6 Irvine Officers Face Disciplinary Action : Investigation: Police chief, city manager won’t divulge nature of charges. They say three suspensions, with possible firings, are not connected to allegations of a sex club. Three others remain at work.

Six police officers face potential firing or suspension pending hearings into misconduct allegations against them, authorities said Friday, but neither police nor city officials would say what they were suspected of doing.

Police Chief Charles S. Brobeck notified the officers Thursday that they may face disciplinary proceedings for “conduct unbecoming an officer,” Mayor Michael Ward said Friday. Ward emphasized that the conduct was unrelated to a sexual harassment lawsuit pending against the department.

The mayor stressed that “it has nothing to do with the sexual harassment suit or Code Four issue,” referring to recent allegations that some Irvine officers formed a sex-initiation club named Code 4. “It’s an internal investigation that stemmed from a citizen complaint, and we followed up on it.”

Brobeck said late Friday that he could not discuss the allegations against the officers in detail.

“None of them are related and none of them are in connection with the Code 4 thing,” Brobeck said. “I can not comment on this further because I’m the hearing officer, and I don’t want to taint any recommendations I might have to make on this later.”

The Police Department’s attorney, Martin J. Mayer, said that most of the six notices were unrelated.

Mayer refused to disclose the names of the officers or characterize the allegations against them, saying he was prohibited from doing so by state law.

Detective Henry Boggs, president of the 124-member Irvine Police Assn., declined to comment.

“I don’t think that I can comment on any of the names regarding the pending discipline,” Boggs said.

Mayer said the six cases “are not necessarily related to the same set of circumstances, and, in fact, several of them are totally unrelated to one another. We had a number of matters that we were investigating separately, and it just happened that they came together on one day.”

Mayer said the officers will have informal meetings with Brobeck on Friday and the following Monday to present their defenses.

After the internal police investigations, City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. said, three of the officers were placed on administrative leave with pay and notified that they face potential firing.

The other three remain at work but face potential suspension, Brady said.

Brady refused to say what the allegations involve, “because it’s a personnel matter” and not public record under state law. But he also said the allegations “have nothing to do with” the sexual harassment lawsuit or the Code 4 allegations, in which two former dispatchers--who are also plaintiffs in the suit--contend that male police officers had sex with women in the back seats of patrol cars.

Mayor Ward, who received numerous calls from reporters on Friday, said that the notices given to the police officers would not have created such an interest if not for the lawsuit filed in June against the city, Brobeck and other police supervisors.

“I don’t think it would be making this much noise if we didn’t have a sexual harassment suit against us at this time,” Ward said. “If we didn’t have the suit against us, possibly nobody would even notice it.”

When the Code 4 accusations were made several weeks ago, police conducted an internal investigation and announced that there was no evidence that such a club existed.

“There is no sex club operating” in the Irvine Police Department, Brady repeated on Friday.

According to city and police officials, the department investigates any complaint against an officer. If the chief determines from the investigation that the complaint has merit, he will issue a “notice of intent to discipline.”

The accused officer has a right to request an informal meeting, called the Skelly Conference, with the chief, and to present his defense. The chief then decides whether the disciplinary action should stand, be amended, or dropped.

If the discipline stands, the officer can ask for an evidentiary hearing at which the department must prove its charges and that the discipline was appropriate. In Irvine, the city manager can either preside over the case himself or bring in an administrative judge.

If the city manager or judge rules against the accused officer, the officer then has the option of taking his case to Superior Court.

Usually, the specifics of a case do not become public unless it reaches Superior Court, Mayer said.

Larry Agran, former mayor of Irvine, said Friday he disagrees in part with some of the procedures. The public has a right to know in general what instigated a notice of discipline, he said.

“I can understand why they would be circumspect about some of this,” Agran said. “But they should at least give a general idea of what it is about. (Six people) is a lot of people being disciplined for the size of the Irvine Police Department.”

Times staff writers Len Hall, Leslie Berkman and Gebe Martinez contributed to this report.