California police found to hide misconduct with secret agreements

SACRAMENTO, the United States, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- California has long used secret legal agreements to hide police misconduct, allowing officers with wrongdoing records to continue working in law enforcement and other sensitive positions, a recent investigation revealed.

An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle and University of California, Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program found that at least 163 California police agencies had executed secret legal agreements hiding misconduct allegations against at least 297 officers and deputies.

Known as "clean-record agreements," these deals often promise to destroy disciplinary records or change them to reflect an alternate outcome in exchange for the officer's guarantee to leave an agency without a fight.

"It happens in almost every agency, at every level," Sid Smith, a former California police chief and expert on law enforcement background investigations, was cited as saying in the report released Tuesday.

The investigation obtained hundreds of previously secret agreements, mostly signed between 2012 and 2022. Over half of the officers received lump-sum payments totaling 23.7 million U.S. dollars as part of the deals, with individual cases going as high as 3.1 million dollars.

Police chiefs interviewed said they reluctantly approved clean-record agreements because firing problematic officers was expensive and challenging due to California's public employee protections.

"It's just cheaper to settle, even if you're 100 percent right," said Scott Fairfield, former chief of the Bell Gardens Police Department, in the report.

The clean-record agreements not only allow the officers to avoid accountability but, often, to quietly move onto other jobs where they are asked to protect the public.

Twenty-five years ago, Hossep "Joe" Ourjanian's supervisors at the Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety accused him of lying to skip work and pulling his girlfriend's hair during an argument. The county agreed to hide this misconduct in exchange for his resignation.

Ourjanian went on to work for multiple law enforcement agencies. In 2019, the Sierra County Sheriff's Office accused him of embezzling money. Again, a clean-record agreement concealed the allegations. When Eric Apperson, then-sheriff of Del Norte County, later hired Ourjanian, he was unaware of this history.

"Are you kidding me?" Apperson said when informed by reporters. "If you're asking me if an officer got terminated for embezzlement, would that make a difference to me if I was hiring them? Yeah, of course, that would make a difference," he added.

The investigation found at least 52 officers benefited from clean-record agreements in securing new law enforcement jobs over the past decade. Many faced accusations of misconduct in their new positions.

These agreements also helped officers obtain other sensitive jobs. At least 16 became teachers, including an officer accused of threatening an unarmed woman with his gun who is now teaching fifth grade. Another, fired after multiple internal affairs investigations, teaches at a law enforcement training academy.

In 2016, Jeffrey Lamoureaux was hired as a Title IX investigator at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to protect students from sexual harassment and assault. A month earlier, he secured a clean-record agreement with the Burbank Police Department to conceal his sexual harassment misconduct.

While a few states have taken steps to address this issue -- Alaska banned such agreements in 2007, and Colorado and Kansas passed laws invalidating confidentiality promises in these deals -- California has not directly targeted the practice.

The Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), a powerful lobbying group funded by police unions, has advocated using these agreements.

PORAC's legal defense fund, which spends about 20 million dollars annually defending officers, boasts of securing "clean slate" agreements for its members, said the report.

The prospect of facing well-funded PORAC lawyers is one reason departments often resort to clean-record agreements as a practical way to remove problem officers.

For some police leaders, the bargain inherent in these agreements proved deeply troubling. Alex Diaz, former chief of the Banning Police Department, recalled being forced to lie about an officer's history of misconduct due to the clean-record agreement. The experience left him disillusioned.

"I was ... so heartbroken," Diaz said. "How do I protect my citizens? How do I protect the city?" Four months later, he resigned from his 18-year career in law enforcement.

As for Ourjanian, he remained in law enforcement but faced new troubles. After rising to captain in Del Norte County, he suddenly retired last fall amid an investigation into whether he lied during his background check.

He's now working for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Reno, Nevada. Still, he has been suspended from police duties due to "new, previously sealed information about allegations of wrongdoing," according to a Veterans Affairs Department spokesperson.