2 Officers Deny Sexual Harassment

Speaking publicly for the first time Monday, two Los Angeles police officers at the center of a sweeping LAPD sexual harassment inquiry vehemently denied that they have ever mistreated women and insisted they are victims of vindictive department managers.

“I categorically deny” all the allegations, said Officer Jay Varga, a much-lauded LAPD veteran, who with Officer Stephen M. McNicholas has been accused of mistreating female colleagues. “They are all false. . . . We haven’t harassed anybody.”

A personnel complaint filed against the two officers in October accuses them of deriding the abilities of female and minority officers, complaining that women were unfairly promoted because of their gender, making a number of sexually or racially inappropriate remarks and, on one occasion each, failing to come to the aid of female officers in trouble.

Those allegations and other purported instances of misconduct are at the heart of a massive LAPD internal investigation into the working relationships between male and female officers in the department’s West Los Angeles area--served by a police station with a long reputation of hostility toward women. Although McNicholas and Varga are among those under investigation, department sources say the LAPD inquiry--formally known as an audit--also has delved into questions about whether supervisors tolerated or reinforced hostile attitudes toward women at the station.

The audit has created intense friction within the department. Some officers believe that McNicholas and Varga are the victims of a “witch hunt,” while others say that at least some of the allegations are true. The Los Angeles Police Protective League has stood by the embattled officers, while the president of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation, which represents black LAPD officers, on Monday issued a statement criticizing the league.

“The Protective League is the guardian of the rights of all of its members, not the trier of fact,” Leonard Ross, the newly installed Bryant Foundation president, said in a statement. “In the future, I hope our league directors . . . will be more mindful of the league’s obligations and concerns of all members.”

Although they would not allow photographs, McNicholas and Varga consented to an interview Monday with reporters from The Times and KNBC Channel 4 News. In that interview, McNicholas echoed Varga’s denials and said he believes the LAPD is bent on punishing them because they successfully fought an attempt to transfer them last year.

“As a result of our exercising our rights, the department has gone to these lengths to back up bogus allegations,” said McNicholas, who, like Varga, has continued to receive sterling performance evaluations even while under investigation for the alleged sexual harassment. “They’ll try to get us any way they can.”

McNicholas said LAPD investigators had asked him not to discuss the specific allegations, and he declined to do so, saying he did not want to be accused of defying LAPD orders. Documents obtained by The Times appear to cast doubt on at least one of the charges, in which he was accused of failing to assist a female officer who was wrestling with a suspect in the back of a police car.

The personnel complaint only generally describes the incident and says it occurred between October, 1990, and October, 1991. Although the complaint does not provide a precise date, it identifies the female officer as Debbie Winchell.

Winchell’s report of an incident during that period makes no mention of misconduct on McNicholas’ part. “I was in the back seat with the defendant, and my partner (McNicholas) was in the front seat driving,” according to the Nov. 10, 1990, report, obtained Monday by The Times. “The defendant raised his left leg over the front seat and proceeded to kick Officer McNicholas before I could react.”

According to the report, the suspect kicked McNicholas three times in the head and shoulder and then McNicholas climbed over the front seat to assist Winchell. In the report, Winchell does not allege that McNicholas failed to help her. A sergeant’s report about the same incident also makes no mention of wrongdoing on McNicholas’ part.

McNicholas declined to comment on the reports, except to say that he did nothing wrong and that he sustained injuries as a result of the altercation.

In a separate count, Varga also was accused of failing to assist a female officer who needed help. According to the personnel complaint, Officer Paget Mitchell said that Varga had failed to assist her with a combative suspect at the West Los Angeles jail sometime between January and March of 1990. Mitchell told The Times last week that the allegation in that complaint is accurate.

Monday, however, Varga said he had never refused to come to Mitchell’s aid and had not been aware that she needed help.

“She never said anything to me,” Varga said. “I never even knew there was a problem until it arose as an allegation.”

Varga and McNicholas also denied making a number of sexually and racially charged remarks attributed to them in the personnel complaint. According to the complaint, the two men referred to a police car containing two women officers as a “bitch car.” Varga, the complaint states, told a female officer that “I’m working with you because I have to, not because I want to,” and McNicholas allegedly told a female officer: “No white man would want to rape a black woman because they are too ugly.”

“The entire personnel complaint is a lie,” McNicholas said Monday. “Both of us respect women. We’re both married, we both have small children. . . . We don’t talk that way, and we don’t condone people talking that way.”

Although McNicholas and Varga could face disciplinary charges for their alleged misconduct, they are not the only officers at the West Los Angeles station to come under scrutiny in recent months. More than 100 officers have been interviewed as part of an extraordinary, four-month audit by the LAPD’s Office of Operations.

That audit, which is all but complete, probed the station’s working environment and attempted to determine whether it was hostile to women. A number of officers have come under investigation, as has the performance of supervisors who, according to department sources, either failed to detect sexism or tolerated it.

McNicholas and Varga have been transferred as a result of the inquiry. They start their new jobs today, but have been placed in positions where they are to have no contact with female colleagues or female members of the public. The two officers also are likely to face departmental charges of some sort, LAPD sources say, adding that administrative action against other employees also is being considered.

Monday, the lawyer for McNicholas and Varga suggested that his clients were being accorded unequal treatment. The lawyer, Gregory G. Petersen, said there was no punishment meted out to a senior officer who allegedly had been carrying on an affair with a subordinate at the West Los Angeles station. Other officers from the station say rumors of the affair reached the highest levels of the LAPD’s command staff. Such a relationship would violate LAPD rules if it began while the senior officer was charged with supervising the other officer. Department officials declined to comment on the alleged affair.