{"id":427881,"date":"2026-08-09T05:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T05:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/427881\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T05:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T05:54:11","slug":"court-blocks-chp-from-firing-officer-caught-in-la-overtime-scandal-long-beach-post-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/427881\/","title":{"rendered":"Court blocks CHP from firing officer caught in LA overtime scandal \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters<\/a>.\u00a0Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 17, 2017, California Highway Patrol officer Nathaniel Partridge checked in his patrol car almost four hours before his shift ended and drove 35 miles home. That day, and on at least two other occasions, he was paid overtime for the hours he didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Partridge wasn\u2019t alone.\u00a0Dozens of CHP officers<\/a>\u00a0at an East Los Angeles patrol division routinely did the same while working traffic enforcement details on highway construction sites. On paper, the practice had been forbidden for five years, but no one objected until a 2019 audit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took the chance to go home and would fall on the consequence if I was called back,\u201d Partridge told CHP investigators, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

The result was the smallest patrol division in Southern California running up an overtime tab that was three times that of the region\u2019s largest division, according to the internal audit. That finding led CHP to drop the hammer on the East LA station 2020, when it moved to dismiss dozens of officers, including Partridge.<\/p>\n

This week, after Partridge\u2019s case lingered for six years through state personnel hearings, a Justice Department investigation and trial court, a California appeals court found that a one-year suspension without pay was appropriate discipline, over the objections of the California Highway Patrol, which wanted him fired.<\/p>\n

David Mastagni, Partridge\u2019s lawyer, said the ruling \u201creflects fundamental fairness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAccountability and second chances are not in conflict,\u201d Mastagni said.<\/p>\n

No one \u2014 not CHP administration, the personnel board, nor the officer himself \u2014 dispute what happened: Partridge was paid $288.98 for three hours and 45 minutes of overtime he didn\u2019t work, which investigators alleged was part of a long-running grift at the East LA station to fabricate overtime hours.<\/p>\n

Partridge and dozens of other officers were fired in 2020, according to the appeals court decision.<\/p>\n

In February 2022, Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a total of\u00a0302 criminal counts against 54 officers<\/a>, alleging they had collectively defrauded the public of more than $200,000.<\/p>\n

Those charges didn\u2019t last long. In December 2022, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge offered the officers a deal: Their charges would be reduced from felonies to misdemeanors and then dismissed if they repaid the money.<\/p>\n

Fifty-two officers<\/a>\u00a0took that deal, The Sacramento Bee reported at the time.<\/p>\n

The Highway Patrol called Partridge\u2019s actions \u201cinexcusable neglect of duty, dishonesty (and) misuse of state property\u201d when the organization fired him. When Partridge appealed, the State Personnel Board said it was \u201cself-enrichment at the expense of the public\u2019s trust,\u201d but handed down a one-year suspension instead.<\/p>\n

Partridge\u2019s bosses found that discipline insufficient, and the CHP asked a California district court judge to override the suspension and reinstate the firing, saying the personnel board abused its discretion in reducing the penalty. The judge denied that petition, siding with the personnel board.<\/p>\n

According to his superiors quoted in court documents, Partridge was a good cop. His evaluations recommended him for promotion and his disciplinary record was clean. But the administration at the California Highway Patrol argued at the State Personnel Board and in court that his conduct compromised his integrity.<\/p>\n

This week, California\u2019s 2nd District Court of Appeals agreed with the district court judge: The State Personnel Board didn\u2019t overstep its bounds in handing down a one-year suspension.<\/p>\n

\u201cA reasonable decisionmaker could have dismissed Partridge, and a reasonable decisionmaker could have\u2014and did\u2014impose a one-year suspension without pay,\u201d the court found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up for their newsletters. On Sept. 17, 2017, California Highway Patrol officer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-427881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}