Officer Disciplined for Involvement in Anti-Parks Protest

One of the Los Angeles police officers behind a campaign to bar Chief Bernard C. Parks from officers’ funerals has been disciplined for pursuing her cause while on duty. Officer Teresa Golt’s supervisor Saturday filled out an LAPD employee comment sheet--one of the LAPD’s mildest forms of discipline--telling the officer that, while on duty or on police property, she cannot give her colleagues blank forms requesting that the chief not attend their funerals if they are killed in the line of duty.

“Police facilities are not open forums for expressing our unhappiness or lack of support for our upper levels of management,” Lt. Gloria Vargas wrote in the comment sheet, a copy of which The Times has obtained.

“In the future, if you wish to express your disapproval of the Los Angeles Police Department, do it on your own time and not on or in department facilities,” Vargas said.

Lt. Anthony Alba, the LAPD’s spokesman, said Golt’s action could be considered a violation of departmental policies on loyalty, integrity and respect for others.

Golt, who is a police union delegate, said she believes that she is the target of retaliation. She said she gave the forms to interested officers before and after a divisional roll call last week.

“I’m just making a personal choice,” said Golt, a 10-year LAPD veteran in the 77th Street Division. “Officers were coming up to me asking for the forms.”

Golt and other officers say they have left written instructions with department officials requesting that the chief not attend their funerals. Many of the officers involved in the campaign say they are protesting what they claim are Parks’ heavy-handed and unfair discipline policies.

Many of those participatingin the protest have had recent run-ins with the LAPD’s disciplinary system. Some officers said they were upset that the chief abolished flexible work schedules when he took command in 1997.

It is unclear how widespread the protest is. According to officers involved, the movement started at the 77th Street and Harbor divisions and has spread elsewhere.

Members of the LAPD command staff said they were unaware of the movement and believe that it involves only a few disgruntled members of the 9,700-officer force.

Capt. Harlan Ward, the commanding officer of the 77th Street Division, met with his officers last week in an effort to gauge the scope of the problem and found no support for the protest, Alba said.

As a result of management’s scrutiny of the issue, Golt said, some officers have filled out the forms and left them in their lockers or given them to family members.

Golt said she has collected more than 40 forms from officers, including two sergeants.

Union officials said they have no involvement in the campaign, but have heard from a number of officers who are interested in filling out the forms.

Dennis Zine, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said officers have told him that they are participating in the protest because they don’t believe that discipline has been administered fairly under Parks.

Zine, who has a pending personnel complaint against him, said the discipline action against Golt is an “attempt to silence her.”

While Parks has refused to comment on the protest, members of his top command staff have condemned it.

“It’s outrageous,” Deputy Chief David Gascon said Friday.

Mayor Richard Riordan also has blasted the campaign.

Meanwhile, law enforcement experts and LAPD observers called the protest an unusual and morbid campaign, clearly designed to embarrass Parks.

Although a number of officers have contacted The Times saying they have filled out the forms barring Parks from their funerals, only Golt and her sister, Lisa Golt, have agreed to be quoted by name.

The twin sisters have been very outspoken against Parks’ leadership. Lisa Golt was recently suspended for 66 days for giving false and misleading statements in connection with an on-duty hit-and-run accident that apparently caused little or no damage and no injuries.

The sisters also figure in the pending disciplinary matter involving Zine, who has been accused of putting condoms and a container of urine in a female colleague’s suitcase during an off-duty trip.

The sisters claim that Lisa Golt placed the condoms and the container--which they said did not contain urine--in the suitcase, believing that it was Zine’s, as a joke. They say that department officials have refused to believe them.