Newport Beach PD Made Life for its Good Cops a Living Hell

Luke McGarry

It was impossible for Balboa Peninsula motorists to notice anything unusual when they passed Newport Beach City Hall on the afternoon of March 10, 2011. The warm sun hovering above steady beach traffic and palm trees swaying from a periodic, lazy breeze revealed just a typical, Southern California day. But not far from Pacific Coast Highway, on a sidewalk adjacent to 32nd Street--a road flanking local government offices until last year's relocation--high-ranking police officers were teaching a lesson to one of Orange County's most heroic whistleblowers and his wife: Mess with us, and you'll pay dearly.

In recent years, daily examples of faithful public service inside the Newport Beach Police Department (NBPD) have been overshadowed by alarming corruption. City officials ignore or downplay the misconduct, but NBPD bosses turned the agency into a darker, stupider version of Animal House. Court records and internal documents show the city's boys in blue have accepted gratuities in exchange for favors, gotten frat-boy drunk at work, lied under oath, passed out confidential information to pals, encouraged oral sex from female job applicants, committed wild adultery on duty, doctored official reports, hurled feces, dished out horrific domestic violence against wives and girlfriends, engaged in intoxicated bar fights, issued criminal threats, vandalized property, converted powerful agency spy equipment to personal use, and rigged promotion systems to ensure mostly see-no-evil, management-loyal employees rise--and let the hijinks continue.

One of the more honorable cops at NBPD was John Hougan, who began working at the department in 1990 and earned a promotion to sergeant in 2005. Solving more than 400 sexual assaults, Hougan enjoyed a respectable reputation. He served as the lead detective in the notorious Haidl Gang Rape case, refusing Orange County Sheriff's Department pressure to sabotage the investigation since one of the defendants was the spoiled son of Don Haidl, an assistant sheriff and wealthy used-car dealer who purchased his badge in violation of California law.

Though not perfect, Hougan was the type of cop citizens appreciated: hard-working, polite and without authoritarian impulses. In late 2008, he was summoned to Orange County Superior Court as a witness in a lawsuit filed by a colleague, Neil Harvey, who sued NBPD for illegally blocking his promotions. Police management labeled Harvey gay, a conclusion erroneously deduced, in part, because he wrote coherent incident reports, offered crime victims compassionate assistance and lived in artsy Laguna Beach. A stream of officers, including then-chief John Klein, testified there had been no anti-gay animus against Harvey, but Hougan refused to lie or suffer fake amnesia. He described unlawful harassment heaped on Harvey, and, when asked, he named the offenders: basically the entire command staff. Thanks largely to that testimony, Harvey won the $2 million case.

For nearly two decades, Hougan's personnel record glowed with commendations and praiseful letters from residents. Not a single serious reprimand or Internal Affairs (IA) probe marred his file. But in the wake of the Harvey trial and his complaints of rigged promotions, colleagues mad-dogged him, called him a "snitch" and a "traitor," stole his personal property, and even taped a picture of a bomb on his desk. Other officers began looking for ways to tarnish his career. Captain Dale Johnson, one of the cops Hougan identified in the Harvey smear, called him into his office, shut the door and said he didn't appreciate the testimony on Harvey's behalf. "I just wanted you to know that," said Johnson, according to Hougan, who replied before walking out, "Is that all?"

Which brings us back to that idyllic March 10, 2011, afternoon.

That day, the city's civil-service board held its monthly meeting to hear Hougan argue a claim alleging illegal retaliation by the NBPD. After the trial, his bosses had launched a supposedly "random" audit of office computer use that somehow focused solely on Hougan and found that, on some days, he allegedly deactivated Google's "safe search" button to surf the Internet for risqué or pornographic images. Instead of telling the sergeant to knock off the conduct, officials saw the chance to secretly build a case for severe punishment. According to IA records, Hougan's searches included "Jennifer Lopez," "scantily clad," "Tim Tebow girlfriend," "topless," "Octomom," "nude," "Brooke Mueller," "Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders," "peephole" and "Snooki."

