Joseph Koch Father-son bounty hunting team Harold and Mike Ray attended Wednesday’s protest at the Claremont City Hall. As regular participants in the weekly protests, they describe their duty as "going after bad officers." Last week’s protest had its largest attendance ever; over 300 people spoke out against the City’s offer of Police Chief to Thomas Scheidecker (which was later rescinded) and last January’s police shooting of Irvin Landrum, Jr.

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City Manager Glenn Southard rescinded the selection of Thomas Scheidecker as Claremont’s new police chief Tuesday night, emerging from a closed session with the city council hours after most of the 300 protestors had left city hall.

Students and residents descended on city hall in Claremont’s largest public outcry in recent history to demand that Scheidecker, who was suspended for tampering with evidence while with the Los Angeles Police Department, not take the reins of this town’s already assailed police force.

"The information I now have about Scheidecker’s past makes his employment with the City of Claremont unacceptable," stated Southard in a press release Wednesday, a day after the city promised to investigate allegations of illegality in Scheidecker’s record that would take "at least two weeks."

Southard and the City Council fielded heated complaints from several students and residents before retiring to the hour-long session to discuss Scheidecker’s appointment. Afterwards Mayor Karen Rosenthal supported the decision to rescind the offer, stating that Scheidecker was "not a good fit with our community values."

Preceding the city council’s regular agenda approximately 20 residents spoke at the bi-weekly meeting, most expressing displeasure with the city’s handling of the selection of a new chief.

"Every single decision has been bungled [by the city], every single decision has been wrong," stated Dean of Admissions Bruce Poch, who said the controversy surrounding the new police chief had prompted him to speak.

Another local businessman added that he and others are incensed by Southard’s behavior. "There are a lot of us who are citizens of this community with great jobs who are disgusted with what’s happened in this city in the past few months," he said. Later, pointing his finger at Southard, he told the council to "get rid of that man."

Southard’s nomination of Scheidecker, announced last Friday, came under intense scrutiny after local newspapers disclosed that Scheidecker had been a member of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID), which was disbanded in 1983 after investigators discovered that it was spying on private citizens and city officials.

Retiring Police Chief Robert Moody, whom Scheidecker was due to replace on February 14, conducted the initial background check on Scheidecker. He is quoted as saying he knew of Scheidecker’s past in the PDID, but did not press the issue with him when he seemed reluctant to talk about it.

Moody said that he did not consider the suspension pertinent to his background check, and that retired LAPD employees with whom he had spoken downplayed the suspension.

Members of the city council claim they had no knowledge of Scheidecker’s participation in the spy scandal, and Mayor Karen Rosenthal said that she first discovered his history when questioned by a reporter.

In a press release announcing the hiring of Scheidecker, city officials said that he was selected from a pool of 29 candidates after a "comprehensive interview and evaluation process." Candidates were interviewed by a community panel comprised of leaders from a variety of community organizations including churches, the School District, youth groups, and the business community.

Associated Students of CMC Vice President Patrick Genjoux ’01, a member of the panel, said that Southard gave the community members the candidate’s application and suggested a list of questions for the candidate.

"At the time I thought [Scheidecker] was a great candidate. He was absolutely phenomenal," stated Genjoux on Tuesday, though he said that panelists knew nothing of Scheidecker’s past.

When informed of Scheidecker’s past, Genjoux said he would have thought differently about the applicant at the time. "The thing about him tampering with evidence; that’s a big deal," said Genjoux.

Protesting for Peace, and Quiet

Joseph Koch " I think it was a terrible mistake [to choose Scheidecker]. It certainly doesn’t help the situation. It was sloppy investigating, not anything to do with these rallies. The only thing that will stop these rallies is if Southard is fired, the councilman is recalled, and the officers are fired. Those are not appropriate solutions." -Jill Simpson, a resident of Claremont since 1967

It is unclear what process the city will undergo to hire a new police chief. Under the city charter the city manager is responsible for the process and needs only the approval of the city council at the conclusion of the search and evaluation.

