Police Whistle-Blower’s Suit Reinstated

Pomona officials were considering Wednesday whether to appeal a court ruling that has revived a federal lawsuit by a Police Department whistle-blower who helped launch a Rampart-like probe.

The ruling, issued Tuesday by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, condemned a “code of silence” among police in general and specifically reinstated the civil rights lawsuit of Pomona policeman Jed Arno Blair.

Blair’s allegations that officers stole money and planted drugs on suspects helped spark a 1995 internal investigation that eventually led to the dismissal of 25 criminal prosecutions and the firing of three officers. Two of the officers were later reinstated.

Blair sued the department a year later, claiming that its hierarchy left him defenseless against retaliation from colleagues who allegedly stole his equipment, interfered with his radio calls, threatened to kill him and his family, and scrawled the word “rat” on his locker.

“This case reveals what happens to good police officers who violate the code of silence,” said Blair’s attorney, Anne Richardson, on Wednesday. “This happened long before the Rampart scandal and shows the code of silence is a nationwide problem. And we want a jury to send a message that this won’t be tolerated.”

Pomona City Atty. Greg Docimo said: “Obviously we’re disappointed in what the court said. We haven’t decided whether we’ll appeal or what the next step may be.”

Mayor Eddie Cortez declined to comment. Police Chief Fred Sanchez said the incidents occurred before he came on board in 1998, but he denied that there is a code of silence in the department. Blair is currently a corporal on patrol duty.

In April 1995, Blair said Officer Michael Olivieri had told him that he witnessed colleagues on the major crimes task force violate numerous laws, including stealing money, throwing a couch at a suspect and taking heroin from one suspect and planting it on another.

Blair said Olivieri asked him to keep the information secret, but Blair informed a lieutenant and warned Olivieri, who then spoke to the chief. An internal investigations led to the terminations and case dismissals.

The district attorney’s office declined to charge the officers, citing “insufficient evidence.”

In the weeks after Blair made his revelations, according to court documents, Olivieri, who was given 24-hour protection, received the message “187-187” on his pager--the number of the California penal code section for murder.

Meanwhile Blair said his locker was spat in and wired shut with a coat hanger. His equipment was stolen, shirts were dumped in a urinal and soda was poured into his patrol car, he said.

According to the suit, Blair’s complaints were ignored and he was transferred to the very task force he exposed. The day the three officers were dismissed, the document says, Blair’s wife got a phone call warning that her husband might come home with broken legs and “that they should get rid of the whole . . . family.”

Soon after, Blair went on medical leave and left the department, but he was forced to return when he couldn’t find law enforcement work elsewhere, his attorney said. Chief Sanchez has ordered Blair not to speak about the suit or the department, the lawyer added.

Blair sued the city in September 1996. The suit was dismissed in February 1998 by U.S. District Judge Ronald Lew, who said Blair could not show the department’s “custom or policy violated civil rights.”

But this week, the appeals court disagreed, saying a jury could find that the department’s alleged indifference toward the acts against Blair amounts to a “custom.”

“Blair was subjected to a series of acts that a reasonable fact finder could infer were inflicted by members of the department with the knowledge and connivance of those running the department,” Judge Jack Noonan wrote.

Citing police cases in New Orleans, New York and L.A., he said the need to allow whistle-blowers to sue for civil rights violations “is underlined by what has been observed around the country as to the code of silence in police departments.” He added, “Silence to protect criminal policemen cannot be supported by a civilized community.”