MTA Security Chief Resigns

The new head of security at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has resigned, barely a week after being hired, following reports that he left his last job as a police chief in Washington state under a cloud.

Stan Reeves departed from the 206-officer Vancouver, Wash., Police Department in May for what he said were health reasons.

On the same day, Washington authorities launched an inquiry into allegations that he intervened in the arrest of a woman who had been stopped for drunk driving, and into allegations that he had harassed the same woman, a former neighbor with whom he acknowledged having a romantic relationship.

MTA officials said they were aware of the investigation when they hired Reeves on Dec. 9 as the agency’s first chief of transit police, at an annual salary of $140,000. Eight days later, on Tuesday, he submitted his resignation, officials said Thursday.

“He’s no longer employed by us,” said MTA spokesman Marc Littman, when The Times inquired about an anti-harassment restraining order placed on Reeves in Washington. “He gave his resignation. There’s nothing else we can say. We have to leave it at that.”

Littman said the agency could not discuss the reasons for Reeves’ departure, citing a policy against the disclosure of personnel matters.

A spokesman for MTA legal chief Steve Carnevale would not say whether Reeves was given severance pay.

Reeves, 52, could not be reached for comment.

When MTA Deputy Chief Executive John Catoe hired Reeves, he told The Times that his “concern about the allegations is zero,” and said Reeves would do a superb job.

Reeves was hired on a conditional basis, pending a state-required background check.

He was to oversee all aspects of security at the MTA, guiding the way officers and deputies from the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are deployed to provide security for the transit agency’s buses, trains and property.

Littman said the MTA will wait several months, until contract negotiations with the agencies are finished, before hiring another chief.