State, O.C. Sheriff May Have a Deal

SAN DIEGO — A state commission and Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona tentatively agreed Thursday to conditions that could lead to the reinstatement of 56 reserve deputies who were appointed without background checks nor in some cases proper training, a step that would settle a years-long dispute.

The reserve officers -- a group that includes Carona’s friends and political contributors -- would have to have 162 hours of training if they wanted to be reinstated. The reserves were removed from the state’s database of peace officers in 2002.

A recently completed internal audit by the Sheriff’s Department concluded that only a few of the reserve deputies were interested in police work, and that most would be uninterested in attending a training academy.

Carona agreed to the condition during recent negotiations as part of a tentative agreement with the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training, which had its regular quarterly meeting Thursday in San Diego.

The agreement could be finalized by next week.

Initially, Carona appointed 86 friends, political supporters and others as reserves, but the number of reserves who remained in the program shrank over the years to 56.

The deal would end a dispute that began when Carona challenged the commission’s decision to eliminate the reserves from the state database. A commission executive said he knows of no other case in which reserves have been involuntarily removed from the database.

While the reserve deputies have not been in good standing with the state, most retained their badges, and some still have concealed-weapons permits.

Dick Reed, assistant executive director of the commission, said Thursday that no settlement would be approved until he and other staff members review all files to ensure that background checks are complete.

The commission recently did a preliminary review, Reed said, and found the files in “much better shape” than they had been in previous audits. There is still a chance, he said, that some reserves will be found to be unqualified candidates.

“We’re on the path of resolving this, hopefully,” Reed said. “In the final throes of the negotiations, some people might not be selected.”

Michael Schroeder, a lawyer who handled negotiations for the Sheriff’s Department, said in a prepared statement that the progress toward reinstating the reserve deputies was a result of years of discussions between the sheriff and the state commission.

The group of reserves, appointed shortly after Carona took office, has been a source of controversy in the department. Documents indicate that the appointments were rushed to avoid tougher training requirements adopted by the state and that warning signs -- including failed psychological exams and lying about a criminal history -- were overlooked during the application process.

Among the applicants were a former police officer who had been fired for lying during an internal affairs investigation, an executive who failed to disclose he had twice been arrested and another who was identified as “psych reject.”

The reserves were appointed in June 1999 and then removed from the state’s peace officer database three years later, after the commission found that the background checks were still not completed and concluded that the sheriff had rushed the appointments to avoid the stiffer training standards.

In his prolonged challenge, Carona argued that the commission did not have the power to remove the deputies from the database, and that they were not subject to “pre-employment” background checks because they were volunteers, not employees.

Under the tentative deal, the reserves would be given a reasonable amount of time to complete the new training. No names will be put back into the database until then.

How many of those reserves would take the training was unknown. The department’s internal audit concluded that fewer than 10 were interested in police work, and the majority would not be interested in taking the training.

Auditors also questioned how many of the reserves would be able to pass a physical agility test, and joked about how many would be able to make it over the 6-foot training wall.