Southard has claimed repeatedly that he had no knowledge of Scheidecker’s past before hiring him, but Moody reported in the Inland Valley section of the Los Angeles Times that he had included some details of the suspension in his background report to the city manager. Both Moody and Southard refused to comment on Wednesday.

At Tuesday’s meeting Matt Gearhart ’00 berated Southard, displaying a number of articles he had retrieved from a Lexis-Nexis search after entering "Thomas Scheidecker." The articles, said Gearhart, clearly related all the details of Scheidecker’s involvement in the PDID.

The city’s failure to discover and disclose all the details surrounding Scheidecker’s past follows months of weekly protests at City Hall concerning the shooting of Irvin Landrum, Jr. on January 11, 1999 by two Claremont police officers.

Landrum’s uncle, Obee Landrum, said Wednesday that he will continue to demand an independent investigation into the shooting.

"The only issue in our minds is Irvin," said Landrum. Speaking later, he said that despite positive change, "the work is not finished yet." Though they stress that Landrum’s shooting is separate from the police chief controversy, they hope that the current city mistakes bring attention to what they see as the central problem in Claremont’s government: the city manager.

"For him to sit up there and claim ignorance is beyond anything I can see as responsible for a city council." Added Landrum. "They need to fire Glenn Southard."

Scheidecker’s participation in a spying scandal that tainted the PDID and the LAPD is documented in a series of articles from the 1980s in the Los Angeles Times .

Scheidecker, then a lieutenant and chief file-keeper for the PDID, tampered with evidence in a case in which eight members of the Revolutionary Communist Party were charged with assaulting police officers.

The judge in that case gave Scheidecker a court-sealed envelope for safe keeping. However, Scheidecker admitted to opening the envelope and inserting evidence that he thought relevant to the case. The judge then advised Scheidecker to obtain a lawyer, and began to investigate the possibility of prosecution contempt charges.

On the date that Scheidecker was to appear in the judge’s chambers only his lawyer arrived, claiming that Scheidecker had suffered a nervous breakdown.

Contempt proceedings were abandoned after then LA Police Chief Daryl F. Gates asked that the District Attorney drop the case against the Revolutionary Communist Party members and the prosecutor complied, a rare occurrence insofar as the case involved assaulting an officer.

Scheidecker was suspended for 15 days, and no further criminal proceedings were brought against him.

Scheidecker’s illegal activities, however, did not stop after the suspension.

A July, 1983 cover story in the Los Angeles Times reported that Internal Affairs investigators discovered intelligence files connected to the PDID in Scheidecker’s home, in violation of 1976 guidelines prohibiting officers from "collecting or keeping information on lawful, constitutionally collected political activities." Many of the files discovered were identified as police documents, and others appeared to be from military sources.

As a result of this transgression Scheidecker was transferred to the Harbor Division, after which he became police chief of the small town of Ripon, CA, where his record is reported to be very good. Ripon city officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Working under Scheidecker at the PDID was Detective Jay Paul, who was also the target of an Internal Affairs investigation. Paul was found to have files on Police Commission members, politicians, lawyers, civil libertarians, leftists, and anti-nuclear protestors.

Paul, it was determined, was "deeply involved" in Western Goals Inc., a right-wing organization formed by the president of the John Birch Society and dedicated to fighting socialist politics and culture in America.

Paul was contracted by Western Goals to compile a data base of left-leaning organizations and their members. He received the permission of his superiors to do so, and compiled the database on a home computer.

Another PDID officer infiltrated the Revolutionary Communist Party, engaged in sex with one of the group’s female members in order to gather information, led a march that ended in a bloody clash with officers, and was present when his primary subject of observation was murdered at a Boyle Heights rally in 1980.

Ramona Ripston, current Executive Director of the ACLU, commented Tuesday that the research into Scheidecker’s past must have been seriously deficient to miss such public information.

"Claremont has some problems with its police department," said Ripston. "It just seems to me that hiring someone with the kind of past that Thomas Scheidecker has does not instill confidence in the police."

"I think it is a problem with police departments and a code of silence, where they are not willing to talk about other police officers," added Ripston.