Stakes High for S.F. Mayor Jordan as Police Chief’s Sex Harassment Trial Opens

When former San Francisco Police Officer Joanne Welsh takes her sexual harassment suit against Police Chief Anthony Ribera to trial Monday, the stakes will be high for Mayor Frank Jordan too.

Jordan has staunchly backed Ribera--whom he appointed to the post in 1992--against Welsh’s allegations of unwanted sexual advances and a Police Commission investigation that ended with the chief keeping his job.

Now the mayor’s own job is at risk in a Dec. 12 runoff election with former Assemblyman Willie Brown, who has described the Police Department as mismanaged and in need of a new chief.

Welsh, who was named Police Department spokeswoman by Ribera shortly after his appointment, says the chief plagued her with uninvited kisses, groping, propositions and sexual comments. Welsh, 34, was removed as spokeswoman by Ribera in February, 1993. She transferred to another position in the department, then quit this year, saying she was suffering retaliation and intolerable working conditions.

Ribera denies harassing Welsh, and contends that their relationship was proper and professional. The city of San Francisco, which is a defendant in the lawsuit, says Welsh and her fiance, former Supervisor Bill Maher, are out to get Ribera for thwarting Welsh’s career aspirations by removing her as the department’s chief spokeswoman.

Although the case could produce some unpleasant publicity for Jordan--who trails Brown in opinion polls--the judge has ruled that the jury may not hear any testimony about whether Jordan failed to act on Welsh’s complaints.

U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen, who is presiding over the case, has ruled that Welsh cannot offer evidence that she tried to complain to the mayor about Ribera before going public in a February, 1993, newspaper interview. Jensen also barred Welsh from challenging the adequacy of the Police Commission investigation.

But the judge also ruled that Welsh could testify about Ribera’s alleged harassment of her in 1989-90 to bolster her charges of harassment during the period covered by the suit.

During the earlier period, when Ribera was her supervising officer but before he was chief, Welsh says Ribera kissed her, fondled her, told her they should have an affair and gave her an unwanted pair of expensive earrings.

The incidents in 1992-93, when Ribera was chief and Welsh his appointed public information officer, all involve alleged sexual comments. Welsh contends that he discussed his marital problems, said he wanted an extramarital relationship, told her she owed him a kiss for saving some policewomen’s jobs, and told her that an officer had had sex in Ribera’s car and as chief, he “should be getting some of that action.”

Jensen ruled earlier that Welsh’s 1993 suit was filed too late to seek damages for harassment she alleged occurred in 1989 and 1990. But he ruled last week that the earlier incidents are relevant to her claims of continuing harassment.

They can be discussed to show that Ribera’s later actions “were not isolated social mistakes or accidents,” and to try to prove that his motive for removing her as public information officer “was to harass her for rejecting his advances,” Jensen wrote.

After jury selection Monday, Welsh is scheduled to be the first witness. Ribera’s lawyers hope to discredit her accounts of the earlier incidents by pointing to her public support for Ribera’s promotion to chief in 1992.

Welsh, then a 10-year veteran and vice president of the Women Officers Network, said in an October, 1992, letter to Jordan that Ribera’s “leadership abilities and progressive ideas will solidify the department and serve the best interests of the community.”