Los Angeles officials approved a $700,000 payout to a veteran police lieutenant in September after city attorneys determined his supervisors — including Assistant Chief Horace Frank, one of the LAPD’s highest-ranking commanders — wrongly demoted him after he reported alleged misconduct in his unit, records show.
In a confidential legal analysis reviewed by The Times, Deputy City Atty. Marianne Fratianne advised the city to settle the lawsuit brought by Lt. Raymond Garvin — former head of the department’s Bomb Detection Canine Section — because the facts of the case “simply do not bode well for the City.”
Among other issues, internal communications showed that Frank and Garvin’s direct supervisor, Capt. Kathryn Meek, had “commiserated about how there was an insufficient factual basis” to remove Garvin from his position, then built “an ad hoc paper trail of poor performance” to remove him anyway, Fratianne wrote.
In addition to raising questions about the leadership of Frank, who oversees all special operations and detective bureaus, Fratianne’s analysis described a canine unit once again engulfed in allegations of mismanagement and wrongdoing — years after other claims by members of the unit cost the city millions in court settlements.
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