Affidavit: Police union asked for dirt on Costa Mesa councilmen

Costa Mesa police officers mocked members of the City Council and suggested ways to catch them in compromising positions in the run-up to the 2012 municipal election, according to emails contained in court documents reviewed Monday by the Daily Pilot.

The emails were exchanged among members of the Costa Mesa Police Assn. board at a time
when the union had asked its law firm to hire private investigators to monitor three councilmen who disagreed with the union’s political positions on retirement benefits and other issues, according to documents filed by county prosecutors.

In one message, the association’s then-treasurer, Mitch Johnson, suggested telling the union’s lawyer about two of the councilmen’s upcoming city-sponsored trip to Las Vegas in the hope of catching them breaking California’s open-meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, or otherwise behaving improperly.

“I’m sure they will be dealing with other ‘developer’ friends, maybe a Brown Act [violation] or two, and I think [Steve Mensinger is] a doper and has moral issues,” Johnson wrote in an email from a private account. “I could totally see him sniffing coke [off] a prostitute. Just a thought.”

Councilmen Steve Mensinger and Jim Righeimer traveled to the annual trade convention in Nevada in an effort to attract retailers, restaurants and other businesses to the city.

After being read the quotation from the email Monday, Mensinger, who is now the city’s mayor, said, “It speaks volumes to the corrupt culture of our police union,” adding that it “ignores any factual basis.”

The emails are included in affidavits in a criminal case the Orange County district attorney’s office filed against two private investigators employed by the now-defunct law firm Lackie, Dammeier, McGill & Ethir, which was working for the police association at the time.

The two investigators now face felony charges for allegedly making a false drunken-driving report against Righeimer and illegally tracking Mensinger with a GPS device.

The police union isn’t implicated in any of the illegal activity. But through grand jury testimony, witness statements, emails, call records and other evidence, the affidavit outlines the union’s ire for Righeimer, Mensinger and Councilman Gary Monahan, who formed the council majority that at the time was trying to reduce police pensions and outsource a host of City Hall jobs.

According to the affidavit, the association intensified its campaign against the councilmen in March 2012, when the union’s board voted to increase membership dues so it could triple the retainer it paid to Lackie, Dammeier, McGill & Ethir.

Some of that money, the D.A.’s office said, was specifically intended to produce “candidate research” that private investigators would compile through surveillance and other means. Soon after the increase, association board members started discussing ideas to damage their political opponents, according to the court documents.

In another email, Johnson called then-Mayor Eric Bever an “idiot” and suggested it’s “time to expose his buffoonery and paranoia” by releasing more information about an internal police investigation that cleared officers whom Bever had accused of intimidating him while he campaigned for Righeimer. Bever said he had been given “the stink eye” by officers while placing campaign signs for Righeimer in 2011.

“I’m loving it,” Johnson wrote about the council appointing Bever mayor. “There was no reason they put that idiot in that position. If they were smart or had common sense they could have made this a lot harder on us.”

Johnson referred questions from a reporter Monday to the union’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, who issued a written statement: “The Costa Mesa Police Officers Association will continue to cooperate and support the D.A.’s office. CMPOA is not accused of any illegal conduct. They did not instruct, direct or know about any illegal acts by the Lackie firm or anyone hired by that firm.”

Mensinger said the emails among police union board members regarding him and the other councilmen struck him as Orwellian.

“I think it raises questions in your mind — even though it’s a small minority in our Police Department — whether the person showing up at your door really believes in the oath that he swore to,” he said.

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D.A. alleges DUI setup

Most of the affidavit centers around the night of Aug. 22, 2012, when the two private investigators, Christopher Lanzillo, 45, and Scott Impola, 46, allegedly conspired to lure Monahan into a compromising situation and then falsely report Righeimer for drunken driving.

Around 4:30 that afternoon, Mensinger, Righeimer and Monahan gathered at the bar that Monahan owns in Costa Mesa, Skosh Monahan’s, according to the affidavit’s account of events.

Impola, who was already there, began texting and calling Lanzillo while watching the trio, according to the bar’s security camera footage. The footage was observed by district attorney investigators.

The affidavit says Monahan also talked to a woman wearing a “lace V-neck blouse exposing her cleavage” after she was “leaning back in her chair, trying to get Monahan’s attention.”

At that point, the document describes Impola texting Lanzillo, “She is hooking Monaghan[sic] now,” and, “He is in love she has his cell #.”

Monahan handed the woman his business card, according to the affidavit.

Monahan told the Pilot on Tuesday that all his business cards contain his cell number and that the woman told him she was new in town and looking for a job.

