An excessive-ranking member of a nation-run narcotics mission pressure in Southern California become fired after an investigation determined he had lied about having a long-term sexual courting with a subordinate and had threatened the lady in an attempt to hold their affair mystery, documents launched beneath the state’s new police transparency regulation show. Details of the investigation, which in 2010 caused the dismissal of William Telish, the senior special agent in charge of the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement in Riverside, had been among the first statistics launched via the kingdom Department of Justice underneath the law.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra had withheld the department’s misconduct records, citing police unions’ challenges to the law and the need for a clearer course on how to observe it. The legal professional general’s workplace produced the statistics in response to a San Francisco judge’s ruling earlier this month in a lawsuit using the First Amendment Coalition and KQED searching for their release beneath the regulation, SB 1421. Telish fought the firing in a sequence of administrative and court docket movements that lasted into 2015.
He nevertheless disputes the grounds for his dismissal, which he says become wrong. According to an investigative document blanketed in 253 pages of newly disclosed documents, Telish lied to supervisors about his dating with a woman, Linda Drylie, who labored for him when he turned into the director of LA Impact, an interagency drug-trafficking project pressure for the DOJ. Drylie’s call was redacted in the DOJ document. However, she filed her very own lawsuit in 2011 towards Telish and the state business enterprise alleging attack, battery, and emotional distress. Telish countersued. Both complaints have been dismissed later that year. Telish stated they settled out of court. Drylie did no longer respond to the request for comment.
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The record said Telish attempted to keep the relationship secret but that his superiors heard of it after Drylie reportedly confided in co-employees approximately the affair. Investigators found Telish lied to a manager who requested him at once about the rumored relationship and other officers at LA Impact.
The document said Telish then confronted the woman and demanded she informs considered one of his superiors she had made up the tale approximately their affair. She later instructed investigators Telish had over a hundred sexually specific pictures of her. He threatened to send the pics to her son and others unless she denied the affair. She instructed investigators Telish to coach her on what to say. “He made me perjure myself,” the record fees her as announcing. Telish stated he by no means threatened or forced Drylie in any manner.
The Department of Justice launched its research into Telish after Drylie left her country job in 2008 and took a role as an assistant to the police chief in the Orange County town of Placentia. In December 2009, the state investigative document recounted that the leader filed a criticism with the country after Drylie advised him that Telish had assaulted her. The file says Telish held her down on a couch “while trying to evaluate her cellphone messages and call log to determine if she changed into courting other guys.”
The Department of Justice opened a criminal inquiry. An investigator directed Drylie to document her phone calls with Telish and try to get him to speak approximately beyond alleged threats and attacks.
In one of the eight recorded conversations, Telish seems to agree with the account that he had held her down simultaneously as he inspected her phone, consistent with the documents. The document says Telish changed into additionally recorded using a racist slur to refer to an African American supervisor, calling Italian Americans “dirty whiteys” and making sexually degrading feedback during the taped calls.
The Department of Justice mentioned those statements in Telish’s termination be aware, announcing the remarks “prompted extreme and irreparable discredit to the department.” Telish stated he didn’t remember making those statements, but if he did, it changed into “banter.” Other grounds for Telish’s July 2010 dismissal blanketed “inexcusable forget of obligation,” dishonesty, the discourteous remedy of the public or different employees, willful disobedience, misuse of state property, violations of policies regulating the use of country time or facilities for non-public benefit, and “other failure of correct conduct either during or outdoor duty hours that’s of this type of nature that it reasons discredit” to the country.
The alleged assault became noted by Orange County prosecutors, who declined to document expenses. Telish challenged his firing in appeals to the State Personnel Board, which issued a very last ruling in opposition to him in August 2011. He then filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The foremost basis for Telish’s court docket challenge changed into a statement that the smartphone recordings have been flawed and must have been inadmissible in his employment case.
In courtroom papers, Telish’s lawyers stated the calls had been a part of a “sham” criminal research. The Superior Court rejected that argument, as did the state’s 2d District Court of Appeal. “A player may additionally properly document a phone communique on the course of a law enforcement officer, performing within the path of his or her authority, inside the path of a crook investigation.” the appeals panel ruled in March 2015. In an interview last week, Telish still feels the state’s investigation and his firing had been unfair. “I had an unblemished career till that point,” Telish said. “I felt they shouldn’t be taking my profession away.”
