Wife’s Suit Says Pasadena Chief Hit Her

Court: In divorce action, she alleges several instances of physical abuse. Her husband of 14 months says the accusations are untrue.

The wife of Pasadena Police Chief Jerry A. Oliver filed for divorce Friday, claiming that over the course of their 14-month marriage her husband physically abused her and threatened her.

The chief, who filed his own divorce suit in Pasadena Superior Court earlier this week citing only “irreconcilable differences,” denied the allegations.

“Anyone that knows Jackie and I remotely, not to mention our close friends, would know that these allegations are not true,” he said Friday. “There is no documented history, anywhere, of me doing that.”

In her Superior Court declaration, Jackie Oliver claimed that during two incidents last weekend, her husband hit her, pushed and shoved her, knocked her to the floor and held her in a headlock.

The 29-year-old public relations specialist also said her husband hit her in the head several times during an incident last fall, and repeatedly threatened to injure her. She also said that, to monitor her activities, the police chief attached surveillance devices on the phone and elsewhere in their Pasadena home and in her car. Chief Oliver denied the allegations.

In the court document, Jackie Oliver described her husband as having “an attitude that, because he is chief of police, he is immune from anyone stopping him from his carrying out his physical violence against me.”

Jackie Oliver’s attorney, Marvin M. Mitchelson, said his client is seeking a temporary restraining order barring the police chief from entering their home on Kaweah Drive. A hearing on the petition has been scheduled for June 30, the lawyer said.

Oliver, 44, a 21-year veteran of police work, was named chief of the Pasadena force last July. He became the first outsider to head the department in 50 years. City officials said he was chosen because he said he approached law enforcement as a “human service.”

Oliver earlier served one year as director of the Office of Drug Policy in Memphis, Tenn., and nearly 19 years with the Phoenix Police Department, where he rose to the post of assistant chief.

The Olivers, who met in Memphis, were wed in March, 1991. The couple have no children. Jerry Oliver has two grown children from a previous marriage.