Beck's role in mismanagement at L.A. police relief group comes under scrutiny

A Times review of court records found one incident over his 32-year career in which Charlie Beck, who is the mayor's choice to be L.A.'s new police chief, was accused of mishandling a crisis, stifling reform and covering up the misuse of taxpayer money.

The allegations, which Beck denies, were never proved. They involved Beck's role as a board member of the Los Angeles Police Relief Assn., a nonprofit that receives millions of dollars a month in city subsidies to manage health benefits for most of the city's police officers.

Beck was president of the board -- a volunteer position -- nearly a decade ago when two former employees filed whistleblower lawsuits alleging that they were pushed out after uncovering mismanagement and misconduct.

In an interview Friday, Beck acknowledged there were administrative problems at the association. He said he had acted properly, and he pointed out that a city audit and police internal affairs investigation cleared him and others of any wrongdoing.

Police Relief eventually settled the lawsuits out of court for more than $1.2 million, according to sources familiar with the terms, which are covered by nondisclosure agreements.

Asked why the cases were settled, Beck said it was on the advice of the board's attorneys: "Sometimes it's in the best interests of the organization."

Read the full story here.

--Jason Felch

Photo: LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, left, picked by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to be the next police chief, says "you can mandate change from the top ... but the only way an organization really changes is from the roots up; that's much more powerful." (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times / November 3, 2009)

Comments

[oldusedcop]

Cleared of wrong doing? So why are we dredging this crap up now?

[it figures]

Beck's "role in mismanagement comes under scrutiny" by WHOM? NO ONE except that this paper decided to dig and dig until you "found" something wrong, because the always noisy anti-Antonio, anti-Bratton, rightwing (or just professional skeptic conspiracy theorist demagogues - the pro-Trutanich/Zine blogs and writers like Ron kaye, jill Stewart/mayor sam and their minions, and so on), keep writing and blathering about some major conspiracy and how Beck isn't 'really' best qualified, it's all a plot or conspiracy, so you have to appease them.

Meanwhile, when your pet project Trtuanch was running, scads of people from the south bay to the USC and legal communities who knew him called and wrote this paper begging and urging you to expose who he was to inform the public that his campaign and your editorial writers were covering up. How he was known as 'the fixer' who handled the worst rapists, thugs, toxic polluters, people who killed protected baby marine life for fun and so on, but only if they were rich or he could rub shoulders with the powerful by helping them in that way. About how he said and did ANYTHING literally ANYTHING to try to get them off and fabricate phony saintly characters for his criminals while turning their victims into demons. Someone who operated outside the bounds that respectable senior partners of MAJOR law firms had to abide by, let alone government officials, and that was WHY they used him. BUT you printed any false allegation by HIS campaign and repeated it as though it were fact, creating headlines out of non-issues to try to hurt by innuendo.

But you wouldn't report that, in fact shot the messengers, vilified them. Because this same cast of characters mentioned above and some others with a particular agenda wanted to 'shake things up." But NOW here's a man with 32 years of service in the LAPD and you just HAVE TO dig up one thing that was NEVER SUBSTANTIATED and sounds like nothing of substance, and sensationalize it in a headline like this. (If you print this at least it's a start to improving your recent awful record, when you censored most comments giving details about this, during the election.)