City Divided on Issues of Police Force

HUNTINGTON BEACH — For years, this seaside city was viewed as a Camelot in law enforcement circles, boasting a police department with robust budgets, cutting-edge technology and cream-of-the-crop officers hired away from other agencies.

Now, Camelot is under siege.

First, budget cuts forced layoffs and curtailed services in recent years. Now, a City Council faction is pushing to rein in the aggressive, celebrated police force by creating Orange County’s only citizen police board, an oversight panel that would monitor the agency and hear complaints against officers.

The proposal is being reviewed by a council subcommittee with a recommendation expected in March. Council members appear divided on the concept.

Proponents say a citizen board is needed because the department’s bruising reputation--much of it owed to the annual conflict with Fourth of July revelers--chills tourism at a time when the city is aching for revenue. Police officials, meanwhile, say the proposal is insulting to a department that saw the city named America’s safest in 1994 and again in 1995.

And, both sides acknowledge, some bitter, personal conflicts lie just beneath the surface of the debate.

In November, the police union mounted a fierce campaign against three incumbents and told voters that police services would continue to slide if they were reelected. Several community members complained that campaigning officers intimidated them or improperly used their job or badge to lobby against the incumbents.

Two incumbents targeted by the union--Tom Harman and Dave Sullivan--were reelected and now lead the push for the citizen police board. The union leaders openly contend that the committee proposal is pure payback.

“The suggestion has been made that this is a personal vendetta,” Sullivan said. “In all honesty--I am only human--I suppose there could be some of that. But over and above any of that, there was a lot of concern over the Fourth of July.”

Independence Day has become a rallying cry for critics of Huntington Beach police. Street skirmishes and mass arrests in the downtown district have created an air of fear and images of a police state, they say.

“I didn’t ride in on a load of pumpkins and I know there are a lot of bad guys out there and the cops have got to whale on them, but sometimes it’s excessive,” said council incumbent Harman, also a local attorney. “Did they go overboard on the Fourth of July? Yeah, they probably did. . . . I have the feeling that, to some degree, the department is a little out of control.”

This past year, a crackdown by police limited violence, but many residents were upset by the methods. Some residents were arrested on their front porches for having open containers of alcohol, charges that were dismissed in December by Municipal Judge Caryl Lee. The sore feelings remained, however.

“I know there were a lot of concerns in the community about how far it went,” Sullivan said. “That’s what seemed to upset people the most, that police came on their property.”

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Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg says the controversy surrounding his department and its handling of the patriotic holiday is a creation of overzealous media coverage and feeds a growing anti-government contingent in the city’s activist community.

Lowenberg says only a handful of formal complaints were filed after the 1996 holiday. The number of complaints for the entire year were not available this week, but in 1995 there were 33 filed--that with 225 officers responding to about 120,000 calls for service and making about 7,000 arrests, Lowenberg notes. There were 55 complaints in 1994.

“I’m a little bewildered as to why anyone in this community would think we need this,” Lowenberg said. “Adding another layer of bureaucracy, taking a non-elected, less-than-sophisticated group of citizens, who for the most part have no understanding of how to provide police services . . . it’s a bit disturbing to me.”

When asked about the motivation behind the proposal, Lowenberg declined comment and said he wants “to stay out of the fray.”

The department itself has not been able to so easily sidestep controversy with the City Council.

Besides the bad feelings stirred up by campaigning officers, the Police Officers Assn. has been involved in a dispute with the council over control of a city-owned shooting range that has been leased to the union since 1972 for $1 a year.

Sullivan and others argued that the range should be pumping money into city coffers, not a union. The lease was not renewed, ratcheting up the ongoing conflict over a contract impasse and budget cuts.

“Officers tell me they hate to come to work, they just don’t want to be here,” said Officer Richard Wright, president of the officers union. “We’ve been handcuffed” by budget cuts.

Wright said if the citizen commission proposal is not motivated by a political vendetta, then it is driven by a mistaken view of local police methods.

“There is a perception that there is danger in the policing of Huntington Beach and that’s all it is, a perception,” he said.

An “involved City Council” is the best police commission, while a citizen panel would create more bureaucracy and questionable benefits, union leaders said in a written statement. That position is echoed by Councilman Dave Garofalo.

“I don’t want to delegate that responsibility,” said Garofalo, who is also publisher of the Local News. “‘We hire a city manager to hire a police chief. If the chief is not implementing our goals, then we as a City Council should know, and we should give appropriate guidance to our city administrator.”

Typically, formal citizen commissions are created as watchdogs for departments tarnished by scandal, brutality charges or mismanagement. In California, major metropolitan cities such as Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco have turned to commissions to clean up police misdeeds.

“Not only do we not have those problems, other agencies have traditionally looked to us as an positive example of the way to do things,” said Lowenberg, president of the statewide Police Chiefs Assn.

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The chief pointed to the city’s declining crime rate and its ranking each year among the safest large cities in the nation, including a two-year stretch atop that poll based on FBI statistics. He notes that the Urban Institute in Washington recently selected the city to be included in an in-depth study of successful community policing projects.

In light of those facts, Lowenberg called the pitch for a citizen’s board “a slap in the face” and an unnecessary expense for a local government grappling with budget constraints.

No matter what statistics say, critics of the department say there is an undeniable air of intimidation surrounding their city’s protectors.

Rose Ohr, a local resident and registered nurse, said she is “terrified at what could happen” to her family members, but she spoke out this week at the city’s public hearings on the formation of a police commission. She said her 17-year-old son was brutalized in 1989 for straying too close to a police incident in the downtown area.

“Witnesses say they saw five officers standing over him, beating him all over with their sticks, kicking him and laughing,” Ohr said, visibly trembling at the microphone. “Initially he was arrested and charged with assault on a police officer. But at 2 a.m., he was released and all charges were dropped. He was never offered medical attention, although he was bleeding profusely. When we saw him, we were shocked.”

Ohr said she took the matter to an attorney, but dropped the case when he told her that Huntington Beach police “play hardball” and would “make it really tough” on her other three children.

Several police officials in other Orange County cities say Huntington Beach officers once had a reputation as “head-bangers,” willing to lean extra hard on anyone who brought trouble, drugs or an attitude across the city line. Some say longtime cops in the city still use that approach.

Keeping the peace in a beach city is never easy, Mayor Ralph H. Bauer said, acknowledging that the city’s police force takes strident stances with rowdy crowds and imported crime.

“In general, we’re pretty aggressive, but do we obey the law,” Bauer said. “We do take a strong position--strong but fair.”

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Some police officers have testified at council meetings that they are looking to join other agencies to try to regain the pride they once felt with the Huntington Beach department. Lowenberg says the department is facing some tough times ahead.

“I don’t know how long we can maintain this trend without a devastating impact on the quality of our service,” the chief said.

Still, Lowenberg and others say the department remains the envy of many other agencies. A steady stream of applications from veteran officers across the country means the department rarely hires rookies, and, despite budget problems, it is the only city agency in Orange County with an in-house crime lab.

In the face of political firefights and wilting budgets, it’s hard to stay focused on those positives, Wright said. The department that once nationally led the way with canine units, the use of helicopters an training innovations is now a shadow of its former self, the 21-year veteran said.

“We once led and now we’re in the backseat,” he said. “We are seeing the dismantling of one of the finest police departments in the country.”