SEAL BEACH : Suit Claiming Arrest Quotas Is Dismissed

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Seal Beach police have been issuing tickets and arresting people under an illegal quota system for more than a year.

“I think it’s a tremendous victory for the city to get this knocked out at this stage. It would have cost the city a lot more money if it had actually gone to trial,” City Atty. Quinn Barrow said.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, who sits in Los Angeles, did not give his reasons for throwing out the case but is expected to issue a written decision within the next two weeks.

Barrow estimated that the lawsuit has cost the city about $50,000 in legal fees so far. But it is unlikely that the suit is over.

Los Angeles attorney Ernest J. Franceschi, who is seeking $20 million in damages and the repayment of fines to all people cited after Jan. 1, 1991, said he plans to appeal Wilson’s ruling.

Franceschi said he was not surprised by the decision because the judge had ruled against him in a similar case against the city of Huntington Beach. That case is already on appeal.

In his suit against Seal Beach, Franceschi alleged that the city has been violating the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that citizens have a right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The case stems from a controversial police “productivity policy” adopted on a trial basis on Jan. 1, 1991. That policy said “officers whose productivity is below 80% of the adjusted watch average . . . will be informally monitored by the appropriate supervisor and counseled toward increasing his/her productivity.”

Franceschi charges that the policy compelled officers to make a minimum number of arrests and citations. Although it is no longer written policy, he said, the “quota” is still followed in practice by Seal Beach officers.

“I think we clearly and unequivocally exhibited the existence of an arrest quota policy,” Franceschi said.

City officials say that the policy was legal and that the quota was merely a clause added on a trial basis to existing performance standards. Although the policy stated that officers should perform as well as their peers in terms of investigations, citations and arrests, it was only one of a long list of criteria for evaluating performance, City Manager Jerry Bankston said.

“The important thing about this ruling is that implicit in the judge’s ruling is that there was probable cause to stop Franceschi and give him a ticket,” Barrow said. “And giving tickets is not a federal offense.”