President Seeks ‘Progressive’ Stance for Union

Cliff Ruff won the presidency of the Los Angeles police union in January by a mere 48 votes, with more than 2,000 cast, over fellow Police Protective League director Bill Harkness.

Ruff, 52, is calling for a “progressive” stance that balances the union’s obligation to represent members with its role as a liaison to the community and City Hall. He is considered more moderate than Harkness, who made the Christopher Commission’s list of officers with six or more complaints over five years and who lived up to his nickname, “Get in Your Face,” when he shouted down city officials in last year’s bitter contract talks.

Ruff’s brush with controversy is more distant, stemming from his work 20 years ago for a since-disbanded spy unit within the Police Department. While a member of the Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID), Ruff was accused of “terrorizing” an elderly architect and peace activist named Seymour A. (Mike) Myerson.

Myerson charged at the time that, solely because of his leftist politics, Ruff threatened him, slashed his car tires, knocked him to the ground by careening past a crosswalk in an unmarked car and hit his wife in the head with a rock thrown through the living room window of the couple’s Echo Park home.

Ruff denied all those charges but served a five-day suspension after admitting he anonymously called in a false report to the Rampart Division, claiming that Myerson was brandishing a gun with children nearby. A dozen or more officers surrounded the Myerson home and led the activist outside with guns held to his head. The city subsequently paid a $27,500 settlement to Myerson and his wife, Vivian.

“I was wrong. I admitted then that I was wrong and I admit it now,” Ruff said recently. “I haven’t been involved in any errant behavior since then.”

The PDID was disbanded a short time later as the result of a lawsuit and news accounts of its harassment of a variety of political groups.

“Intelligence work was a very different animal back then,” Ruff said. “That era was the Watergate era and that was the practice.”