Officer Who Beat Another Denied Stress Pension

A former Los Angeles policeman who pulled his gun on a fellow officer and beat him with his fists in the station was denied a pension Thursday for job-related stress.

At a hearing in Los Angeles City Hall, the officer, Gerald P. Baker, 37, said tearfully that the attack stemmed from a buildup of stress, which he said probably stemmed from the “cumulative effects of arresting people and dealing with deaths.”

But the city Board of Pension Commissioners, which has come under fire recently for liberally granting tax-free pensions for stress, voted 4 to 1 to reject Baker’s application.

Baker’s attorney, Ronald H. Stillman, declined to say if the decision would be appealed to a court. Several commissioners said they expected a court challenge.

Baker, a 14-year-veteran, was sentenced to five years’ probation in Van Nuys Superior Court in September after pleading guilty to a felony charge of battery. He resigned from the force shortly after the incident, which happened in June in the Van Nuys police station.

In voting to deny Baker a pension, Commissioner Bert R. Cohen cited a long record of troubles the former officer had acknowledged having with his parents and with two former wives.

Cohen said that “those troubles kind of carried over into your relationship with the department.”

Baker contradicted him, saying that “perhaps my problems with my wives resulted from my problems with the department.”

Commissioner Sheldon Andelson quoted from a psychiatric evaluation of Baker, a Westlake Village resident. The report said that, in 1982, while recuperating from a shoulder injury, the patrolman discovered he “enjoyed spending time around the pool and going to the beach with his girlfriend.”

Also cited at the hearing was another psychiatrist who said that Baker was experiencing “severe job dissatisfaction rather than job-related stress.”

Stillman said that, since 1982, Baker has been under the care of a psychiatrist, who along with several other psychiatrists had concluded that the former officer was mentally unable to continue police work.

Under the City Charter, an officer who becomes “physically or mentally incapacitated” is entitled to a tax-free pension of 50% to 90% of his or her pay.

Baker testified that, in the months before the attack, he was able to perform light-duty police work, including taking burglary reports, but feared a return to patrol duty.

He blamed his superiors at the Van Nuys station for triggering his attack on a fellow officer by ordering him back to patrol duty shortly before the incident, “even though I begged them not to.”

“I can’t tell you exactly what about the job that caused this man’s stress,” Stillman said. “But he is disabled from police work.”

David Bow Woo, commission president, cast the lone vote in Baker’s favor, saying, “The question is, ‘Would you want this man back on the force?’ ”

Baker said that, since quitting the force, he has supported himself by painting houses, building cabinets and working as an unarmed guard at a hospital.