Here is why results of yesterday’s scheduled no-confidence vote against the police chief, by the police union, were not available:
The election is not over yet.
Leadership of the 91-member Police Officers Assn. devised an elaborate — some would say coercive, others would say controlling — scheme to guard against any voting member later weaseling out of his vote and claiming he has been a loyal Chief Don Pedersen supporter all along.
Sources told the newspaper this afternoon that the imaginative election system suggested leaders of the uprising are themselves uncertain how much backing they have from members, and further, they clearly do not trust voters.
The reasoning behind the sophisticatedly designed election strategy may be more fascinating than the weblike plan itself.
The POA announcement of a Tuesday-morning-at-9 no-confidence vote at the American Legion did not suggest the rather global dimension of intrigue fogging up the scenario.
It is believed that the top tier of police union officials does not know, any more than Chief Pedersen does, how widespread is the desire to put a new person in the chief’s chair.
In such a ticklish, emotional, hugely sensitive setting, the leaders created measures to insure against fence-sitters and other officers developing cold feet and loudly proclaiming later their undying fealty for Mr. Pedersen — when they cast their ballot against him in the no-confidence vote.
The POA’s perhaps foolproof methods will not be mistaken for a democracy where legally ensured anonymity of the ballot-marker is the highest value.
For the police union, anonymity was the enemy.
When members arrived yesterday morning, they were given the following instructions:
When ballots were distributed, recipients were required to sign for them.
The ballots were uncomplicated — merely mark up or down on a no-confidence vote in Mr. Pedersen, who marked his fourth anniversary as chief last month.
Once the police union member had declared his choice, he was ordered to return it, open-facedly, to a member of the POA board. Only a board member could deposit a ballot into the box.
The voting would be umbrella’d across three days, yesterday, today and tomorrow, to reach the maximum portion of the POA membership.
Following yesterday morning’s session, officers voting later or turning in their ballots later were ordered to hand the paper, again directly, to a Board member. They were not permitted to drop it into a ballot box.
The longer this unique drama wears on, one insider said, the likelier it is to harden the bulldog commitment of the police union board to uncouple Mr. Pedersen from Culver City.
Legally, there is no evident path available to them.
“But they can really make conditions miserable for Don,” said a police source, “especially if they are successful in intimidating the younger and newer officers to go along with them.”
