LAPD Cops Get $1 Million 'DROP' Checks 5 Years Before Retiring but Villaraigosa Claims Poverty and Seeks Sales Tax Proposition A

LAPD Cops Get $1 Million "DROP" Checks 5 Years Before Retiring but Villaraigosa Claims Poverty and Seeks Sales Tax Proposition A

By Jill Stewart Tue., Feb. 26 2013 at 2:33 PM

Train Chartering and Private Rail Cars

Life after LAPD and LAFD? It can all be yours thanks to $1 mil personal DROP accounts.

KCET has a blockbuster report on the bizarre DROP program approved by voters under Mayor Richard Riordan when LAPD morale was so low -- thanks to the Rampart scandal -- that City Hall was at that time desperate to stop a rush of early cop retirements.

Now, says a probe by KCET's Judy Muller, the DROP perk is sacrosanct and cops and firefighters are getting very rich -- awarded interest-bearing accounts of $800,000, $939,000 and $1 million. In a blatantly fake process, they "retire," get the money, then get "rehired" the very next day. KCET hounded Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to probe this. His aides ducked. Villaraigosa says LAPD's been cut to the bone, asking voters to back Proposition A, a city sales tax hike, on March 5:

Mayoral candidates Wendy Greuel, who is the City Controller, and City Councilman Eric Garcetti, both love DROP, which stands for Deferred Retirement Option Plan.

A pleased Greuel gushes to the Muller team: "I don't see DROP as a double-dip!"

Garcetti goes much further in the KCET report, really sticking his foot in it.

Garcetti wrongly and solemnly claims: "Study after study shows [DROP] is a money saver."

Wow. As KCET explains, that is simply untrue, at least in practice, in Los Angeles. Muller and team have been demanding the data on the true cost (or, alleged savings) for two years.

Eric Garcetti is in lockstep with Villaraigosa on the city's "DROP" perk.

Inside City Hall, KCET has made itself known for demanding the data. It's hardly a secret.

In a warning issued during the KCET investigation ~~Tuesday~~ Monday night, a respected former top budget analyst for Los Angeles, Keith Comrie, advised city leaders to, "Clean up your system now," or "Dick Riordan will be back" to correct this onetime solution-turned-fiasco.

Riordan and the City Council in 2001 promised Los Angeles voters that the LAPD and Los Angeles Fire Department double-dipping scheme would cost the city nothing. And the fine print on the 2001 ballot measure, Charter Amendment 2, promised voters that the phony-retirement/double-dipping idea would be "cost-neutral."

In truth, the fine print in Charter Amendment 2 only protected LAPD's and LAFD's pension funds from losses caused by having to create huge (even $1 million) interest-bearing accounts for cops and firefighters who don't really retire.

But Charter Amendment 2's fine print did not protect the actual city coffers -- or taxpayers.

Los Angeles City Council Circa 2007-08.

On top of that, years after voters approved it, the Los Angeles City Council in 2007 took out the taxpayer-protective "sunset clause" that applied to the DROP program.

Unlike the upbeat Greuel and Garcetti, mayoral candidate Kevin James told KCET: "It's a program that has to be done away with." City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Jan Perry, one of the council members who wiped out the sunset clause, promises that she, as mayor, would analyze how much DROP may be sapping from the city.

Los Angeles chief fiscal officer Miguel Santana has repeatedly promised, then failed, to dig into DROP costs despite repeated pressure from city budget watchers.

Now, as Muller notes, DROP programs are being scuttled in other states. There, the fake retirement scheme swept through when it was backed by many politicians who weren't bothered by the appearance, if not the fact, of "doubledipping."

In those other states, DROP turned out to be as costly as it sounds, Muller reports.

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Tyruss

These people are thieves plain and simple. If you support this you are scumbag, and a worthless human being. People have no sense and have all kinds of entitlement issues. Always wanting more and wanting others to foot the bill. This is the doing of the unions and the corrupt local government. Pure disgust

richardt

Antonio Villaraigosa state's that LAPD has been cut to the bone and the voters should support Prop A I Guessing he want's to give the city of Los Angeles a Good bye FUCK before he leave's

gwennie

At the City Controller debate last Thursday night, Dennis Zine was specifially asked how he could continue to support DROP at a time when city budgets were so tight as to need a sales tax increase. His answer. the DROP program is "revenue nuetral" and once it can be shown to be anything esle, they (the city) would drop DROP. Apparently, the way thay are justifying this is that if you had to go out a hire a police officer with 26 years experience, it would cost the same as double paying he current officer. The current officer who enters the DROP program gets his regular salary and the 90% of his final salary that he/she would get in pension (if he was actually retired) is put in a separate account paying guaranteed 5% annual interest. Aftyer 5 years, the officer retires gets his regular pension AND is handed the proceeds of that special account that has been accruing for 5 years. Only in city government could that be called revenue nuetral. When a candidate for city council was asked about the pogram, he said that it was needed 8 years ago for officer retention. When asked wheteher it was still needed 8 years later, he declined to asnwer the question.

