic pattern of disciplinary action and intimidation against members of the union who opposed the policies of then-chief Oliver Drummond.

“Drummond was a remarkably aggressive manager. He bragged about being Machiavellian,” said Peter Friesen, the attorney representing the union.

Drummond, who was a defendant in the case, resigned from the Police Department in November, 1990, after election of a new City Council majority led by Councilwoman Melba Bishop.

Bishop had made clear that she did not support Drummond as chief.

“I think that the new City Council was largely responsible for bringing the settlement figure down to the figure that it is,” Friesen said. Initially, the suit had asked for damages of $11.8 million.

Mayor Larry Bagley and Councilman Sam Williamson dissented. Both are part of the old council majority that had hired Drummond.

Bagley had opposed any sort of settlement with the Police Officers Assn., saying “they did not have a good case, and we had a wonderful defense.”

“It sets a very poor precedent that says, in effect, that we don’t let our managers do any discipline, and, if we do, they can take us to court,” Bagley said. “We should have gone to court so that we could get the records out in the open to see if the chief was out of line or if these officers were out of line.”

The settlement figure was recommended by U.S. District Judge Myron Gordon during a settlement conference Tuesday, Councilwoman Nancy York said.

“There is a significant change in the way that the department is run now and the way it was when Chief Drummond was running things,” York said. “My hope is that this settlement will allow things to heal . . . and that there will not be a continuing festering of the bad feelings that were there.”

York, who moved to approve the settlement, said she “viewed the matter as a jury would, as somebody who doesn’t know the individuals involved and just hears the testimony in court. . . . And there was a strong enough probability that a jury would have found against the city on some of the allegations.”

The suit claimed that:

* A black sergeant had been denied the opportunity to apply for lieutenant in 1989, and was told that “he need not bother apply” for the position of special enforcement sergeant. After the sergeant registered a complaint with the Police Officers Assn., the suit alleged, Drummond threatened to place a negative letter in the man’s personnel file.

* Officer William Cramer, chairman of the Police Officers Assn. board, was demoted from the Internal Affairs Division to patrol duty after he reported Drummond’s threats to a city official investigating the complaint.

* Drummond had reassigned another member of the union board from the Investigations Division to a patrol duty after eight years of “unblemished” performance in the division, as retaliation for his union leadership.

A third union board member was harassed in November, 1989, through a disciplinary investigation in retaliation for his formal complaints about department policies.