2 Park Employees Face Charges of Bribe Solicitation : Crime: The pair are accused of accepting cash from an offender to excuse him from court-ordered work.

Capping a five-month investigation, authorities arrested two Los Angeles city recreation and parks employees Wednesday on charges of soliciting a bribe from a convicted offender so he could avoid performing court-ordered community service work.

Gardening Supervisor Willard M. Stone and gardener Manuel Galvin Perez were taken into custody while working at the Department of Recreation and Parks Northridge District maintenance yard, where the bribe allegedly took place.

“The district attorney views this type of violation as serious,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Reid A. Rose said. “It should send a message to anyone out in the community that they should do their community service or they’ll face additional criminal consequences, and to public employees that we’ll prosecute them criminally for breaching the public trust by accepting bribes.”

Both men were being held late Wednesday in lieu of $15,000 bail each. Stone, 51, of Granada Hills has worked for the department for more than 26 years. He faces a maximum five years and eight months in state prison and $10,000 in fines if convicted. Perez, 41, of Pacoima faces a maximum of five years in prison and $10,000 in fines if convicted.

Authorities originally were investigating a third, unidentified, recreation and parks employee, but said Wednesday that no charges would be filed in his case.

At today’s arraignment, Stone and Perez will be charged with two felony counts each of bribery, authorities said. Stone also will be charged with two felony counts of preparing false documents for allegedly doctoring time sheets to show that the offender had spent time gardening at city parks to fulfill his court-appointed community service work.

The two were arrested after the offender told authorities that Stone and Perez allegedly solicited a bribe from him. The offender, who agreed to cooperate in a sting operation, had been ordered to perform 300 hours of community service following a conviction. After doing some of the work, he was told by Stone and Perez that “things could be taken care of if he paid $125,” Rose said.

Rose said it was believed that the bribe was solicited Sept. 14, 1992, and that Stone and Perez accepted the bribe three weeks later.

Stone and Perez were first arrested late last year and released pending further investigation. Since that time, Stone has maintained his innocence, said his lawyer, Fred Bien. Perez could not be reached for comment.

Elliott Porter, personnel director for the Recreation and Parks Department, said the two men originally were to face an administrative hearing, but that parks officials wanted to wait until the results of the criminal investigation were complete before deciding whether to fire them. He said the two men continued to work because they were no longer allowed to oversee community service workers since their initial arrest, and because “they are certainly not a danger to anyone.”

The value of the court-ordered service runs into the millions of dollars in free labor for cash-strapped cities and counties, which rely on the workers to clean parks and roadsides and for a host of other tasks.

Since the initial arrest of Stone and Perez, public and private agencies throughout Los Angeles County have taken steps to ensure that the hundreds of thousands of offenders sentenced to do community service as an alternative to jail perform their appointed tasks.

Some authorities, however, said that problems in the community-service program continue despite some recent improvements, due to lax oversight in a few cases and the sheer numbers of court-ordered workers going through the system. At least 2,500 offenders a month are placed in public and private community service programs in the San Fernando Valley alone.

“The problem, I believe, is widespread, with community service workers being allowed the opportunity to buy their way out,” said Rose, a Special Investigations Division prosecutor who handles community service and public corruption cases. “It probably occurs with city and county employees as well as the employees of the nonprofit agencies that administer the community service programs; the employees receive money in exchange for writing off the hours.”

Rose said there are ongoing investigations into community service fraud by his office and the Los Angeles Police Department, and that he continues to advise judges and community service agencies on how to look for fraud and tighten monitoring procedures.

Judge Andrew Kauffman, chairman of the alternative sentencing committee for the Los Angeles Municipal Court, acknowledged there is a potential for abuse, but he said it is rare and not coordinated.

“Of course, we’re concerned. We rely to a tremendous extent on people not affiliated with the court system to monitor the conduct of people we place on probation,” said Kauffman, who is also the supervising judge in Hollywood Municipal Court. “But short of having some court employee actually on site, we’re pretty much stuck with what we’ve got.”

The Municipal Court recently considered hiring a compliance officer to visit public and private agencies that receive referrals from the court to make sure they are properly monitoring the community service workers. “But given the current budget situation, it’s out of the question,” he said.

The Volunteer Center of Los Angeles, which channels most of the Los Angeles court referrals in areas south of the San Fernando Valley into community service projects, has hired a monitor “to keep a closer eye on things,” Executive Director Charles Fox said. And Joan Kagen, manager of the court referral program for the Volunteer Center of the San Fernando Valley, said her program also has tightened up its oversight considerably.

Porter said the city Recreation and Parks Department has limited the number of supervisors who can approve the time sheets that offenders must return to court to show they have done their community service. “We’ve tightened up departmentwide and worked with our volunteer centers so that this type of thing will not happen again,” he said.