Campaign Support by Police Chief Stirs Anger : Politics: Redondo Beach activists call for an investigation of letter endorsing a City Council candidate. It was written on city stationery.

Redondo Beach civic activists are demanding that city officials investigate how a letter by Police Chief Roger Moulton endorsing a City Council candidate was distributed to voters before last month’s election.

In the letter, which appeared on city stationery under the city seal in violation of local ordinances, Moulton endorsed candidate Greg Hill and strongly denounced Hill’s opponent, Rick Abelson. Hill won the election.

City Manager Bill Kirchhoff has publicly apologized for the letter, saying it was inappropriate for the chief to use city stationery and the city seal for political purposes. He also said he has disciplined Moulton, but he declined to say what action was taken.

Some residents of District 2 want more than an apology. They demand to know who made copies of the letter and who delivered them to the homes of an unknown number of voters four days before the election.

Some activists say that it is a violation of the federal criminal code, punishable by a $300 fine, to put flyers into private mailboxes. They also say the chief, who is scheduled to retire this year, is guilty of interfering with the election and should be demoted.

“He caused considerable harm to the electoral process in our community,” said Greg Diete, a business owner who supported Abelson in the election. “There’s enough breaking of rules and regulations, let alone having the police chief lead the parade.”

Other critics say they simply want the city to investigate the matter further to ensure the integrity of future elections.

“It’s like saying, ‘Mrs. Murphy, I want to apologize for raping your daughter,’ ” Tom O’Leary fumed at a recent council meeting. “It was a foul, despicable dirty trick. It cannot be taken care of by a simple-minded, puerile apology.”

Anaheim Police Chief Joseph T. Molloy, who is first vice president of the California Police Chiefs Assn., said he has never heard of a police chief endorsing a candidate in a local election. He said his organization recommends against it because such endorsements would politicize police departments and strain their relations with city leaders.

But despite his reservations, Molloy said there is nothing illegal about police chiefs making their views public and that he could not condemn a chief for doing so.

“I would not personally endorse a council candidate, but that doesn’t make it right or wrong,” Molloy said.

City officials say they are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution from taking any action against Moulton for expressing his First Amendment rights. They acknowledge that his use of city stationery and the city seal violated city ordinances, but insist he was punished appropriately for it.

City officials cited confidentiality regulations in declining to disclose the disciplinary action. But they said the punishment in such cases ranges from a verbal warning to a 30-day suspension.

They also deny there are sufficient grounds to open another investigation.

“They (city activists) have introduced nothing that’s factual on this issue,” said City Atty. Jerry Goddard. “I don’t have any information before me that would indicate that any other employees or city assets are involved.”

Moulton declined to comment on the incident. In a written apology he sent to Abelson last month, Moulton acknowledged writing the letter, which began “Dear Editor” and was apparently intended for publication as a letter to the editor in a local newspaper. But he denied distributing the letter for campaign purposes.

The seven-paragraph letter was dated April 7, one month before it appeared in voters’ mailboxes. Moulton’s name and title were typed at the bottom, but the letter did not carry his signature.

The letter recounted a conversation Moulton said he had with Abelson on March 17 in which Abelson allegedly asked him to influence the president of the Redondo Beach Police Officers Assn. to “not go after him” politically. The association had already endorsed Hill.

Moulton wrote that he was “totally shocked” by the request. But, he wrote, “What surprised me the most about this meeting was Mr. Abelson’s disinterest and apparent lack of concern for crime problems and issues facing District 2.”

“He almost reluctantly took the materials I had prepared for him but made sure that I received a copy of an article he had written for an architectural journal,” the chief wrote.

Moulton ended the letter saying that Hill appeared “very knowledgeable about crime and graffiti problems facing our community” and had “enthusiastically received the reports I had assembled for him.”

Abelson called the chief’s allegations “ridiculous.”

“There’s no way that I ever went in to the chief to try to influence him to do anything,” Abelson said. “He gave me a bunch of (statistics) and I used them in the debate.”

Abelson, who said dozens of voters had questioned him about the letter in the final days of his campaign, is convinced it cost him the election.