Council Deadlocks on $631,000 Settlement

Call him the Michael Ovitz of the public sector.

OK, a $90-million severance package it’s not. But $631,000 isn’t bad for a guy who was booted out of the Los Angeles Police Department 14 years ago for insubordination and is suspected of everything from having sex in a hot tub during his shift to running a burglary ring of crooked cops.

Plus interest.

Plus a 20-year pension from the LAPD--even though he was only on the job for 16.

“I could puke,” Councilman Joel Wachs sputtered Tuesday as he and his colleagues mulled whether to comply with a judge’s order to compensate former Sgt. Roger M. “Hoot” Gibson. “This is a guy who’s as bad as they come, and he’s going to get money? It shocks the sensibilities. I’m going to do everything I possibly can to stop this.”

But the city attorney’s office says there is no way to stop Gibson from collecting his check.

A federal jury awarded him nearly $3 million in 1988, saying his rights were trampled during internal investigations. The city appealed and got the amount slashed to $631,000 three years ago. A second appeal by the city was rebuffed, and now the time limit for fighting further has passed. Meanwhile Gibson won the right to a pension of 40% of a sergeant’s salary in the mid-1980s, which comes to about $20,000 a year.

The original judge in the case has died, as have two key witnesses.

Faced with no choice Tuesday, the City Council still refused to make one, deadlocking 7 to 7 on whether to pay the federal judgment against the city. It then cast another tie vote on a radical proposal to rehire Gibson and make him work four more years to earn the pension the judges have ruled he is owed. Council members are scheduled to consider the matter again today.

“Let him come back and face his peers. Otherwise, we’re rewarding him for having sued us,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. “I, for one, would seriously like to consider reinstating him and firing him appropriately.”

As council members elbowed in front of one another to decry the outrage of the situation, staff members joked about Gibson’s future.

“He could be the LAPD liaison to the council,” one quipped.

Gibson, who at 55 retired last year from his second career as a Canyon Country carpenter, said Tuesday that he has no intention of backing down. If the council wants to rehire him, Gibson said, they’d have to retrain him first, since his state certification as an officer expired more than a decade ago.

“If they want to pay me $64,000 a year to drive down to the academy and watch them little video screens, I’d be more than happy to do that,” Gibson said in an interview. “. . . They really don’t have a choice. I’ll have the marshal’s office go over and impound their parking lot and collect from their till every day.

“They’ve played so many games, I’ve grown immune to it,” he added. “The bottom line is, they’ve got to pay it. Whether they like it or nor is immaterial.”

They don’t.

“Every one of us [is] completely disgusted by this case . . . and by the options in front of us,” Councilman Mike Feuer said.

Lawmakers fired questions for half an hour at Deputy City Atty. David Hotchkiss, trying to find a way out of the situation, but the answer kept coming back: “No.”

No, the city couldn’t get out of the judgment even by hiring Gibson back. No, the city can’t refuse to pay the pension. No, the city can’t appeal again, even to the Supreme Court.

“What you’re saying is this is a fait accompli,” Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. sighed. “What you give us is two bad options, two lousy-tasting options.”

It didn’t take long for council members to turn on Hotchkiss, reprimanding him for not bringing the case to them before the deadline for appealing further had passed.

“I want to assure you that I fought this case as hard as I could,” said the lawyer, who has collected 435 documents since he opened the case file 15 years ago. “I should have brought it to you earlier, and I apologize for that.”

*

Despite Hotchkiss’ insistence that they had to follow the federal court order, council members Hal Bernson, Goldberg, Mike Hernandez, Nate Holden, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Wachs cast “no” votes, leaving the matter on the table undecided.

Councilman Richard Alatorre, who was in the bathroom during the vote, must break the tie; he already supported the payout when it was presented to his budget committee.