The following article, JUSTICE DENIED, is number FOUR in a series of real-life experiences taken from the manuscript of retired Deputy Dale Hedges, titled, “Damage Control,” which documents his time with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
In this article, we see the aftermath of the investigation into disgraced former deputy/psychologist, August Hoffman, and the bizarre lengths that executives on the Sheriff’s Department would go to maintain their dirty little secret. We also see what these efforts have on Detective Hedges, including the personal price he has, and continues to pay, even today.
JUSTICE DENIED
In 1996 I spent a month off work at NORSAT due to a double hernia operation after being injured at work. When I returned to work, I went directly to my team and back to my investigations. During my time off, Lieutenant Clark had retired and left the unit. A few weeks after returning to work, I had to drive over to our main office where I noticed our new Lieutenant, Lieutenant Rodriguez. I had no idea why there was a change in Unit Commanders or why Lieutenant Clark had retired.
I had never personally encountered any issues with Lieutenant Rodriguez. I had known and worked around him when he was a Sergeant at West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. His reputation among most of the deputies was not ideal. He was known as a climber, someone who cared only about his own career and personal advancement. Deputies had made fun of him behind his back calling him an “ass kisser” and he was not trusted by many of the deputies who worked for him. Every deputy thought he was more than willing to push someone over the cliff or under a bus if it made him look good or gave him those famous brownie points with the upper brass.
I walked into the office and said hello to Lieutenant Rodriguez. He acted glad to see me and started out with some small talk. But after a while he acted as though he suddenly remembered something and started reaching for some papers on his desk. I at first thought he was simply wanting to catch up on some old times at West Hollywood, but he pulled out some papers from inside his desk and handed them to me, asking, “what do you think I should do with this?” I read the paper he handed me. It was nothing new to me, it was something I had seen several times before.
Being found guilty and having a lot of time on your hands in prison for a career criminal must be tough. This individual, after about a year in prison for conspiracy, receiving stolen property and other crimes committed in Burbank, California, decided he wanted to file a complaint about how the investigation was conducted. I recalled seeing this paperwork Lieutenant Rodriguez had just handed to me before. The imprisoned and convicted suspect filed a complaint. The complaint was investigated and cleared, after which the complainant received a letter explaining the outcome. After several months, not happy with that outcome, the complainant filed the exact same complaint over again, he sent in a photocopy of his original complaint. On his second attempt he had received the same outcome. He had literally filed the same complaint three separate times to my knowledge, hoping for a different outcome.
Now I had Lieutenant Rodriguez looking at me with a slight smile, like a hungry wolf with a “gotcha” look on his face asking me what I think he should do with the same complaint on its fourth submission. I made the obvious observation and told him the complaint had been submitted and investigated three times already that I knew of and had been cleared. I would at some point discard it. Not wanting to accept that answer, Rodriguez asked me again, “But, what do “you” think I should do with it? What would you do with this if you were me?” I was getting annoyed and uncomfortable at this point and told him I didn’t care what he did with it. If it were me, I’d throw it away. Rodriguez said he could throw it away, but it will be sent back again, and asked me again, what I think he should he do with it. Finally frustrated with him I said, “do whatever you want, investigate it again or whatever you think, it doesn’t matter what I think anyway.” It was at that point that Rodriguez asked me to hand him my badge, ID and gun as he was sending the investigation to Internal Affairs. I was relieved of duty and sent home.
I was sent to work at the Sheriff’s crime lab for a period while awaiting Internal Affairs to complete the investigation. While there, sitting in the library, I picked up a piece of paper, a teletype. On it were the list of deputies being promoted to sergeant by name and number placement on the list. I read the list and realized it was the list I had been waiting for, the list promoting me. My name and number were absent from the list as they had passed me over for being under investigation. What didn’t make sense before now became perfectly clear. I was being retaliated against. I was never questioned nor investigated by Internal Affairs regarding the matter, it just went away on its own, but the Department wasn’t done yet.
I returned to work, but shortly thereafter my hernia repair broke, and I had to be operated on again. Shortly after the surgery, I was home recuperating when my NORSAT Sergeant, Guido Guiterrez, knocked on my door. He apologized to me and said he had been sent there to pick up my county car, which was parked in the driveway. I handed him the keys. He then began to get sweaty and nervous. Sergeant Gutierrez told me he was ordered to pick up my car and my badge, ID and gun once more. He began to apologize to me saying this was not right and he didn’t agree with it. He said he was ordered to do it and that was it but claimed not to know why. I handed everything over to him as requested. Then he asked me if I had the Hoffman file at the house. He said someone from the Department had been searching the NORSAT files for the investigative file and it was not in the office. I told him I had the file in a large box inside the house, so he picked it up and took it with him. I never saw the file again.
