Besieged UCLA Police Force Gets New Chief : Law enforcement: Clarence Chapman, a veteran sheriff’s captain, inherits a department suffering from low morale and a rash of personnel complaints.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Capt. Clarence Chapman, a veteran lawman who earned widespread praise as West Hollywood’s top cop, will be the new chief of UCLA’s embattled police department, university officials have announced.

Chapman, a 28-year sheriff’s department veteran, is scheduled to be sworn in June 1. Among his most immediate concerns, he said, will be improving morale in a department that has become a breeding ground for civil rights and personnel complaints filed by disgruntled officers and civilian employees.

“We’ve really got to hit the ground running,” Chapman said. “The problems in that department dictate immediate attention.”

The 55-member force, riven by backbiting and what many describe as a hostile working environment, has been buffeted by budget cuts and upheaval caused by last year’s retirement of longtime Chief John Barber.

Disaffection, particularly among minority workers, runs high. No fewer than eight current or former Police Department employees have filed lawsuits in the past three years against the university alleging harassment, favoritism and discrimination by supervisors.

The union for campus police officers, frustrated by the slow pace of departmental reform, directed a vote of no confidence earlier this year against the acting police chief, Karl Ross.

“Generally,” Chapman said, “just a real unhappy work force is what you’ve got there.”

Chapman, an expert in risk management, said the swirl of litigation indicates poor communication between the rank-and-file and the university administration. He pledged to plunge into the task of improving the work climate.

“My goal is to build teamwork and self-esteem--to build a model of professional law enforcement,” he said.

A Pepperdine University graduate, Chapman joined the Sheriff’s Department in 1966. He was promoted to captain in 1990 and was assigned to the Marina Del Rey station for a year and West Hollywood for three years.

As the top sheriff’s official in West Hollywood, he won kudos in many circles for expanding community-based policing programs that helped temper longstanding perceptions that the Sheriff’s Department was insensitive to the city’s large gay population.

A city referendum to replace Sheriff’s Department service with a local police force was soundly defeated in 1992.

“The West Hollywood experience really did matter,” said Administrative Vice Chancellor John Curry, who led a seven-month, nationwide search for a new chief. “It was a complex job at a difficult time, and Clarence, by every indication, did a stellar job of working with that community.”

Chapman’s career has not been free of controversy. While serving in West Hollywood, he earned $70,000 providing expert testimony and other assistance in 35 civil cases pivoting on excessive force. Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Turley conducted an inquiry into the matter, and concluded earlier this year that Chapman violated a 1990 ordinance that bans county employees from receiving any pay outside their regular salaries for such testimony.

But the ordinance contained no provision for sanctions.

“The evidence suggests,” Turley wrote, “that Capt. Chapman has engaged in a variation of double-dipping. . . . While such a practice may offend elementary principles of propriety, it does not support the filing of a criminal action.”

Chapman denied in interviews that he double-dipped, and was supported in his assertion by Sheriff Sherman Block. He was subsequently reassigned by the department to handle risk management matters--such as preventing lawsuits--full-time.

It is an area of expertise that will likely come in handy as he turns his attention to the litigation-prone UCLA police.

“That’s been one of his specialties,” Curry said. “I think it will serve us well.”

Optimism about Chapman’s selection was apparent even among the most embittered members of the department. Charles Harold, an officer currently on leave who has led the legal charge against the university and its Department of Community Safety, said: “Everyone seems impressed with him. He says he’s going to run this place like a police department, not like a grade school.”