Oldest Rookie Officer Turns in His Badge

He was the oldest Los Angeles Police Department rookie in history, and TV news crews accompanied him on his first patrol four months ago. Now, 59-year-old Edward Olivares is just another citizen, confirming Tuesday that he has turned in his badge.

Olivares said he resigned Saturday because his training officers had warned him he didn’t meet LAPD standards, but he would provide few other details.

Olivares said he did not want to discuss his resignation “until I’ve had time to sort this out, until I’ve been able to come to a conclusion about what actually happened.”

The Calabasas resident said his training officer informed him he was lacking in officer-safety skills, a category that includes officers’ ability to protect themselves in dealing with suspects, including using their guns.

Olivares said he resigned because he was worried he would endanger his fellow officers or the public. He refused to comment on whether he felt he had been forced out because of age discrimination. But, he said, “Yes, there is a problem.”

Police Department officials said Olivares’ departure is a confidential personnel matter. But a police source close to the case said: “He just wasn’t as good as we thought he was going to be.”

After graduating from the Police Academy in November, Olivares became a probationary patrol officer at the Foothill station in the northeast San Fernando Valley. All Academy graduates are probationary officers for a year, during which they are coached and evaluated by a veteran officer known as a training officer.

Until the probationary year is up, officers can be dismissed easily. At the end of the year, the department formally decides whether they will be retained.

LAPD officers said that when probationary officers are doing poorly, they are frequently advised to resign by their superiors so they won’t be fired. But an LAPD spokeswoman said probationers having trouble are offered remedial classes at the Police Academy.

After he was laid off from his aerospace job in December, 1990, Olivares, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, began working out. Each day, he ran five miles, swam 20 laps in his condominium’s 30-foot pool and lifted weights for 90 minutes. He also attended the famed Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, but was unable to get a job as a chef.

His first day on the job was recorded on TV, and his story made national headlines. But there were no cameras to record his last day of work Saturday.

“It’s a very physically grueling job to learn,” said Gary Fullerton, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the police officers’ union. “I think he was physically up to it.”

Fullerton said that so far, Olivares has not sought the union’s help.

Cliff Ruff, another union director, said that because Olivares resigned, he would first have to successfully retract his resignation if he wanted to file a complaint with the union that his rights had been violated.