2 Prosecutors Allege Transfers Are Payback for Backing Lynch

Two senior prosecutors who were outspoken supporters of election challenger John Lynch were told Thursday that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti was assigning them to new jobs, transfers they bitterly alleged were retaliatory.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who has headed the San Fernando branch office for four years, was assigned to head the welfare fraud division. “It’s payback time,” Cooley said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Bozanich, who heads the Compton branch office, will take over a regional Juvenile Court office in Downey. “It’d be fair to say that I win my bets that he would bury Cooley and me,” Bozanich said.

Their transfers were but two of what amounted to wholesale changes disclosed Thursday in the management of various district attorney’s units and branches countywide.

Such changes are actually something of an annual event. The office, with more than 1,000 deputy district attorneys, is the nation’s largest prosecutorial agency, and managers are often rotated from job to job in Los Angeles County.

This particular round of transfers, however, has been eagerly awaited in legal and political circles because the election forced many in the office to choose between the incumbent and the challenger, who heads the Norwalk office.

When Garcetti was sworn in two weeks ago for a second term, he promised that he would not retaliate against those who supported Lynch in the Nov. 5 election.

Lynch is staying put. “I know I’m not going anywhere,” he said Thursday. “That would have been a story.”

Late Thursday afternoon, however, others were told they were being transferred--including Cooley and Bozanich. Their reactions signaled emphatically that the hard feelings lingering in the office because of the election probably will not dissipate soon.

“So much for Gil’s promise for no retaliation,” said Cooley, who wanted to stay in the San Fernando branch. “Obviously, when you stand up and get involved in politics in this office, you will pay a price. His word, as it was in the campaign, is relatively worthless.”

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Bozanich, meanwhile, will have gone in about a year from working in an office literally down the hall from Garcetti to Compton to the traditionally low-profile Juvenile Court office in Downey. He said Thursday of Garcetti: “He’s not much of a district attorney and not much of a man.”

Calls to Garcetti were referred to Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Sandra L. Buttitta, who said she was “very disappointed to hear that some of our head deputies are still expressing bitterness and personal animosity toward the district attorney.”

She said that no one--not even Cooley or Bozanich--is being forced to undergo what prosecutors often call “freeway therapy”--that is, a long commute.

No transfer, she said, is retaliatory.

She added that she also did not understand why either Cooley or Bozanich thinks he is being singled out for punishment.

To the contrary, Buttitta noted that Garcetti considers welfare fraud a “vital division” and that he is deeply involved in attempts to reform the juvenile justice system. “It’s my firm belief we have to put the election behind us and move on to doing the job we all came into this office to do--serve the citizens of Los Angeles County,” Buttitta said.

In another transfer of a visible Lynch supporter, Steve Kay, who headed the Torrance office, will supervise the Long Beach branch. Kay, who earlier this week won a life prison term for Charles Rathbun, the killer of model Linda Sobek, said: “I’m really not complaining.”