Officers Got Good Reviews After Alleged Incidents : LAPD: Personnel records reveal supervisors gave the two glowing evaluations after allegations that they harassed female colleagues.

Two Los Angeles police officers at the center of a massive LAPD sexual harassment inquiry received glowing performance evaluations after incidents in which they allegedly mistreated female colleagues, copies of personnel records obtained by The Times reveal.

In early 1993, Officer Jay A. Varga was given strong ratings in 22 of 28 categories and was not found to need improvement in any area. The report called his work exemplary and credited him with enjoying the respect and trust of community leaders, including a homeowners association president and City Councilman Marvin Braude, whose district Varga patrolled.

But those laudatory reports stand in stark contrast to allegations that Varga and another officer, Stephen M. McNicholas, made sexist and racist remarks and failed to come to the aid of female officers who were in trouble.

According to a copy of the personnel complaint filed against them, Varga and McNicholas made sexist remarks on a number of occasions--allegedly referring to a police car containing two female officers as a “bitch car.”

The personnel complaint was completed Oct. 25, 1993, while the audit of the West Los Angeles station was under way. It details eight instances of allegedly improper comments or actions by McNicholas or Varga in 1990 and 1991. In one case, Varga allegedly told a female officer, Paget Mitchell, that “blacks are subhumans, blacks can’t write and have no capability of learning, and I don’t want to work with them.”

Varga allegedly made that comment in early 1990. Mitchell also told investigators that Varga failed to come to her aid when she was battling a combative suspect at the West Los Angeles jail. Mitchell declined to comment on the investigation Friday, but she said the allegations in the report were true.

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McNicholas also was accused of failing to assist a female officer as she struggled with a suspect in the back of a police car. Gary Fullerton, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which is backing the two officers, said the allegation was “totally false.”

Another allegation against McNicholas accuses him of telling a female officer: “No white man would want to rape a black woman because they are too ugly.”

Gregory G. Petersen, a lawyer who represents Varga and McNicholas, angrily rejected every one of the charges.

“The department has not provided me with any formal charges against my clients,” Petersen said. “But the allegations, as described to me by (a reporter), are untrue, unfounded, unsubstantiated and grossly unfair.”

The disparity between the comments attributed to the officers in the personnel complaint and their glowing performance evaluations bothered some observers.

“Maybe what this is showing is that we need a whole new way of evaluating officers,” said City Councilwoman Laura Chick, a member of the Public Safety Committee.

Chick and some other observers commended the LAPD for conducting a massive investigation into the sexual harassment allegations at the West Los Angeles station, a police division that has long been accused of allowing hostility toward women. The LAPD audit, which is nearly complete, took four months and involved interviews with more than 100 officers in West Los Angeles, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

But leaders of the Police Protective League called a news conference Friday in which they criticized the department for its inquiry, accusing LAPD officials of slanting the investigation to bolster the charges against Varga and McNicholas. Danny L. Staggs, the league’s president, also said that the union “resents the fact the 250 officers and supervisors (at West Los Angeles) have been branded” as tolerating an environment that is hostile to women.

Police Department observers and critics delivered sharply different assessments of the West Los Angeles station and its reputation as a difficult place for women to work.

Lt. Paulette Herman, a day watch commander at West Los Angeles and president of the Los Angeles Women Police Officers Assn., told City News Service that “believe me, if sexual harassment was going on at West L.A. right now, I would be very sensitive and aware of it, and it’s just not the case.”

Herman was assigned to West Los Angeles after the investigation was under way. A source familiar with the LAPD internal investigation said harassment at the station has virtually stopped since the inquiry was launched last fall.

Katherine Spillar, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and a co-chairwoman of the Women’s Advisory Council to the Police Commission, said West Los Angeles has earned its reputation as a hostile environment for female employees.

“There’s been so many complaints out of that division,” Spillar said. “It’s a cesspool.”

Exactly how the LAPD investigation came to be initiated remains a mystery, as department officials say there was no specific complaint of misconduct. Police union leaders doubt that, and say the investigation was intended to build a case against Varga and McNicholas.

Those two officers were first transferred out of West Los Angeles last year, but they went to court to block the transfer. It was after they filed suit that the allegations of sexual harassment came to light, according to department sources.

Petersen and leaders of the police union say the timing is no coincidence, but rather bolsters their contention that the LAPD was out to punish Varga and McNicholas. The officers echo that argument, and laid out their case in an Aug. 9, 1993, letter to Deputy Mayor William Violante, a former police union president who serves in the Administration of Mayor Richard Riordan.

In that letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times on Friday, Varga asked Violante to launch an inquiry into the department’s efforts to transfer him and McNicholas. Varga requested that the investigation be handled by the civilian Police Commission because he doubted the integrity of LAPD management.

In his letter, Varga said questions about him were first raised in early 1993 after an officer at the West Los Angeles station reported “perceived mistreatment” to a supervisor. That officer’s complaint ultimately sparked what Varga described as a “clandestine investigation” overseen by Deputy Chief Ronald A. Frankle.

According to Varga, that investigation involved interviews with about 40 female officers, who were asked leading questions about officers and supervisors in the West Los Angeles police station. Varga said in his letter that commanders put together a hit list based on those interviews, and soon began transferring the officers on that list to other areas.

But when commanders attempted to transfer Varga and McNicholas, they objected, saying they had a right to see any material that had been gathered against them. Commanders at first insisted there was not an administrative investigation under way, but later admitted that they had polled female staff members.

Although the personnel complaint against Varga and McNicholas lists a number of charges against the officers, more may be brought against them or other officers, police sources said. The audit is nearly complete, and its results are being forwarded to the department’s Internal Affairs Division, which will consider whether the allegations of misconduct warrant disciplinary hearings.