A Fancy--and Improper--Ride : Police chief’s use of a seized luxury auto is another blow to Newport Beach

More and more these days, the real Newport Beach resembles the fiction of novelist Joseph Wambaugh, who in “The Golden Orange” chronicled the balmy Orange County city’s obsession with the good life. We learn now that in a city where expensive cars are de rigueur , embattled Police Chief Arb Campbell drove around in a Mercedes-Benz luxury sedan that had been seized in a local drug bust.

This surely is abuse of an asset seized in a criminal case. Taking the Mercedes to Palm Springs may not be as grave an offense as selling a drug suspect’s wares, but it clearly falls in the category of misusing the booty from the war on drugs. And a chief reaching for the keys of a luxury sedan when he already has a city-leased Ford Taurus at his disposal gives new meaning to the idea of keeping up with the Joneses.

Only last month Campbell was placed on paid administrative leave after he and a police captain were accused of rape and sexual harassment in a civil lawsuit. Now city records show that since August, 1991, he repeatedly used the Mercedes on routine police business; officers and other employees within the department assert that the car also was used for personal travel, including weekend outings.

The penchant that Campbell had for riding in style would be comical if it did not inflict further emotional distress on a beleaguered Police Department.

And this incident says something about the entire question of asset seizure in drug cases, a powerful law enforcement tool. The temptation for abuse by authorities has been discussed in hearings being conducted by the Assembly Committee on Public Safety, which is reviewing a California asset forfeiture law due to expire next year.

It has been a rough year in Newport Beach, with its reputation for high-life glitz and low-life boilerplate scams. Scandals have hit the Police Department, City Hall and the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

And there seems to be a troubling common theme in all these scandals--a taste for the good life ordinarily well beyond the means of most local public employees.