Captain Is Guilty, Police Board Rules

A controversial Los Angeles police captain, who was accused five years ago of roughing up a female officer, was found guilty by a disciplinary board Monday of inappropriately commenting on another female subordinate’s weight and telling her that short hair makes a woman look “like a dyke.”

The three-member Board of Rights panel recommended a 22-day suspension for Capt. Jerry W. Conner, a 29-year veteran who commands the department’s Central Division and was described by sources in the department as a blunt-spoken autocrat.

The recommended leave without pay, which must be approved by the chief of police, came after Conner was found guilty on two counts of making inappropriate remarks that offended the officer at whom they were directed and a typist who overheard them. He was acquitted on a third count of misconduct alleging that he had fondled another typist’s hair, department officials said.

The case has been closely watched within the department, sources said, because it is rare for an officer in management to appear before a disciplinary panel or be publicly punished for misconduct.

“It’s unusual to see any captain disciplined,” said one source who asked not to be named. “You just don’t see command officers disciplined.”

Typically, high-ranking officers who get into trouble quietly accept their discipline or go unpunished until they fail to receive promotions, sources said. But Conner, 54, chose to appear before the disciplinary board because he wanted to appeal a 15-day suspension for the misconduct charges and attempt to clear his name, according to a department spokesman and the officer who defended Conner, recently retired Lt. Pete Borgerding.

Conner’s case also drew keen interest because of allegations that his commanding officer, Deputy Chief Bernard Parks, tried to protect him by failing to act quickly on the women officers’ complaints in the hope that a one-year statute of limitations would expire, the source said.

The case was also perceived by some in the department as part of a feud between Parks and former Assistant Chief Robert Vernon, both candidates for the chief’s job, Borgerding said.

Parks, a finalist for the chief’s job, last year pursued misconduct charges against a favorite subordinate of Vernon, according to Borgerding and the other police source. So Vernon, whose critics charged that his fundamentalist Christian beliefs were influencing his on-duty decisions, saw to it that the women’s allegations against Conner were investigated, Borgerding said.

Parks, Conner and Vernon, who retired earlier this year, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Borgerding said Conner told the disciplinary board that his remarks to Officer Susan Padron had been misconstrued.

“You have to be familiar with his sense of humor,” Borgerding said.

Padron has claimed that Conner would stand her up to inspect her body and comment on the size of her hips and buttocks, telling her they either “looked good” or that she needed to lose weight, the unnamed source said. She also claimed that when she appeared with a shorter hairstyle, he warned her against looking like a lesbian.

In 1987, Conner was suspended for 15 days for threatening to fire Officer Patricia Ibarra if she filed charges accusing him of shoving her, and for failing to take appropriate action on a citizen’s complaint alleging excessive force.

Conner was also formally reprimanded that year for operating a carwash within his patrol area without notifying his supervisors.