The reason for my being relieved of duty again was according to the Department, due to an accusation that I had been with an underaged female. It was investigated, not proven, nor did it ever happen. I went through all the necessary required interviews and after my last interview was told by the investigator not to worry about it, this was going to go away and pass. I never heard another word about the accusations.
Eventually after the last interview, my attorney contacted me and said what I already knew, the Department was never going to stop. They were upset with the entire Hoffman situation, and he felt they would continue to come after me. They had nothing but time and this would go on until they finally got something to stick with, ruining my career and reputation or worse. He gave me my options and I gave them some thought. I decided as much as I loved my job, I had clearly poked the bear and uncovered their high level of corruption. They obviously would not stop, maybe it was simply time to pull the plug and retire. I had been through enough and didn’t think I could handle it anymore.
I contacted my attorney and said I wanted assurances that the Sheriff’s Department would not block my retirement credentials and allow me to receive my retirement badge and retirement Identification. My attorney said he was promised by Sheriff Sherman Block himself that I would get my credentials. So, I filed for and got an approved medical retirement. The day I retired I signed all documents and had my picture taken for my retirement identification.
As I had not given Sheriff’s Personnel much time to prepare, I was handed a temporary retirement Identification card and told it would be about two weeks before my retirement flat badge and identification card were ready for pick up, they would contact me within two weeks. After waiting for over eight weeks for the retirement credentials, I contacted Sheriff’s Personnel where I was unable to get any information. I contacted my Union Attorney who contacted the department. My Attorney was told the Sheriff had “changed his mind” and was not going to give me my retirement credentials after all, something solely up to the Sheriff to approve or deny.
One year after my retirement the Hoffman investigation continued to haunt me. I knew the department’s reasoning for keeping this story suppressed and wanting it to go away. But I still felt it was my obligation, my duty, to bring things out in the open and force the Sheriff’s Department to be accountable for their corruption and mistake. I thought daily of how this investigation had affected my career and my mind burned. I thought about the tragedies that had unfolded, the loss of deputies at their own hands as well as how much damage must have been done to others that I didn’t even know about.
As it became clear to me during the investigation that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had blatantly covered up the entire Hoffman situation, I had duplicated the investigative file. I had at first taken the duplicate file to my home. It was some months after I left the Department that I went through this file again and again, reviewing the entire case, that I felt more needed to be done. I needed to force the Sheriff to be transparent about the entire incident and help any other Sheriff’s personnel or family member who may have seen August Hoffman in his role as a psychologist.
Not sure where to turn, knowing this was a conspiracy and serious breach of not only the Sheriff’s employees but a breach of public trust, I decided to contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and speak with a field agent about the situation. I contacted the Los Angeles field office of the FBI and was put in touch with an agent. I began explaining the situation to him as best I could but realized he likely thought the story I told him was either made up, exaggerated, or he didn’t think this kind of thing could happen in real life. It may have been the fact that I had dropped the name of possibly the most powerful law enforcement officials in the State of California. I don’t know, but after talking for a while and giving him the information he asked for, including my name, number and address he said he would be contacting me, hung up and left me feeling very uncomfortable.
It was several days later I looked out of the second-floor window of my home in the Quartz Hill area of Palmdale and noticed a car parked in a very conspicuous place on my street facing my house. The car sat there for several hours, and I could clearly see a male individual in the driver’s seat. I had to leave the house to go to the store and as I pulled away from the curb, I noticed that the car had pulled away and began to follow me at a distance. I took a few turns to lose the vehicle and it stayed behind me tailing me. After going to the store, I drove home and noted that the car was not on the block anymore, so I went inside. A little later I looked and there was a different vehicle parked facing my house with a single passenger inside.
I had done surveillance work for over seven years at NORSAT, so I quickly realized that for some reason the Sheriff’s Department had decided to watch my every move. I drove from my home several other times over the next few weeks on my Harley Davidson motorcycle. I watched vehicles tail behind me often and managed to lose them in heavy traffic. Thinking back to my conversion with the FBI agent, I realized I had told him I had a second copy of the August Hoffman Investigation and feared that’s what they were looking for. I waited until early one morning and loaded the case file into my truck. I drove away from the house until I felt sure I was not being followed. I handed the case file over to a friend of mine for safekeeping and drove back home.
