Ex-Pasadena Chief Won’t Face Charges : Police: Ex-girlfriend’s allegations that Jerry A. Oliver had beaten her could not be corroborated, D.A. source says.

Criminal charges will not be filed against recently departed Pasadena Police Chief Jerry A. Oliver, who an ex-girlfriend had alleged beat her while he served as the city’s top law enforcement official, a source at the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Friday.

In justifying the decision, the source said, prosecutors noted that Oliver’s onetime companion had recanted the allegations she made in a police report filed last year that he beat her seven times or more in 1993 and 1994.

Recently, she has said she is willing to stand by her initial claims. But, the source said, there were no credible witnesses to corroborate the violence alleged by Katrina Hammonds.

A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office refused comment on the status of the case Friday.

The investigation of Oliver, who left Pasadena in April to become the police chief in Richmond, Va., began last fall, The Times recently reported. Oliver has not returned several telephone calls from The Times, but he has flatly denied Hammonds’ charges in comments to other reporters.

“There are no facts and a lot of smoke,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Hammonds’ attorney, Joe Hopkins, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the decision not to pursue charges against Oliver. He speculated that prosecutors may have been reluctant to act against a former chief because they often work with Pasadena police on other cases.

“They’re all cops,” Hopkins said. The district attorney’s office “wouldn’t have filed against the [Los Angeles Police Department] officers that beat Rodney King but for the video” that was made of the March, 1991, incident, he said.

Hopkins said his client, a Los Angeles County health worker whose romantic relationship with Oliver lasted 2 1/2 years, had recanted her allegations last summer because she was afraid of him and did not want to harm his career.

Locally, Oliver was well known for spearheading community policing programs and Pasadena’s ammunition registration law, the nation’s first such ordinance.

Hammonds’ allegations were not the first time Oliver had been targeted by abuse claims. In divorce papers, his fourth wife alleged that he threatened, choked and spied on her electronically during their 14-month marriage. The district attorney’s office looked into those allegations but decided there was insufficient evidence.

Oliver has been quoted as saying that both women making the charges were trying to punish him for breaking up with them.