South Pasadena Council Moves to Fire Officer in Hit-Run Case

The city of South Pasadena is attempting to fire a politically well-connected police officer whose alleged hit-and-run crash threw his department into turmoil, officials confirmed Thursday.

On Oct. 11, the city gave Scott D. Ziegler a letter of intent to terminate and has not yet received a response from the officer who remains on paid leave, said interim City Manager Linda Holmes. She said that Ziegler is entitled to appeal the planned termination.

The move comes during a changing of the leadership guard that has guided this small suburban hamlet through a year in which it has been rocked by a series of scandals in City Hall and the Police Department.

Holmes, who is credited with steering the city through its recent turbulence, will step down Nov. 7. Michael J. Ward, a 25-year veteran captain who became acting police chief after the department’s leader went on leave and filed a workers’ compensation claim against the city, has declined to remain as acting chief, Holmes said.

City Council members asked Holmes, a retired bureaucrat who takes on temporary assignments, to stay, but doing so would jeopardize her pension benefits. The council asked Ward to stay on as well, but he said he would rather be captain than acting chief, Holmes said.

“The council begged him to keep the position,” she said.

The city’s troubles began last year when an off-duty Ziegler drove a Camaro registered to his father-in-law, former Mayor Ted Shaw, into a parked car and then sped off, prosecutors said. Police Chief Thomas Mahoney was on vacation, and Ziegler was initially fired by Ward, then the acting chief, according to city documents. But Mahoney rehired Ziegler two weeks later.

Officials say Ziegler was rehired on the condition that he pay the $550 in damages to the parked car’s owner and that police present the case to the district attorney. Neither were apparently done, officials say, and Ziegler’s name was omitted from a police report until The Times made inquiries about the case.