CULVER CITY — With a vote-of-no-confidence — issued by the 89 member Culver City Police Officers’ Association — hanging over his head, Culver City Police Chief Don Pedersen spoke to The Wave about his reaction to the news that 86.5 percent of his department have no faith in him as a leader.

When did you find out about the vote-of-no-confidence?
I found out before but the formal notification came to me upon return from my vacation, which was last Sunday.

What was your reaction?
I was disappointed in the vote but it wasn’t a surprise.

What do you make of the vote? A massive number of your police officers and sergeants said they have no faith in you as chief.
It obviously concerns me but I believe that by having meaningful dialogue we can work through these issues and that is what I would like to have happen with the union. I am committed to working through the issues. We have only met three times before this occurred. I think to get to this point you really need to do a lot of self reflection — on everybody’s part.

Though they may not have confidence in you, do you have faith in your officers?
I have no worries that they are not doing a good job.

You’ve read the allegations, do you believe there is any validity to them?
No, I don’t believe there is any validity in them. I believe some of them are misunderstandings. I think some are miscommunications but when it comes down to the allegations, they are just not substantiated. They are completely false.

Can you comment on the list of allegations?
Sure, ask away...I’m an open book.

The first allegation is that you failed to report collision damage to your take-home city vehicle and rather than making a report you took it to a private body shop for a quick fix.  Is this true?
Yes, I have a take home vehicle and there was a very minor scratch on the fender of the vehicle. The assistant chief actually brought it to my attention and we had the repair corrected through the city’s body shop. It was exceedingly minor.

The second allegation is that you interfered with a criminal investigation involving the son of former Mayor Albert Vera who hired you as chief, and possibly tampered with evidence in the case. What happened here?
That is a case that was actually investigated by the Redondo Beach Police Department. There were also some parts of the case that became of concern to the Culver City Police Department because a crime occurred in our city. Recognizing that there was potential conflict of interest because this person’s father was a former mayor as was he a former reserved police officer here. I asked the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to assist us with that investigation.

The CCPOA suggested that you may have tried to interfere with the investigation to protect Vera’s son, as a way of paying him back for hiring you as chief.
That’s completely false.

The CCPOA claims that — at least to their knowledge — there was no burglary reported, investigated or prosecuted in the case.
Both that investigation [by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department] as well as the Redondo Beach Police Department investigation both resulted in convictions. There was no interference at all on my part.

The third allegation is that you failed to identify yourself as chief to a citizen while at the scene of a search warrant.
What happened there is that we were in the city of Inglewood serving a number of search warrants. I had shown up to oversee service of one of the search warrants. I did that because I wanted to make sure the officers had everything they needed to get this done because it required mutual aid from other police departments. When I was leaving one of the officers was talking to a female who wasn’t real happy about having her house searched. She wanted to know who was in charge of this investigation. And because I was just there supporting the officers, I said ‘he’s taking good care of you.’ That’s it.

At any point did the citizen speak to you directly or ask for your identity?
No. I was not asked for my name.

The final allegation is that you have on occasion attempted to intimidate members of the CCPOA and keep them from participating in their union activities.
That did not happen. I have had a number of conversations with people about their careers and I have encouraged them to be involved with their union because I think you see both sides of the police business by doing that. I, myself, was a union member and on the board of directors. So, I have never done anything to attempt to dissuade the union from doing anything. That is not happening. I have never intimidated any member of the association...and I’ve never tried to prevent them from [engaging in] union activities.”

You’ve restructured the department, do you believe that this has anything to do with the vote?
Some people don’t like change. I think change is hard, it’s hard for everybody. Some people except it better than others. I would just tell you that any changes that I’ve made here are to bring us into the norm with other police departments. We did create what we call a Professional Standards Unit, which entails our Internal Affairs Unit. A police department this size would typically have that. We didn’t. I know originally it wasn’t well-received but I thought we had gotten passed that because we did that close to two years ago. What we do with that is investigate our complaints more thoroughly and we come to conclusions...I think that is what most citizens would want us to do.

What do you hope comes from this situation?
What I would like to have come from this is an environment where we can get back down to business, and where I speak to the association more and speak about the issues. I want to move on and take care of the people who work here and make sure that they get home to their families.

What are your goals for the department from this point forward?
My vision is to make this the best police department it can possibly be. We are going to make it great and in the process I just want to make sure that we do everything we can to do the job the right way.