Ex-Deputy Chief Charged With Having LAPD Records : Police: Daniel Sullivan illegally got information for his investigations firm, officials say. He denies allegations.

Daniel R. Sullivan, a retired deputy police chief once considered one of the Los Angeles Police Department’s brightest stars, was charged Thursday with illegally having confidential law enforcement information in the files of his private investigation company.

He is the highest-ranking former LAPD official to face criminal charges since the corruption scandals of the early 1900s, a department spokesman said.

Sullivan, charged with 11 misdemeanor counts, allegedly received the confidential information from a police officer who has since resigned from the force. The former officer, Walter Ray Bentley Jr., was charged separately Thursday, as was another private detective to whom he allegedly passed information.

Outspoken and personable, Sullivan was widely seen as a likely candidate to succeed Daryl F. Gates as police chief. Before his retirement eight years ago, he was regarded as a straight-talking “cop’s cop” unafraid to take on City Hall politicians, members of the civilian Police Commission and even fellow officers who stepped off the straight and narrow and took free meals.

On Thursday, he strongly denied any wrongdoing and lambasted those seeking to prosecute him.

“I am disappointed and I am disgusted,” said Sullivan, 57. “Are the citizens of Los Angeles going to sleep better knowing that (the district attorney and Police Department) spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to determine if I got information that indicates someone is a crook?”

At worst, he said, some files at his Woodland Hills-based Investigative Services Corp. detective agency contained “harmless” information about criminal records of people applying for jobs with his corporate clients.

“If I have any records that were unauthorized, I don’t know about them,” Sullivan said. “But if they are, I take responsibility for them.”

Despite Sullivan’s efforts to downplay the charges, police and prosecutors say the allegations are serious and underscore the department’s efforts to counter improper and illegal trafficking in computerized information.

“The department hopes to send a message that you cannot get away with this type of behavior, even if you were a deputy chief of police,” said one law enforcement official who investigated the case for the past year. “Who knows where this information could have ended up? It could have gotten a cop or someone else killed.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Yochelson, the prosecutor handling the cases, said information on various people--including witnesses in criminal cases--was obtained from LAPD computers by Bentley and given to Sullivan and another private detective, Thomas Whiteaker of Whiteaker Investigative Services in Mission Hills.

In one instance, Yochelson said, Whiteaker was given information on a witness in a murder case who had been relocated for his protection, and information on former actor Todd Bridges, who has had a number of scrapes with the law. Authorities declined to comment on the specific nature of the material found in Sullivan’s possession, but said it involved the kind of confidential material turned up in background checks.

A lawyer for Bentley, who has resigned from the force, did not return calls seeking comment. Whiteaker did not respond to a request for an interview.

Sullivan, who during his 25 years on the force headed bureaus on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley, has been under investigation by bunco detectives for more than a year because of his alleged ties to Bentley, a veteran Juvenile Division officer. Sullivan aggressively projected a squeaky-clean reputation. “A police officer who accepts a free or reduced-price meal is a whore,” he said in a 1983 interview.

In an interview Thursday, Sullivan acknowledged knowing Bentley, and said the former officer did work for his private investigation firm, getting court records and similar publicly accessible information. But he denied paying Bentley any money, saying instead that the two “did favors” for each other, which he described as a common practice between the police and private eyes.

“We all have a common community,” Sullivan said. “We help each other.”

But it is that level of cooperation that worries police and prosecutors, who say they are becoming increasingly concerned about confidential information being sold or bartered by police to private detectives. At least one Los Angeles police detective has been convicted in recent years for selling such information to a private eye, and a Police Commission staffer was suspended for 10 days in 1992 for using LAPD computers without authorization to get confidential data on political figures and celebrities. From 1988 to 1992, in fact, at least 66 sworn officers and civilian personnel were disciplined for similar misuse of department computers.

An internal investigation is also under way to determine whether LAPD officials compiled confidential information about residents and turned it over to the Anti-Defamation League.

Such allegations have dogged the department for years. More than a decade ago, it was forced to dismantle its controversial Public Disorder Intelligence Division, after it was revealed that a detective in the unit kept files at his home and made them available to an ultra-conservative group.

Last summer, hidden cameras watched as Bentley received requests from the two private investigation companies, ran the names of nearly 500 people and companies through department computers and relayed that information back, according to search warrants filed in the case.

When arrested last summer, Bentley had more than $100,000 in cash hidden in a safe, and child pornography that authorities allege he stole from locked police evidence vaults.

Bentley, 47, already has been charged with illegally possessing child pornography. He resigned from the department earlier this year, on the same day he was to face internal departmental hearings that would have put him on trial publicly for a host of sweeping misconduct charges.

Sullivan is scheduled to be arraigned June 24. He and Whiteaker each were charged with 10 counts of receiving criminal records, which are confidential materials, and one count each of conspiracy to receive criminal history materials. If convicted, they each face a maximum of 5 1/2 years in prison and $11,000 in fines. Bentley was charged with 11 felony counts of illegal computer access and fraud, and faces a maximum of six years in state prison if convicted.