SACRAMENTO, CA - Last September we noted that chiefs in the California Highway Patrol were taking lucrative disability pensions, further enriching already generous benefits, then taking other high-paying jobs. A full 80 percent of CHP chiefs, the Sacramento Bee found, filed worker's comp claims within two years of retiring. Incoming CHP Commissioner, Mike Brown, said they would clean things up. They haven't.

Recall that deputy CHP Commissioner Ed Gomez claimed to be disabled by workplace stress and physical ailments. In 2000, the 57-year-old was awarded a $39,000 settlement, medical care for life for his injuries, and a state industrial disability pension of $106,968 a year, half of it free of taxes. Two years later Gomez became security director at San Francisco airport.

Deputy Chief Kevin Mince sought a worker's compensation settlement as a result of stress from dealing with his
supervisor. He was found to be 23-percent disabled as a result of headaches, shingles, chest pains, and "injuries to his psyche.'' He took an industrial disability retirement of $109,259, half of it exempt from taxes. He also moved to Hawaii where he functions well enough to teach scuba diving.

Assistant CHP chief Denise Daeley, 42, was hurt in a private car returning from a weekend in Las Vegas. The trip was not work authorized but she claimed to have been recruiting for the force. Daeley got an annual $57,396, half her salary, tax free, and decamped for Hawaii. The author of the report that authorized Daeley's claim was Mike Brown, then a deputy chief.

In response to the Bee report, the CHP created a worker's compensation fraud unit and promised to crack down, sparing nobody. Their efforts have yet to touch a single chief. Instead, a lowly officer and dispatcher are the prime targets. A new assignment further suggests that CHP brass get special treatment.

On July 1, Deputy Chief Gary Dominguez is slated to become commander of the Southern Division, including Los Angeles County, with a population of nearly 10 million. Early last year, Dominguez was on medical leave from the CHP, though his medical problem did not keep him off the golf course. He was arrested in Pasadena with a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent, well over the .08 legal limit for driving.

That should be enough for a drunk driving charge but local officials opted to charge him with failing to obey a peace officer. Officers had to forcibly remove him from his car. The failing-to-obey charge was dropped because the main witness proved unable to testify. The DMV, however, suspended the license of Dominguez.

State Senator Gloria Romero, a Los Angeles Democrat, was outraged at the appointment. The force's response to reporters was revealing.

"The bottom line is that Chief Dominguez is a deputy chief in the California Highway Patrol," the CHP spokesman said.

On the job or in retirement, a CHP deputy chief can apparently do no wrong, a kind of executive privilege. That
is not good for civil society in California, a state with severe debt and pension problems.

California legislators need to do a better job of patrolling the CHP, which should not be allowed to investigate itself. The legislature or judiciary should take over the investigation of worker's comp fraud in the California
Highway Patrol.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at
klbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.