Officer’s 2004 Arrest Raises Questions

SACRAMENTO —  A high-ranking California Highway Patrol officer in line to become commander of the CHP’s Los Angeles-area division was arrested last year for allegedly failing to comply with a police officer’s order, the Sacramento Bee reported Saturday.

A breath test found that Deputy Chief Gary Dominguez, 45, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.10, but he was not charged with drunk driving. The law considers a person with a level of 0.08 or more intoxicated.

The charge of disobeying a peace officer was dropped because the officer who made the arrest had left the department and wasn’t available to testify, an attorney said. Dominguez’s driver’s license was suspended for four months.

The newspaper reported that Dominguez did not respond to requests for an interview.

Dominguez was arrested Feb. 21, 2004, by a Pasadena Police Department officer who said he found Dominguez asleep in the driver’s seat of a sport utility vehicle about 2:30 a.m.

The officer, David Llanes, reported that Dominguez refused to get out of the vehicle and at one point drove the SUV forward about six inches.

Officers said Dominguez told them he had had four or five beers earlier that day about 13 miles from where they found him.

Pasadena Chief Prosecutor Connie Orozco said Dominguez, who works in the CHP’s Sacramento-based Information Management Division, was not charged with drunk driving because he apparently was seen driving only a few inches.

Assistant CHP Commissioner Kevin Green would not say whether Dominguez was disciplined by the department.

Dominguez is scheduled to take command of the CHP’s Southern Division on July 1.

“The bottom line is that Chief Dominguez is a deputy chief in the California Highway Patrol,” Green told the Bee.

“He is not prohibited from transfer eligibility. He is qualified for the transfer.... We have no reason within policy or law to block it.”

He said the CHP gives officers involved in alcohol-related incidents a second chance.

But state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) said she was outraged by Dominguez’s appointment to head the 4,000-square-mile Southern Division.

“This is a failure on the part of Commissioner [Mike] Brown to stand up and clean up his own department,” she said.

“How do you convey to the public with a straight face ‘Don’t drink and drive,’ and all of a sudden you have this chief here?”