Police pick has Maywood in uproar

The controversial selection Friday in Maywood of an interim police chief with a checkered past has dismayed some residents, infuriated rank-and-file officers, put his supporters on the defensive and launched a nasty bit of back-and-forth mudslinging.

At a tense meeting that ran late into the night Friday, a divided City Council picked Al Hutchings to take over the department, which has a reputation as a haven for misfit cops. The decision, made behind closed doors and announced to a council chambers packed with about 125 people, was met with anger from the largely anti-Hutchings crowd.

“Recall! and “Idiots!” some shouted at the three council members who voted for Hutchings, according to several people who attended. Two council members voted against his appointment.

A small group of Hutchings supporters made themselves heard over the racket, shouting “¡Si, se puede!” (“Yes, it can be done!” in Spanish).

Councilwoman Ana Rosa Rizo was surrounded by residents upset with the decision. They shouted insults at her as she stepped off the dais, Councilwoman Veronica Guardado said in an interview Saturday.

“They are just bullies. This city has been run by a government of fear for years,” said Guardado, who along with Rizo was elected last year on promises to clean up a city with a reputation for corruption and waste in the police and other agencies. She praised Hutchings as someone committed to making the Police Department more responsive to residents.

“Ours was the easy part,” she said. “Hutchings has the hard job. He’s walking into something that is going to be very difficult. I wish him luck.”

The troubled department has about 40 officers patrolling the mile-square city south of downtown Los Angeles.

The district attorney and the state attorney general are investigating allegations of police brutality and corruption. A Times investigation into Maywood last year found that a third of the officers on the force had left other police agencies under a cloud and several had criminal records.

Hutchings, 45, is a former Los Angeles police officer who pleaded no contest to bilking the LAPD out of bogus overtime pay. He has since received a court order expunging his record.

After leaving law enforcement, he earned a doctorate and taught at Los Angeles Valley College, but he was fired for alleged acts of dishonesty at the school.

Missing life as a cop, he applied for a job in Maywood and was hired in 2006. He soon started complaining about other officers’ misconduct. Later, according to city officials, Hutchings agreed to resign after he was caught having an improper on-duty relationship with the owner of a doughnut shop.

Hutchings fills the void left by another interim chief who himself had a troubled past, notably a conviction for threatening his girlfriend.

Hutchings’ tenure is to last no longer than six months while the council searches for a permanent replacement.

“I have a difficult job,” he said in an interview Saturday, adding that the challenge had made him “almost sick to my stomach. . . . I don’t feel comfortable about it at all.”

Hutchings said he entered his no-contest plea in the LAPD case because it was the most expedient and cost-effective way of dealing with false charges that were leveled in retaliation for revealing misconduct on the part of a top LAPD official. He denied that he was dishonest at Valley College and said allegations of misconduct in Maywood were likewise trumped up because he was a whistle-blower exposing bad cops.

“This stuff hurts,” he said, referring to the public resurfacing of his past. “There are a lot of guys out there tougher than me who wouldn’t do this.”

Maywood Mayor Felipe Aguirre, who voted to hire Hutchings, said the new chief would start today but would be fired immediately if a background check contradicted his account of his past or uncovered any other wrongdoing.

Such assurances did little to appease J.C. Rodriguez, president of the police union, which opposed Hutchings’ selection. Rodriguez dismissed the dark portrayal of the police force and questioned the choice of Hutchings to clean up alleged corruption. “It makes absolutely no sense to appoint Hutchings,” he said.

Rodriguez accused Hutchings of winning favor with Aguirre, Rizo and Guardado through campaign contributions and other financial favors. Aguirre and Guardado denied those contentions, saying they had never received money from Hutchings. Rizo could not be reached for comment. Hutchings also denied that he contributed money to the candidates.

The union is not organizing any job actions or other protests, Rodriguez said. He indicated, however, that until Hutchings passed a background check, he would be denied passwords to police databases and keys to sensitive areas of the department.

Hutchings said he was bracing for confrontation. Since working in Maywood as an officer, Hutchings said, he has endured anonymous calls threatening his life. Somebody called him “the devil” on the phone after Friday’s vote.

“This is a department with a lot of officers with guns,” he said. Some of the officers are “nut cases,” he added. “The crazies will come out of the woodwork.”

Maywood, whose residents are mostly low-income immigrants, is one of the densest cities in the nation. It sits on the edge of the Los Angeles River and in the shadow of the industrial warehouses and railroad tracks of neighboring Vernon. The quiet city’s tree-lined streets are lined with modest, neatly kept homes, and its commercial center consists mostly of strip malls at the intersection of Slauson Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard.

Resident Marco Solis, 25, who works at a factory that manufactures plastic trash cans, voiced concern about Hutchings’ return.

“It’s better to give another person an opportunity,” he said as he picked through clothes and furniture at a yard sale on one of the city’s narrow residential streets.

Security guard Olga Garcia agreed. “He’s corrupt,” she said after a midday meal at a Denny’s restaurant. “You know his record’s dirty. . . . The only thing it’s going to achieve is more corruption.”

Before Friday’s vote, Hutchings said he thought about withdrawing from consideration but decided against it, even if it meant enduring such attacks on his reputation.

Walking away, he said, would have been “the easiest thing to do.”

susannah.rosenblatt @latimes.com

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this report.