Rickey Ross Won’t Appeal His Firing as Sheriff’s Deputy

Rickey Ross, the fired Los Angeles County sheriff’s narcotics investigator accused of slaying three prostitutes only to have the murder charges dropped, will not appeal his dismissal from the department, the county Civil Service Commission disclosed on Monday.

Ross’ attorney, Howard L. Weitzman, said an agreement had been reached with the Sheriff’s Department under which Ross was allowed to resign.

The Ross case caused a sensation when he was arrested last February in South-Central Los Angeles, while sitting in a car with a prostitute. Police initially linked Ross to a series of prostitute murders through the results of ballistics tests that were performed on his handgun--results that later proved to be wrong.

Ross’ decision not to appeal his dismissal was contained in a one-sentence letter to the commission, dated last Friday. It came just before he was to go before a county hearing officer today in what was expected to be a dramatic appeal.

On Monday, the commission received by messenger a letter from the 18-year Sheriff’s Department veteran, declaring: “I hereby withdraw my appeal from before the Civil Service Commission and request that you either seal my file or return all materials in it to me.”

Last week, Undersheriff Robert A. Edmonds said, Ross resigned from the department “for personal reasons.” The resignation--effective April 27--was the same day that Sheriff Sherman Block had sent the deputy a formal termination letter.

Ross, 40, declined to comment when reached at his Rialto home.

Weitzman said that Ross was emotionally drained by his incarceration for 81 days in county jail and the attendant publicity. The attorney said Ross decided he could not resume his old job, even if he won reinstatement.

“He’s emotionally incapable of going back to law enforcement work,” Weitzman said in a telephone interview. The lawyer said that Ross, given “the trauma he’s gone through and the anguish he’s suffered,” did not think he could remain a sheriff’s deputy.

But Weitzman said he is preparing a lawsuit designed “to allow Rickey to recover damages of unlawful arrest.”

In Unmarked County Car

Ross’ problems began in the early morning hours of Feb. 23, when two Los Angeles police officers found him sitting in an unmarked county car on Flower Street, between 57th and 58th streets, with a prostitute, Jimmie Joann McGhee, 21, of Denver.

Block, in his termination letter to Ross, said the deputy had “brought discredit and embarrassment to yourself and the Department” when he was allegedly found smoking crack cocaine with the prostitute.

“She said that you provided a small piece of cocaine and at the time the officers approached your vehicle, you and she were smoking cocaine together,” Block wrote.

Ross’ arrest had been announced at a news conference conducted by Block and Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates after the Police Department’s forensics tests purportedly linked Ross’s handgun to the three slayings.

Charges Dismissed

But then, in a remarkable turnabout, a county prosecutor announced last May 15 that the murder charges would have to be dismissed because the results of the ballistics tests were wrong.

McGhee, currently in County Jail on a prostitution charge, was scheduled to be the first witness today at Ross’s hearing.