Chief, Top Aides No Longer Able to Dismiss Tickets

San Diego City Manager John Lockwood on Thursday will impose new rules to prevent ticket-fixing abuses in the Police Department, including prohibiting Police Chief Bill Kolender and his top aides from deciding which parking and moving citations are dismissed.

Lockwood’s rules prohibit any police officer from investigating or dismissing a ticket for a family member or friend, and they also provide that a log of all dismissed traffic tickets be made available to the news media for scrutiny.

The new rules come one month after Lockwood issued written reprimands to Kolender and Assistant Police Chief Bob Burgreen, in part because they fixed tickets for friends and relatives. The San Diego County district attorney is reviewing those and other improprieties to determine whether a criminal investigation is warranted.

Lockwood began his inquiry after a monthlong investigation by The Times revealed that Kolender and his top aides last year dismissed hundreds of parking tickets and dozens of moving citations, many for family members, influential San Diegans and the news media.

In many cases, The Times found that the dismissals were based on fabricated excuses and the officers who wrote the tickets were not consulted.

Some of the rules prepared by Lockwood restate rules that already were in effect but had been disregarded by Kolender and other top officials.

For example, Lockwood’s guidelines require the Police Department to provide a “thorough explanation” for any dismissed ticket.

Existing police guidelines require “complete reasons” for dismissals because “a generalized statement such as ‘Furtherance of Justice’ is not sufficient.” The department routinely ignored that policy in many cases, fabricating excuses such as “Driver en route home on family emergency.”

Lockwood said Tuesday the new guidelines were written in response to the controversy, and he said he was hoping to create an “equitable procedure for everyone.”

Lockwood’s new rules, however, still grant special parking privileges to some.

Television camera crews displaying a media placard to be issued by the Police Department will be exempt from parking citations while “engaged in live broadcasting.” Newspaper and radio reporters no longer will be allowed to have their parking tickets routinely dismissed.

The guidelines also allow for parking ticket dismissals for government employees on “urgent official business.”

Under the old policy, 27 high-ranking administrators--from captains up to Kolender--were empowered to dismiss parking tickets. Commanders and above--a total of 12 people--had the authority to dismiss moving violations.

Under Lockwood’s new policy, the responsibility for dismissing all tickets, parking and moving, now rests with the commander in charge of the traffic division, currently Cmdr. Jim Kennedy. Kolender and his deputy chiefs, all of whom outrank Kennedy, will not be allowed to dismiss the citations.

Police officials said Kolender declined to comment on the new rules and referred calls to Kennedy.

“I think the biggest difference is we’ve limited final say on any citation to one person,” said Kennedy. “I really think that is the major change. I think your control is absolute when there is only one person is involved.”

With that change, Kennedy said, Kolender will no longer be able to dismiss his own wife’s parking ticket or dismiss a moving ticket for Burgreen’s uncle--examples turned up by The Times in its investigation.

Instead, Kolender and all others will have to file a dismissal request with the supervisor of the officer who wrote the citation. That supervisor will investigate the circumstances and send the request up the line to Kennedy, who has final approval.

Kennedy said he won’t feel any pressure handling tickets that may be turned in for consideration by Kolender or other superiors.

“I think the chief helped write this policy,” he said. “The chief is aware of what the policy is and agreed to it. His assistant agreed to it and his boss, the manager, agreed to it. I don’t think it’s a problem. I don’t feel intimidated by it.”

Kennedy said from now on he will require full explanations for dismissals. Unless there is an obvious error on the ticket, a dismissal request will require interviews with the person who received the ticket and the officer who wrote it, he said.

Lockwood’s new policy also requires that the Police Department make a log of all ticket dismissals available to news reporters. The log will show who received the ticket, who requested the dismissal and the reasons for granting the request.

“The difference is that (reporters), and John Lockwood and Bill Kolender can see the report, and if the explanations don’t make any sense, we can all follow up,” said Lockwood.

Lockwood’s other rules include:

- Prohibiting any officer from investigating or dismissing a ticket for someone he knows.

“No police official shall be involved in an investigation of a parking or moving citation when the cited person is a relative or personal friend of the police official,” the new policy reads.

Lockwood said he included that provision because it “removes some suspicions that some connection influenced the decision” to drop a citation.

- An expanded list of why the department may dismiss a parking ticket. The new policy allows parking tickets to be dismissed when the issuing officer made a mistake in interpreting the law; a writing error was made or the ticket mutilated; the citation was issued to an out-of-town visitor who may have been confused by parking signs; curb markings or signs are inadequate or missing; a parking meter is confirmed to be malfunctioning; the vehicle was parked by a government official on “urgent official business;” the car was confirmed or reported stolen; the vehicle belongs to another law enforcement agency and “it was not feasible to legally park,” or there is a registration violation that is later corrected by the motorist.

Lockwood gave no list for when moving citations could be dropped.

- The Police Department’s Inspection and Control Unit shall conduct an inspection of ticket dismissals every six months. Results of the review will be forwarded to Kolender.

Lockwood wrote in a memo that the periodic audits would “ensure compliance with established procedures and will reveal any exceptions.”

But The Times has reported that the Inspection and Control Unit found ticket-fixing abuses in previous reports to Kolender and those warnings went unheeded. An audit, sent up the chain of command for review, warned the department in 1985 that officers were improperly dismissing traffic tickets based on phony excuses.

Despite the warning, Kolender and his aides continued to fix tickets for another year, The Times investigation found.