Over the years, dozens of cops have been caught misusing NBPD computers--some far worse than Hougan's breach--without suffering any meaningful punishment. But NBPD Chief Jay Johnson, a Klein replacement, demoted Hougan from sergeant to officer (a move that resulted in about a 20 percent annual pay loss), claiming his decision was "fair" and "impartial" and entirely unrelated to the Harvey trial or his protests over promotions rigging.

Johnson wasn't done with Hougan yet. At the board meeting, the chief--thinking his words would be shielded from public consumption during a closed session--slyly enticed its old, conservative members to uphold his decision by offering erroneous, inflammatory testimony: Johnson wondered aloud if Hougan and his police-dispatcher wife, Christie, were promiscuous with other couples. In the retaliation game, the move was akin to wounding two birds with one stone.

"I have reviewed some of the websites and things that [Hougan] was looking at," Johnson said, according to a transcript obtained by the Weekly. "And I know that some of the websites he was interested in [were related to] wife swapping. So, if that is something that he and his wife were comfortable with, maybe she does know about [his illicit web use]. I don't know."

[I wanted to ask the police chief what pornography he'd watched in anticipation of making this point and how he understood the sexual interaction to be wife swapping, but he did not respond to three attempts for an interview.]

Hougan sent Christie, who was off-duty and waiting in the lobby of the board meeting, a text message about Johnson's remarks. When the chief and Lieutenant Jeff Lu emerged on the sidewalk at 32nd Street, she confronted them. Cops can only surreptitiously record a conversation for a criminal investigation, but Johnson turned on his iPhone voice recorder to capture her words without getting permission.

Christie wanted to know why he'd tainted her with a wife-swapping suggestion after repeatedly reassuring her on earlier occasions that he was her ally.

"If it's any consolation, I didn't say that," the chief replied. "I said that . . . Well, I'm not going to tell what I said, but I don't think it's appropriate to talk about it."

Christie seethed. "Oh, I got it, hun," she said. "You know what? This is not going to be pretty. Not after those comments. It's not going to be pretty."

Johnson asked what she meant.

"This whole thing, it's not going to end well," she replied.

"Are you threatening me, Christie? I don't get this."

"Am I threatening you?" she asked. "I'm not at work. I'm a private person right now. You're not paying me. I'm having a discussion with you."

Her husband walked up, and she told the chief, "When I get back to work and tell everybody what you're saying about me in the courtroom, your credibility is gonna go through the floor."

Lu ordered her to keep her mouth shut about the accusation. "How do you know I said anything about you?" Johnson fired back.

As he demanded she reveal her source, Hougan pulled her away.

The next day, at the continued civil-service board hearing, Hougan's lawyer, Saku Ethir, got Johnson to admit the demotion of her client was the harshest discipline he'd ever imposed for improper computer use and, more important, that the wife-swapping tale was bogus.

"In that entire [IA] report, was there any reference to any searches done by Sergeant Hougan that pertained to wife swapping?"

"No, ma'am," the chief conceded.

Civil-service board hearings contain a confidentiality provision designed to protect the accused officer. But members displayed their coziness to Johnson by ridiculously lecturing Hougan for violating the chief's right to confidentiality when he told Christie about the lame accusation. Not surprisingly, the board--stacked with well-connected, political-appointee hacks--approved the demotion.

After the sidewalk incident, Johnson ordered Lu to make a record of Christie's "inappropriate" and "demeaning" comments. The chief followed up with a memo outlining his victimhood and forwarded the tape recording to his trusty IA unit. Those investigators refused to determine if the recording violated state law or to consider if the unfounded wife-swapping line was a form of sexual harassment or a simple policy-violating lie.

But, soon, John and Christie Hougan would find absurdly trivial matters sculpted into unforgivable firing offenses--and the NBPD's top brass would successfully push out more whistleblowers from its ranks.