It was several weeks later that I got into my truck with my girlfriend and her two-year-old daughter. We were driving to get breakfast when a black and white Sheriff’s vehicle drove up behind me and turned on its red lights to pull me over. I had not been speeding nor broken any laws, so I pulled over and the deputy, who knew me, walked up to my driver’s door. He looked confused and before he said anything to me, he walked back towards his car and shouted, “there’s a mistake, this is Deputy Hedges. He’s a retired deputy.” I could see a group of plainclothes individuals running for cover behind my truck, guns drawn telling the patrol deputy to get back. I could clearly hear the voices of these people yelling for me to exit the vehicle with my hands up. I fully complied and I was placed into handcuffs and seated in the backseat of an unmarked chevy.
I was driven to the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, forty-five minutes away. The same jail I had worked in some 21 years earlier. On the way a female Sheriff’s detective read me my Miranda Rights and began to question me. I asked what I was being arrested for and she said she would let me know after I was booked, but she wanted to ask me some questions first. I declined to answer any questions and although she tried to make small talk and solicit answers from me, I sat in silence until I was finally booked. I will note this though, one of the things she threw at me in the form of a question was if I had forgotten to turn in any of the case files from my NORSAT days as they would make good reading.
I went through the booking process and was taken to be evaluated by a doctor who asked me some routine questions, but then began asking about my suicidal thoughts. I was confused by that questioning and asked why he was even asking me about that. He said the female deputy who booked me had advised jail personnel that I had said I was suicidal on my way during transportation. I laughed and told him that was a lie. I had never spoken to her other than to tell her I wouldn’t talk to her. It took me several hours, but I was eventually bailed out and released. But rather than book me at Palmdale Sheriff’s Station where I could be a few miles from home, the Detectives had decided to book me almost an hour away from my home, making it much more difficult for me to be released and picked up.
In 1994, while moving back into my residence in Glendale, California, my garage had been burglarized. I had been going through a divorce at the time and my now ex-wife had kept possession of the family home. She decided to move out of the home and once I discovered it was empty I took possession of it and began moving back in. During this move, many of my personal things were placed inside the locked garage until they could be organized. I had left the residence one evening to visit a friend who lived in Palmdale, California. I returned home the next morning and after a short period of time walked into my garage and discovered someone had broken in and stolen property from the garage.
I had always worked on cars and motorcycles over the years as well as done much of my own home repairs. My father had left me with all types of tools and over the years I had purchased many tools on my own. I considered myself a tool guy, I owned a lot of tools. I Looked in my garage and found all my tools had been stolen. There were other items stolen as well. A bicycle, roller skates, paint, and an air compressor to name some, but mostly my tools.
I had been seeing a psychologist and had been taking anxiety medication. I don’t know how that affects my thought process, but being ex-law enforcement, I realized that no matter what happens, it’s unlikely I would ever find my tools or see them returned. I decided to make my supplemental list of items stolen before calling the Glendale Police Department. It took me two days to complete and itemize the list before I called Glendale Police to make the report. An officer came out to the house at which time I made the report and handed him the list of stolen items.
I opted not to receive monetary compensation for my loss from my insurance company. I requested the insurance company instead simply replace my missing tools. They were happy to comply and replaced the stolen items, shipping them to my home, in the end handing me a very small check to finish the claim.
The statute of limitations for a burglary is four years. Four years from the date of the incident to file charges against the suspect for committing the burglary. It was now 1998, literally a few months before that four-year statute of limitations would expire if they had captured an actual suspect. As I learned, I was now being booked for insurance fraud. Nearly four years after reporting a burglary of my home to the Glendale Police Department, I was arrested and booked for falsely filing an insurance claim on my homeowner’s insurance by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. I was stunned. Why would the Sheriff’s Department care about a small burglary that happened in Glendale after almost four years? Why now? This burglary was not a secret in any manner.
I really wanted to get this case over with and out of the way. I honestly didn’t understand why the Sheriff’s Department had done this nearly four years later. I was not really concerned about the end results at this point because I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was concerned about paying for an attorney because I simply couldn’t afford it.
As my trial began in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court, I was facing seven counts of insurance fraud. When the District Attorney brought the Sheriff’s investigators to the stand, my Court appointed attorney began his cross examination. The judge appeared to be highly slanted towards the Sheriff’s Department and prosecution. My attorney was blocked from most of the questioning and later blocked from entering most of his evidence. It frustrated my attorney who kept wondering out loud about who or what was going on behind the scenes to cause this trial judge to take such a stand.
