Officer Denies Harassment, Accuses Chief of Retaliation

A Los Angeles police union official who is also a member of the city’s elected charter commission defended himself against sexual misconduct charges Thursday, accusing Chief Bernard C. Parks of orchestrating a campaign to drive him off the force.

“This is retaliatory,” said Sgt. Dennis Zine, an outspoken critic of the chief. Zine has been notified that he will be relieved of duty pending an internal LAPD hearing on 13 counts of sexual and other misconduct. “This is the chief’s way to embarrass me, humiliate me and discredit me . . . but it’s not going to work,” he said.

Zine strongly denied the allegations of a 36-year-old female police colleague who says he stuffed her suitcase with condoms and a container of urine after she repeatedly rebuffed his sexual advances during a 1997 business trip to Canada.

Denise Ward, the female officer, has sued Zine and the city, alleging that he sexually harassed her.

“It is absolutely not true,” said Zine, speaking out for the first time since the allegations became public this week. “This is so bizarre.”

In a telephone interview from South Dakota, where he is vacationing, Zine said he met Ward while they were both working off-duty security at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. As divorced parents, he said, they struck up a personal relationship. He said they had gone on several dates, including a trip to Disneyland and a “cocktail cruise,” before she agreed to accompany him on the trip to Calgary, Canada.

“She led me to believe she was interested in a relationship,” he said, adding that he helped Ward move into a new home, painted her bedroom and had dinner with her and her three children. He said that they walked hand in hand and that she would refer to him as “honey, baby, sweetheart.”

During the trip to Canada, Zine said, there was never any discussion of separate rooms, despite her subsequent statements to the contrary. He said they went sightseeing and enjoyed each other’s company during the first few days of the trip. “Everything was copacetic,” he said.

One night, Zine said, two other female officers, unbeknown to him, put the condoms and the container of what was believed to be urine in Ward’s luggage as a prank. Ward accused him of putting the items in her luggage and left his hotel room, he said, adding that those two officers admitted during interviews with internal affairs investigators that they carried out the prank.

Zine asked rhetorically, why--if his behavior was as offensive earlier in the trip as Ward contends in her lawsuit--she stayed with him five days. He said that the two playfully wrestled in the hotel room and that he gave her a back massage. “I was very much wooed by her,” he said. He described his actions as “gentlemanly.”

Patrick McNicholas, who is representing Ward, said “it is patently false that they had any dating or romantic relationship. When he made the slightest romantic overture she specifically told him she was not interested.”

McNicholas added that Ward wanted to move out of Zine’s hotel room earlier, but was unable to because all the rooms were booked. When a room became available, she left, he said.

Ward declined through her attorney to comment.

Like Zine, other union officials have voiced concerns that Parks is retaliating against him and other association directors because of their criticisms of the chief’s management of the department.

Three other directors are the focus of internal complaints, which the department is investigating. The complaints range from directors making inappropriate remarks to committing perjury.

A spokesman for Parks rejected the notion that the chief is retaliating against the union.

“This has nothing to do with retaliation,” said Cmdr. Dave Kalish, the chief’s spokesman. “We must remember that the allegations were initiated by another department employee, not the department,” he added.

Zine said the chief is targeting him because he has successfully opposed several of Parks’ police initiatives in the City Council and in the city’s charter commissions. The sergeant said he has been in meetings with Parks at which the chief’s “jaw is twitching because he’s so angry with me.”

“I have absolutely nothing to hide,” Zine said. “I think Parks is gloating.”