Trial Over Officer’s Alleged Retaliatory Firing Begins

Steve Nolan says he was a dedicated police officer whose career was prematurely ended when he violated an unwritten “code of silence” by reporting two alleged incidents of police brutality committed by fellow officers.

But the Anaheim Police Department, where Nolan worked for eight years, characterizes him as a temperamental man who had trouble getting along with others on the force and had a history of disciplinary problems both on and off duty.

The two sides began squaring off in Orange County Superior Court on Thursday in a long-awaited legal showdown. The jury trial is expected to last about three weeks, and comes nearly two years after Nolan filed a civil lawsuit against the city seeking damages.

At issue is whether the Police Department was retaliating against Nolan by firing him from the force in 1993. An impartial arbitrator later determined that the 34-year-old officer was wrongly terminated and ordered that he be reinstated. But Nolan claims he received anonymous death threats, including one from a caller who said “better wear your vest when you get back.” Nolan never returned to work, saying he was afraid for his life.

Nolan’s attorney, Steve Pingel, said in an opening statement that his client had an obligation to report incidents in 1991 and 1992 when he believed that two suspected gang members were beaten by fellow members of the department’s gang unit.

A Police Department investigation concluded that wrongful conduct by the officers Nolan named could not be proven, and no disciplinary action was taken against them. Nolan contends the internal investigation was not carried out properly.

Pingel said Nolan’s complaints were not kept anonymous by his superiors and became a source of friction between him and his colleagues.

After months of strained relations and a transfer out of the gang unit, Pingel said Nolan was “set up for termination” with trumped up charges of hiding an investigation file. He had already been suspended for other discipline problems.

“It wasn’t just an accident that Officer Nolan was terminated,” Pingel said. “It has everything to do with reports he made.”

Pingel said that after a hard-fought arbitration victory in 1994, his client began receiving anonymous telephone threats shortly before he was scheduled to return to work. The attorney said he will elaborate on the “hostile environment” Nolan faced at the department during the trial.

The city’s attorney, Richard Kreisler, immediately tried to chip away at Nolan’s credibility in his opening remarks to the jury. He cited 18 disciplinary incidents in the officer’s record and said his claim of retaliation is “fabricated and baseless.”

“The plaintiff had an employment history so poor that the city would have fired him in any case,” Kreisler said.

Kreisler said Nolan was welcome to rejoin the force in 1994 after the arbitration ruling, but instead of showing up for work on his first scheduled day back, he sent his lawyer with papers requesting a disability retirement.

“This plaintiff does not want work, he wants money,” asserted the attorney, who added that Nolan’s complaints came only after he was disciplined for other matters.

At the end of the day, Nolan took the stand and his attorney began to question him about each disciplinary incident in which he was involved.