The District Attorney brought my ex-wife to testify against me. She was unable to give them any information because all she could testify to was that she knew I owned a lot of tools, tools she recognized from the list of stolen items. She also testified she knew I had been burglarized and my tools were stolen. Oddly enough, during her testimony, as she sat on the stand and testified, she discovered the Sheriff’s investigators had served search warrants at two small outside storage units she owned. Presumably they were searching and looking for the stolen property I had alleged to have been stolen.
The final witness for the prosecution was the investigative agent from my insurance company. Under oath and under intense questioning from the State Insurance Investigator and District Attorney, the insurance agent stated it was his belief and opinion that the insurance claim I had made was valid. His opinion was in the beginning and still was at that minute, that no insurance scam had been perpetrated against the insurance company. When asked if anything he had heard in court had changed his mind, he repeated himself and said he did not believe I had lied to file a false claim. The trial was over in a few days and the outcome being determined by the sitting judge. My attorney felt sure that the County had in no way brought a compelling case and thought the case would be thrown out. Surprisingly the judge shocked us all when he sided with the prosecution and convicted me on seven counts of Insurance Fraud.
I was given a five-year suspended prison sentence and five years of probation. The judge ordered me to repay the insurance company back the roughly twelve thousand dollars they paid for the replacement tools they had sent me, and he also gave me five thousand hours of community service, 5,000 hours, which he said had to be completed within one year. Honestly, I was defeated. My attorney was totally shocked and still questioned what the hell the whole thing was about. He swore he thought this had something to do internally with the Sheriff’s Department and someone else was making the calls. I simply didn’t have the money or the will to fight this conviction. The Sheriff’s Department had not stopped, even coming after me for a burglary report filed four years earlier. All I could do was get through the next few years without incident and get past this.
I had to report to a Probation Officer monthly. I had to repay the insurance company, so I contacted them to make a payment plan. When I spoke with the insurance investigator over the phone, he apologized to me and told me he still believed the claim was valid but because of state law they had to recover the money from me as the court ordered. I repaid the insurance company in full and did my community service as required. I completed it and had it all done within the first year.
Shortly after the first year of probation, Sheriff Block suffered a severe stroke while at home and ultimately passed away while in the hospital. He had been replaced by Sheriff Leory Baca. Shortly after this, I received a letter from the Superior Court ordering me to report to the court. I spoke with my attorney who told me he thought the court date was simply to check up on my status with probation. I walked into the courtroom and sat with my attorney. The judge called my attorney as well as the District Attorney to his desk where they spoke for a few minutes. My attorney came back and looked a bit confused and told me seriously, to just sit and stay quiet.
A few minutes later, without any discussion, the judge ordered me to stand. He looked at me and began talking. He ordered all my pleas on all counts be changed to not guilty, he then one by one changed each charge from guilty to dismissed. His final order of the court was he ordered the records expunged, he expunged the entire record. The judge looked at me and, “I wish I could do more for you but that’s all I can do.” It took me a few minutes after leaving the courtroom to even begin to process what had just happened. I asked my attorney what all that meant, he said it was over, and the entire case had been dismissed and there was no longer a record of my arrest or conviction. That was it, it was over just like that. After being arrested, booked and a year of struggling with this, repaying the insurance company, and visits to a probation officer, it was done. Sheriff Sherman Block had died, and this all went away in a matter of minutes.
As we left the courtroom, my attorney, who of course by then knew the story of my investigation of August Hoffman, shook his head and said he had always felt there was much more involved in my arrest and prosecution than a simple criminal matter. It had appeared to him during the few days of trial that the judge was under some type of pressure to make the conviction happen despite the evidence in my favor. He claimed he had never seen anything play out like this in any other case during his time working the courts. He felt it was even more telling that the judge had dismissed the entire case and expunged the record without his having requested it shortly after the death of a very powerful politician, Sheriff Sherman Block.
I’m not accusing Sheriff Block directly of being corrupt, but it seems hardly possible that these things could happen on his watch, right under his nose and in the offices around him without his knowledge. There was an accusation of theft at the higher levels of the Sheriff’s Department, investigated by a deputy working for the NORSAT unit. The crime was basically covered up when the deputy Investigator was stopped and taken into the Sheriff’s custody after being bitten and injured by a Sheriff’s K9 unit.
After all of this was finally over, it’s taken me over 30 years to even begin to finally come to some sort of resolution for the entire incident. I’ve kept my mouth shut for all these years so as not to damage the department I held in the highest esteem and not hurt the hard-working deputies I cared so much about. But it haunts me each and every day thinking about those deputies and or their family members who may have interacted with August Hoffman, those people who may have suffered because of him and maybe still suffer today. I needed closure and, if nothing else, I am hoping those affected by Hoffman and this coverup may find some closure here. I fought the powers that be over my trying to do the right thing, I gave it 100% to bring Hoffman to justice and get justice for his victims. For my work I had to navigate all the bumps in the road thrown at me, and the hard knocks thrown at me, I was battered.
