Transportation Panel Accused of Intimidation on Police Issue

RTD officials accused the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission Wednesday of improperly meeting with the RTD transit police union in an effort to intimidate the officers into withdrawing their bid to police the Red Line.

Several transit police at the meeting with commission staff said they felt their jobs would be threatened if they didn’t retreat from the contract to patrol the subway.

“It wasn’t veiled. They brought it up front: ‘Leave the Red Line alone,’ ” said Sgt. Everett Rodriguez, a negotiating member of the Southern California Transit Police Officers Assn. “I thought having a job was worth more than policing the Red Line.”

Transportation Commission Executive Director Neil Peterson said no impropriety occurred, and those meetings had no effect on which agency would be chosen.

The transit police are locked in a fierce competition with the Los Angeles Police Department over which agency will patrol the Red Line when it opens next month.

At a Transportation Commission meeting Wednesday, commissioners voted to put off a decision on selecting a police agency until after the RTD board hears presentations from the transit police and the LAPD today.

During recent weeks, the LACTC’s Peterson has said he believes the LAPD can do a better job.

The controversial meetings raise larger questions about how smoothly the merger of two feuding agencies will go and which staff will ultimately wield more power.

“These people have absolutely no right to inject themselves in the collective bargaining process,” RTD board President Marv Holen said of the Transportation Commission staff.

Several LACTC officials met last month with six members of the transit police union, discussing several issues--including improving the retirement package, health benefits and their peace officer status--that the union was negotiating with their employer, the Rapid Transit District.

The package of incentives would have cost about $2 million, RTD officials estimated. The officers said they believe they were being offered these incentives in exchange for retreating from the Red Line contract.

“We felt our jobs were in jeopardy,” said Sgt. Luke Fuller, “that if we didn’t play ball with them, we were history.”

Lou Hubaud, LACTC director of safety and security, said he disagreed with the officers’ description of the meeting and that he did not try to extract any promises from the men.

“Their wording isn’t good,” Hubaud said. “It was a matter of how do we live in harmony on these projects. We explored all these issues. We didn’t try to twist arms.”

Peterson said he believes there was nothing improper about the meetings between the transit police union representatives and the LACTC officials, who included Hubaud, a former transit police officer; Jerry Givens, the assistant executive director, and Marvin Merriweather, manager of systems security. Givens and Merriweather were unavailable for comment.

UCLA management professor Dan Mitchell said such meetings are not unusual in the public sector.

Hubaud and Peterson both said the meetings were initiated by the transit police members. The union members deny that.

Hubaud “used to work there, he knows them, he has relationships with them,” Peterson said. “The fact that he meets with them is nothing to worry about. To suggest there is any kind of ties between that and this decision (between the LAPD and transit police) is inappropriate.”

Peterson, who is jockeying among other candidates to become head of the new Metropolitan Transit Authority that will result from the merger, also questioned the timing of the officers coming forward on the eve of a decision about the Red Line.

“Obviously, it’s one more attempt to try and distort the real issues,” he said.

Both sides agree that the meetings resulted in no agreements. In a second meeting shortly after the first, transit officers say LACTC officials backed down.

“We were told there were some kind of problems, that they were not sure if they could go ahead,” said Officer Lee Tainer, a member of the association’s board and its negotiating team. “Basically, it seems to us that they laid it all out and then when we came back, it was all reneged and so we walked away.”