Police morale: Findings suppressed? Santa Barbara's five-member Fire & Police Commission was created in 1927 to organize both departments, hire chiefs, and approve promotions. Forty years later its role was officially minimized to "solely an advisory capacity." And ever since, the very departments it created have eroded the commission's oversight authority. For instance, in mid-2006 commissioners proposed conducting a survey to determine morale.

Police Chief Cam Sanchez circumvented their request by rushing to conduct his own "in-house" survey of SBPD employees, while promising, at the commission's regular meeting on June 22, 2006, "to share the house survey with the Commissioners" -- according to the minutes of that meeting.

But after the survey was completed, Chief Sanchez changed his mind, and kept its findings secret from Commissioners -- and off the public record.

"I may have misspoken when I said to the Commissioners I would share it with them," Chief Sanchez told The Investigator. "Our employees wanted me to assure them that it would stay in-house as a document just for us, and I promised them that it would be handled that way."

If police employees who answered survey questions anonymously indicated that morale was poor, the study would have reflected badly on Chief Sanchez's leadership. So this exercise was rather like asking a restaurant proprietor to evaluate the sanitation of his own kitchen for a health inspection report. Certainly, it defeated the commission's purpose: to understand the inner workings of the department at a grass-roots level to better advise the Santa Barbara City Council and make recommendations for improving efficiency, which remains its charter, at least on paper.

"If the survey had been complimentary to the chief, he would have broadcast it far and wide," a source familiar with SBPD told The Investigator. "But I heard it was pretty negative."

A veteran police officer with the department told The Investigator:
"It doesn't help morale to be asked your opinion and then have your opinion buried. Like, don't ask if you're not really interested. When public funds are used for a survey, it should be a public record. And if you do an internal study -- which costs money, using outside consultants -- you should be prepared to implement the lessons learned."

Were any such learned lessons implemented?

"The survey assisted me to make some changes that improved things like communications," Chief Sanchez told The Investigator. "The bettering of communication was what people wanted. We established an employee newsletter and established an employee speakers' bureau for community meetings. We also established an employee advisory committee, which advises me on equipment enhancement, uniform changes, etc."

It did not, however, enhance the department's communication with commissioners.

Commissioner Daniel Signor told The Investigator, "I would still like to see the results of that survey."

So would Commissioner Patrick Lennon, a former deputy sheriff, who conceived the survey. "There were a lot of morale problems in SBPD -- and still are," Mr. Lennon told The Investigator. "And we had a retention problem. We wanted to ask questions like, 'What can the city do to keep you as an employee? How far do you drive to work each day? What can be improved?' We put it on the agenda for the next meeting -- that's what our city charter requires, so they're not surprised by anything we want to discuss. But Chief Sanchez cancelled the next meeting. And at the meeting afterwards, he announces, 'I've already done a survey, so you guys don't have to worry about it.'
Well, I happen to know that a couple of officers totally flamed the chief [in the survey]. A year later, the chief told us, 'A few people were unhappy -- we're trying to deal with it.' The chief told us the city administrator decided the survey was outside our scope, which threw me for a loop. It makes me wonder about our relevancy or why the commission even exists."

But supposing the commission is relevant -- who watches the watchers?
(Aside from this column.)

Joe Rodriguez, a current member of the commission (for 13 years), is clearly engaged in a conflict of interest. Mr. Rodriguez owns a local commercial enterprise called Venco Security, which he started in 2007. Venco provides detectives, guards and armored cars for hire.
Approvals to operate private security companies in Santa Barbara are issued by 0xc9 the Fire & Police Commission.

"I don't think it's right," a commissioner told The Investigator. "Of course it is a conflict of interest."

Worse still, earlier this year -- on February 25 -- Venco was fined $5,000 by the state Department of Consumer Affairs, Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, for illegally employing four unlicensed guards.

• Chaplin's ghost?

Halloween is behind us, but Charlie Chaplin's ghost year-round haunts the Montecito Inn (which Mr. Chaplin created in 1928) and Lucky's bar and grill next-door, on Coast Village Road in Montecito.

The iconic moviemaker manifests himself by perpetrating playful pranks on patrons. For instance, he'll jerk a barstool, prompting a male customer to pratfall while concurrently causing a female to slip on an imaginary banana skin, and they'll engage each other on the floor -- Charlie's slapstick style of sparking seduction. Strangely, no injuries occur from these pratfalls and slippages (which of course have nothing to do with martinis).

Charlie, costumed as The Tramp, is seen walking through walls in Lucky's Bamboo Room; he flicks empty glasses off serving trays, incessantly taps the shoulders of chosen patrons, and, when washrooms are occupied, jiggles sliding locks to show "vacant," resulting in mirthful (if mortifying) encounters.

Lucky's Table 80 belongs to Charlie. That's the one whose candle mysteriously alights at evening's end when all other candles, and lights, are extinguished.

Occasionally, Charlie loses his temper. In a fit of pique last January, disguised as a gust of wind, he slammed the Montecito Bar's "shatterproof" glass door with such force, it shattered into a million pieces, closing the joint for a week.

But perhaps Charlie's most mischievous trick to date was levitating a Dover sole, about to be filleted, high above manager Eric Maldonado's head, while simultaneously dispersing filet accoutrements in odd trajectories, leavings diners (and poor Mr. Maldonado) astounded.

"A ghost is the remnants of a life," local poltergeist expert Bob Burton told The Investigator. "The quicker one's wit, the more likely one will enjoy a spiritual presence. Charlie is obviously having the time of his after-life."