Physically it had taken a toll on me and emotionally maybe a bigger toll. In my humiliation I cut most all my ties with my friends, old partners, and classmates. I didn’t feel like I could fit in with them anymore or deserved their friendship, I still struggle with those feelings today. In some odd way, not getting my retirement badge and credentials made me feel like I had let everyone of those deputies down; my friends, partners and those I had trained over my twenty years as a deputy. I couldn’t face them anymore. During that time, I went through an emotional rollercoaster, and I lost my second wife, a woman I adored, and a stepdaughter whom I loved like my own.
I decided to move out of the State of California, to Texas. I lived alone in Texas for 17 years before my mother got sick and I decided to move to Nevada and take care of her. With the help and encouragement of an old radio car partner from my early days at Firestone Sheriff’s Station, Mike Rice and that of another Firestone Deputy, retired Captain Mike Bornman, with their help and friendship, I have begun to reconnect back with those hard-working men and women I had worked with over the years.
I’ve tried a few times over the years to make the final part of my life come together and get my retirement credentials, but I’ve been gone a long time and don’t have the access to people or a Sheriff who would care enough and would or could fix this. Who would they believe anyway, one deputy or an investigator writing what he was told to write, their means always justify their end results. It’s even more difficult when you are just one against a massive political system. A system that either condones or ignores corruption at its highest levels, or a system that doesn’t want to believe that corruption exists and refuses to look for it.
In closing I want to say this: I am not angry or bitter at the hard-working deputies of Los Angeles County, nor am I bitter at law enforcement in general. Those who wear the badge are some of the hardest working, most dedicated people on the planet, dedicated to protecting life and liberty, even at the risk of their own lives. Do they make mistakes? Of course, they do, we all do as imperfect human beings. But their mistakes should be judged differently, as mistakes made during split-second stressful situations, mistakes made while being verbally or physically assaulted, versus mistakes of the heart, and bad decisions made during an incident that intentionally cause harm.
I love those members of law enforcement and I fully understand the stresses they live with every day. Stresses from a public with no respect for them or the job they do. Stresses from administrators who seem not to have their backs when it’s needed, managers with their own promotions or self-interest at heart.
There is one broken system here that needs a complete overhaul, and that is the system called Psychological Services. This group of doctors and psychologists working for the County of Los Angeles need to be held accountable for the work they do with their law enforcement members in need. The Sheriff’s administration needs to fully investigate the events surrounding August Hoffman and his time at Psychological Services, looking at the effects on those who were clearly misdiagnosed and not given proper treatment. The Sheriff’s Department needs to show transparency especially today, as record numbers of deputy sheriffs are dying by their own hands. It is well past time, but never too late for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to come clean about the August Hoffman years and look back at the effects he had on Sheriff’s personnel and families. Even though it’s been many years, people, especially August Hoffman, need to be held accountable.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I have known Dale Hedges for over 40 years, having first met him when I was assigned to Firestone Station as a patrol trainee in September of 1981. After Firestone we went our separate ways as we moved through our careers. I have always considered him to be a loyal member of the LASD and a good cop. He was a great investigator and a respected voice in the law enforcement community.
After reconnecting with him over these past several months, I was shocked, horrified, and furious to find out what had happened to him over the years. Despite the horrific ways he had been treated by the department, to his credit, Dale never said a single negative thing about the LASD. He mentioned that he had written a book about his experiences, and I jumped at the chance to proofread it for him.
What I read was an incredible, ofttimes unbelievable story of an honorable man who had been vilified, maligned, persecuted, prosecuted and demeaned by the very department that he loved and worked so hard for. A man who had taken on a criminal investigation at the direction of the Sheriff himself, and who had subsequently been forced from the career he had given his entire adult life to. The case which should have been a “career builder” for Dale’s professional resume ultimately wound up being a cruel career ender instead.
I would like to think that when the current administration of the Sheriff’s Department learns of the absolute injustices this man has endured, they will at least correct a decades-long blemish on the LASD, and finally present retired Deputy Richard Hedges with his full retirement credentials. It is but a small gesture from the Department for a man who gave them everything he had. Of course, the final and most important conclusion would be for the villain in this story, disgraced former deputy sheriff/phony psychologist August Hoffman, to finally face justice for his many unanswered crimes and many acts of despicable immorality.
Michael Bornman, Captain LASD (retired)
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