She then sat at the bar alongside his regulars. Monahan said she seemed like any other customer.

“I was friendly to her like I am to everybody,” Monahan said. “I’m a bar owner. I have to be friendly to everybody.”

When investigators served a search warrant at the woman’s house weeks later, she admitted she knew Impola but wouldn’t say any more without legal counsel present.

“[She] later explained that she was at Skosh Monahan’s to have a drink and that she didn’t approach anyone,” the affidavit said. “However, when pushed for more details, she again stated that she needed to talk to her attorney.”

Around the same time the woman was talking to Monahan at his bar, Lanzillo called 911 to report he was following Righeimer’s car as it swerved, rolled through a stop sign and sped as fast as 50 mph.

Righeimer has denied driving erratically that night.

When an officer responded to Righeimer’s house and cleared him of any impairment, the councilman asked the cop who had called in the report.

According to the officer’s report, he said, “I am an elected official. We are in the middle of negotiations with the police and someone all of a sudden follows me.”

Righeimer and his wife then confronted Lanzillo, who was outside their Mesa Verde house in a car. They demanded to know Lanzillo’s name, but he drove off, the affidavit states.

When a Costa Mesa police lieutenant questioned Lanzillo over the phone the next day, he denied he’d been working for Lackie, Dammeier, McGill & Ethir.

“I don’t do anything with them,” he allegedly told the lieutenant, who had found Lanzillo listed as an investigator on the law firm’s website.

Hours after that interview, Lanzillo sent Dieter Dammeier a coded text message, according to phone records obtained by investigators.

It said, in part, “I exposed the firm and I’m sorry. Just give me a couple of weeks to find work somewhere else because I don’t have much saved. Tell them I went rogue and u had no idea and u immediately fired me.”

Dammeier did not return a voicemail Monday. However, in a conversation that investigators recorded between him and Costa Mesa’s then-Police Chief Tom Gazsi, Dammeier denied any knowledge of the incident. Gazsi had agreed to be recorded to assist the investigation.

” … These guys are out doing uh, a job and they kinda ran a little, you know, ran a little bit on their own with obviously the whole DUI nonsense,” he said, according to the affidavit.

Dammeier’s Upland-based firm is now defunct. Lawyers began fleeing the business after a raid on their offices last year, and allegations surfaced that some partners had been double- and triple-billing clients.

The district attorney’s office has not filed any criminal charges against Dammeier or other partners at the law firm.

Prosecutors said in the affidavit that the police association initially was hesitant to cooperate with the investigation, citing attorney-client privilege.

Eventually, however, some union members were given immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before a grand jury.

The association’s president at the time, Jason Chamness, told the grand jury that he asked the law firm to dig up dirt on certain City Council members because he believed they were corrupt.

Shortly after the DUI report involving Righeimer, the union fired the law firm, although the affidavit notes the union continued to pay a retainer until as recently as January 2013.

During his testimony, Chamness also said he deleted emails from his private account, which he used to contact the law firm about union business.

The district attorney’s office later served a search warrant and seized the remaining emails among association board members, netting hundreds of pages of documents.

“It reiterated the point that the CMPA board members strongly disliked the council majority and referred to Dieter Dammeier in their emails to each other,” prosecutors wrote in the affidavit.

Orange County officials say they’re continuing to investigate, but prosecutor Robert Mestman declined to say last week if he anticipates any more arrests or charges.

In the Costa Mesa case, Lanzillo and Impola each face one felony count each of conspiracy to commit a crime of unlawful use of an electronic tracking device, false imprisonment by deceit, and conspiracy to commit a crime of falsely reporting a crime.

They each face another felony conspiracy charge for using a second GPS tracker on a lawyer who competed with Lackie, Dammeier, McGill & Ethir, according to prosecutors.

Lanzillo and Impola could each face up to four years and four months in jail, if convicted of all charges.

They also could lose their state licenses, according to prosecutors. Lanzillo is licensed as a private investigator, and Impola is licensed to operate a private security patrol.

Both defendants are former Riverside Police Department detectives.

Lanzillo was fired from the Riverside Police Department in 2010 but later won reinstatement after arguing he was let go because of his activity in the local police union.

However, Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz told the Press-Enterprise newspaper that Lanzillo was fired “because he did some really bad things.”

In 2009, authorities accused Impola of breaking into his estranged wife’s apartment and beating the man who was with her, but most of the charges were dismissed after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor burglary.

Lanzillo, Impola and their legal counsel could not be reached for comment Monday.

Lanzillo and Impola are scheduled to be arraigned on Christmas Eve in Orange County Superior Court.

—Daily Pilot staff writer Bradley Zint also contributed to this report.