Fired Jail Supervisor Says Officers Used Racial Epithets

A former civilian jail supervisor whose confrontation with two Los Angeles police officers led to her dismissal testified at a Civil Service hearing Thursday that the officers called her a “black bitch” as they struck her with a baton and handcuffed her.

The officers made no attempt to verify her employment even though she gave them her name, her watch commander’s name and her serial number, testified Jennifer J. Jones, who hopes to win back her job.

The Aug. 9, 1991, incident occurred when Jones, a black woman employed by the department for 10 years, arrived for work without her police identification and was stopped by Metro Division Officers Michael Daly and John Puis, both of whom are white, as they pulled into a Parker Center parking lot.

Jones, 41, was fired May 27 after an investigation by the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division. The department found that she failed to cooperate with the officers trying to identify her and that she unnecessarily struck Daly on the chest and forehead with her hands and key ring as their argument became physical.

On Thursday, during her first public account of the incident, Jones denied deliberately using her key ring to strike Daly, who was cut on the forehead during the altercation.

Instead, she testified, the officers shoved her, struck her on the leg with a baton, handcuffed her and pushed her over the trunk of their unmarked car, painfully twisting her fingers as she protested. She was treated for scrapes on her thigh and shoulders.

Both officers denied using racial epithets during rebuttal testimony Thursday and called the allegation personally offensive--Daly, 34, because his wife is half Latina and half Asian and Puis, 44, because his girlfriend is black.

In closing arguments, Internal Affairs Detective Bryan Odenwald said it was Jones who allowed the confrontation to escalate into violence by refusing to accompany Daly inside police headquarters to confirm her employment.

As a veteran department employee, Jones should have known better than to walk through a restricted area without her ID, or to take offense when she was asked to produce it, Odenwald said.

But Jones’ union representative, Michael J. Berman of the Los Angeles City Supervisors and Superintendents Assn., said Daly could have easily confirmed her employment by calling into the building with his police radio.

Citing the Christopher Commission report, Berman also suggested that Daly and Puis were products of a Police Department that tolerates excessive force, despite their testimony that they have received more than 30 commendations each during their police careers.

Berman noted that Daly, a nine-year veteran, and Puis, an 18-year veteran, were involved in fatal shootings of minorities during the riots last spring. Those officer-involved shootings and others during the riots are under investigation by the Police Department.

Daly also received a written admonishment in 1987 for firing too soon when he fatally shot a black man.

The closing arguments ended a two-day hearing in City Hall South. City Hearing Examiner Philip Tamoush said he will issue his opinion to the Civil Service Commission within 30 days.