After six years of battling City Hall for back pay, recently retired Culver City police Lt. Greg Smith filed a $250,000 claim for damages on Monday, and, in the process, he had plenty to say about those in and out of the Police Dept. who have rejected previous requests for relief.
He said ethical violations that allegedly flourished under the iron thumb of the controversial former Police Chief Ted Cooke continue to this day, unabated, under Mr. Cooke’s latest successor, Don Pedersen. He maintains the violations still are being routinely committed, but for discrete reasons — a form of passivity, he indicated — apart from the prevailing one-man-rule environment during the long Cooke regime.
Mr. Smith laid into the department, its past and present leadership, with the force of 31-year veteran who proudly wore his watchdog reputation that he says turned him into a pariah. He has accused City Hall and Police Dept. officials of retaliating against him on numerous occasions.
In perhaps his most condemnatory statement, Mr. Smith said that every time he has informed city personnel “in confidence” of abuse within the department, “each time the word gets back to the rank-and-file of the Police Dept., and I suffer retaliation.”
Ex-Chief Is a Prime Target
Mr. Smith is clear about exactly where he believe fault lies, with Mr. Cooke. “I was promised reimbursement (of the overtime back pay he is seeking) by Chief Ted Cooke, and I have been denied this time. The only reason I have been denied this time is because I have raised issues of ethical, moral and illegal conduct that have occurred within the Culver City Police Dept.
“Chief Cooke said it best when he told me, because you have raised these issues, this is a benefit you no longer can enjoy.
“The benefit of taking time off, by management personnel in the Police Dept., and not reporting it to the city, was occurring up until my retirement date of Nov. 30, 2007, and I am sure it is continuing today.”
Turning more sharply toward his retaliation assertion, Mr. Smith said:
“The last 10 years of my 31-year career with the city of Culver City have been the most difficult. I and many others have suffered continuous retaliation for speaking out about these abuses.”
Task Force and Back Pay
Mr. Smith’s basis for claim, for $250,000, lies in 1,160 hours of unpaid overtime during the three years when he was out of the office, assigned by the department to be Deputy Director of Operations at L.A. Impact, the gangs/drug task force that is a joint venture of citywide law enforcement.
Between September 1999 and September 2002 at L.A. Impact, Mr. Smith said he was required to be available 24/7. He was compensated for part of his accumulated overtime, he said, by being allowed to take time off. “When I returned to Culver City, I had 1,160 hours of uncompensated overtime,” Mr. Smith’s claim says. “I have requested some of this time off every year since 2002.I have filed civil service grievances with the Police Dept., city personnel and the City Manager.
“I have appealed this to the Civil Service Commission and been denied a hearing on the matter.”
Reserving his heaviest criticism for Mr. Cooke for allegedly running the department his last two decades as his personal fiefdom, an authority unto himself, as distinct from the rest of the city, immune from City Hall authority, Mr. Smith also took a strong swipe at the Utility Users Tax on the April 8 ballot.
Crying Wolf, He Says
“Over the past 25 years,” he states in his claim, “the citizens of Culver City have spent over $100 million in unnecessary and non-existent law enforcement. ‘Unnecessary’ are those management positions that Chief Cooke told the community were necessary to protect the citizens of Culver City.
“When Chief Cooke retired (November, ’03), we cut several of these positions from the Police Dept. budget, and we still heard rumblings of how crime was going to increase. It did not happen. We heard how the workload for the command staff would increase, and it didn’t happen.
“ ‘Non-existent law enforcement’ is the thousands of hours that Culver City citizens’ tax dollars pay for police protection that is not there. There are still numerous days of the week that you can go to the Police Dept. and find very few management personnel there or in the city. (However) (i)f you check the payroll records at the end of the pay period, you will find that they are all there.
“It’s a shame that the citizens of Culver City have been told that they have to pay some of the highest municipal taxes in the state in order to have a safe community. Over the past 31 years, I have witnessed the community consistently approve utility taxes in order to pay for the public safety that was unnecessary.”
(To be continued)