DROPDROP

DROP is pure corruption. I work with cops who joke about how they still can't believe that such a program exists...not that they don't love it. It's beyond belief that the City allows cops to get away with this. DOWN WITH politicians that support it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tim Ackerly

Kevin James has got this liberal's vote.

checkerspot

Unreal. When is the city (and we as taxpayers) going to wake up and realize these pension packages are not sustainable? Up until now, I didn't realize you could run a campaign for mayor and have absolutely no vision or plan. I can't understand why anyone would vote for Garcetti and Greuel to get the same old status quo.

jhenderson419

We're on a nation on the decline and everyone on the inside is looting what they can on the way down before the eventual collapse.

Just because this is unpleasant to accept doesn't mean it's better to ignore it.

Michael Clementine-Everest Dominguez

Looks like I will be voting for Kevin James...

abramsrl topcommenter

The real causes behind the creation of the DROP program are not so benign as trying to hold on to good cops. From what we know about the Ramparts Scandal, which allegedly harmed LAPD morale, the actual ring leaders were not the LAPD officers but some of the judges in the criminal courts.

Judges are political appointees and back then Law and Order was being demanded by the political powers who appointed the judges. Judges were under pressure to convict by any means possible. People do not know that the DA Office had been ordered in the late 1980's to stop using jail house snitches as most were liars who gave false testimony to get out of jail early. The judges had allowed this snitches paradise exist as it make conviction rates much higher which was good for their careers. Also, judges were being evaluated by how fast they processed cases. Thus, officers expert a testiLying were at a premium to move cases along.

After Officer Perez blew the whistle on other officers who "lie stole and set people up" (quote from former LAPD Dect. Mark Fuhrman), the corruption in the courts started to unravel. There was the Javier Ovando case. There was strong pressure to clean up the LAPD, but the LAPD knew that the judges and the DA were the ring leaders of the corruption -- in order to benefit their own careers.

When the prosecution of Ramparts Officers began, LAPD officers allegedly became upset. From the scuttlebutt around at the time, a lot of officers were planning on doing a "Perez" on the corrupt DA's and judges who have been orchestrating the TestiLying, the falsification of evidence, coercion of witnesses to commit perjury. These officers, so the tale goes, were not about to take the fall, while judge raked in $100,00+ salaries and other perks. . After a jury convicted the first of the Ramparts Officers, Judge Connor reversed the guilty verdicts and acquitted them.

Then in 2001, the political honchos like Riordan decided that the LAPD Officers deserved extra attention. Some cynical people believe that LAPD officers simply blackmailed the billionaires into a huge pay off. Who knows the full story? Maybe Muller can find out. It strikes me as naive that Riordan all of sudden decided in 2001 that the LAPD needed the DROP program out of the goodness of his heart (but always out of the pocket books of the tax payers).

Today, voters have to realize that in 2007 when the DROP program could have ended, Garcetti who was council president made certain that the DROP would continue and continue and continue. Yet, voters who complain about the city's debt want to elect him mayor. Go figure.

gwennie

@abramsrl

Would you rather elect Wendy Gruel who is supported by the PPL and then expect her to get rid of the program? What is fascinating to read are citizens who think theat DROP is a great idea and as one defender claims, the city of LA made 10 million dollars in the first 5 years of the program. At the end of the day, many people go completely brain dead when public safety is mentioned and taking a hard look at how LAPD and LAFD spends 70%% of the general fund creates lots of blowback.

abramsrl topcommenter

@gwennie The choice is not between Garcetti and Greuel. The choice is between crooks/incompetents who have caused the problems while squandering well over $1 BILLION and someone like Kevin James who played no role in creating the problems.

Choosing between Garcetti and Wendy is like choosing between cutting off your right leg or your left leg.

The only candidate without entanglements is Kevin James -- most the GOP refuse to support him because he's Gay and will base his decisions on facts and not on which special interest will benefit. Only Kevin will appoint department heads, e.g., Planning Department, who will refuse to cooperate with the corrupt developers.

Stopping the cozy relationship between the mayor and the crooks will be a huge first step to get the City on the right track. Both Garcetti and Greuel will only appoint their cronies and the theft of public funds will accelerate.