Laura J. Kalty

How police agencies can conduct investigations of peace officers and impose discipline within the limits of the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act has been a source of some confusion and misunderstanding. Kalty helped cut through the fog by shepherding through the courts a landmark case finally decided by a state appellate panel in January.

Kalty represented the city of Sierra Madre from the case's beginning in 2010 through the issuance of the published appellate decision this year. The city's police department learned that one of its officers, John Ellins, might have been improperly conducting database searches of his ex-girlfriend and her family. Out of concern for the ex-girlfriend's safety, the department at first told Ellins only that he was being investigated for "abuse of his police powers" and informed him about the suspected improper computer searches later, at his interrogation. At that point, Ellins and his attorney were permitted to meet privately to discuss the charges.

That delay became the focus of Ellins' allegations that the city did not properly notify him of the nature of the investigation "prior to" his interrogation, as the police officers' bill of rights require. "Effectively, this was a wrongful termination case," Kalty said, although its administrative procedures under the act differed from those in a standard lawsuit. "I was with the city all along the way, from giving them advice during the investigation to the final chapter at the 2nd District Court of Appeal." Ellins v. City of Sierra Madre, B261968 (2nd DCA, Jan. 28, 2016)

The panel held that while an officer should be notified of the nature of an investigation "reasonably prior to" the interrogation, an agency can delay disclosure "if it has reason to believe that earlier disclosure would jeopardize the safety of any interested parties or the integrity of evidence under the officer's control." And the agency must give the officer a meaningful opportunity to consult with his or her representative, the panel held.

Now, Kalty gets to describe the intricacies of the strategy behind the timing and process related to a department's investigation and discipline of a suspected rogue officer as part of the training she gives throughout the state to public safety agencies, using Ellins as a textbook.

"The city won this case every step of the way," Kalty said, from the recommendation of a hearing officer that the city council terminate Ellins, to an affirmance of that decision by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to the further affirmance by the justices on the appellate panel. "And it was a long way."

— John Roemer