Did Rudy Martinez Pick up His LAPD Badge at 'The Front Desk of the Parker Center?'

A day after it endorsed Rudy Martinez for the March 8 City Council elections, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that the Eagle Rock businessman possessed a slain LAPD officer’s badge in 2004 and that he quit the police department’s volunteer reserve force after being questioned about the badge.

"He was uncooperative from the onset of this investigation, refused to be interviewed, and obstructed the investigators from carrying out and fulfilling their duties in appropriately investigating this matter," the Times quoted a 2005 LAPD report that the newspaper said it had obtained from the campaign staff of District 14 , whom Martinez is trying to unseat in the elections.

The LAPD report, a pdf file of which can be accessed in the photo section, says that Martinez "possessed a badge he knew he wasn't authorized to have" and that when the LAPD "became aware of the fact, he quickly resigned and attempted to contrive a fabricated explanation to justify possessing the badge." Neither the report nor the Times story say anything about why Martinez has not been prosecuted for possessing an evidently unauthorized LAPD badge.

The revelation was the latest twist in an increasingly bitter campaign between Huizar and Martinez, who have accused each other of everything from laziness and corruption (Martinez’s charge against Huizar) to being a criminal and a carpetbagger (Huizar’s charge against Martinez).

The police report, from which sensitive information had been expunged, was obtained by the Huizar campaign following a public records request, the Times said. Martinez possessed Badge No. 8029, which was issued to David Kubly, an officer who died in 1979, the Times quoted an LAPD management aide as saying. Carrying an LAPD badge without authorization is a misdemeanor offence.

It has been widely reported in the media—and reiterated by the Times in its news report—that Martinez claims the badge was issued to him so that he could create miniature replicas of LAPD badges as part of a fund-raising campaign at a celebrity golf tournament run by the LAPD.

The Times quoted Martinez’s campaign consultant, Eric Hacopian, as saying that Martinez was not aware at the time that the badge belonged to a dead officer and that the entire controversy is a "non-issue" aimed at creating a distraction from “the real issues" that voters in District 14 would like this election to be about.

But the report, Huizar’s campaign manager Parke Skelton told the Times, demonstrates that Martinez "definitely has a problem with the truth” and that he “obviously did not want an investigation into his activities, which is why he obstructed the investigation."

Further, said Skelton, Martinez should explain if he ever used the badge to impersonate an officer. "Why would he be carrying it around in an official LAPD billfold if he wasn't flashing it at people?" the Times quoted Skelton as asking.

Hacopian countered that Martinez never impersonated an officer—and any suggestion that he did would be "slanderous."

In an interview that Martinez gave to Eagle Rock Patch last month, the businessman claimed that the LAPD badge was given to him in connection with fund-raising activities for a celebrity golf tournament while he worked at the now-defunct community affairs department of the LAPD.

 In the interests of helping unravel as much of this controversy as possible, Eagle Rock Patch is reproducing below, word for word, what Martinez said about the LAPD badge issue in a tape-recorded interview meant for an upcoming profile about him:

• "I was a specialist reserve with the LAPD and there were IDs given to us to allow us to go into police facilities. During that tenure that I had—it was five years or four years—there was a celebrity golf tournament in 2004. My job was in the Community Affairs group, which no longer exists—it was under Chief [Bernard] Parks—and they would go out and get donations, find celebrities to play in these golf tournaments, they would go out and raise money and get certificates, door prizes, auction items. I was part of that group and that’s what they brought me in for.

• "I would raise a lot of money—I was very well connected throughout the real estate industry. One big thing I did—a task—was for Jim McDonnell at the time. Chief McDonnell was just promoted commander to bring in and head the IACP [International Association of Chiefs of Police], which was coming to Los Angeles [in 2004] for an annual conference. The City gave them no office space—the police gave them no office space, so he [McDonnell] was brought to me. I then knew people in the commercial real estate world. A friend of mine who managed a big portfolio gave them [IACP] a beautiful office space at 7th and Figueroa. As people came in for this big event, which was a major event, they got this free office space for almost three years worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was what I was used for.

• "It was during that tenure, when they [LAPD] needed little trinkets made, that I was given a package and part of that package was things that needed to be made. You know, I had a lot of resources—and there was a badge in there and that badge was used to make certain replicas, certain miniature badges, T-shirts, all that sort of stuff. It [the LAPD badge] was in the glove box of my car and there was a traffic accident on the freeway. I stopped and got out to assist—there were a couple of people hurt and you couldn’t drive past it at that point—and when I was assisting somebody, someone took it [the badge] from my car, my I.D., my camera. And that was turned in to—I want to say—a towing company that towed one of the cars [in the accident]. How it [the badge] got there I have no idea.

• "That [the badge] was then turned in to the LAPD. I had already resigned at that point. Not officially—I hadn’t shown up there [on duty for the LAPD reserve force] for four to five months—I had just bought a building and my restaurant was opening and I had stopped showing up. As a reserve you have to do 30 hours a month—I wasn’t doing that anymore because I was building my restaurant and so forth.

• "When they [LAPD] got the badge, they wanted to know who had given it to me. I said it was picked up at the front desk of the Parker Center [LAPD headquarters]. And that was it. I ended up resigning and it was a non-issue from that point on—and here we are. I have explained it—hopefully this is the last time that I will explain it—it’s on the [campaign] website and that’s what happened."

Editor’s note: To the chagrin of many people, including self-admitted supporters of Martinez, there is no mention of any LAPD badge on his campaign website.