Three days after police officially opened the case, Councilmember Bob Livengood was quoted in the Milpitas Post as saying when the phone calls were occurring and in which city departments. Police sources say this has made a phone stakeout even harder. Finance director Sabo said it was not the first time Moore had discouraged him from taking an issue to the police. In June, he told the cops of a recreation department employee who had spent several hundred dollars on a city credit card for clothes and other personal items. In that case, Police Chief Lawson reports, the criminal investigation proved worthwhile, and the district attorney's office did issue a complaint.
Sources say the employee was fired and ordered to repay the money.
Moore said Sabo reported the phone abuse directly to a friend in the police department rather than to himself or the police chief first. Sabo was a cop for ten years, between 1969 and 1979, before becoming finance director. He said that the police chief wasn't in when he went to the police station to report the phone problems. Inside city sources say it's hard to tell whether Moore was actively trying to get the police off his subordinates' backs or if he's merely upset that Sabo made a bureaucratic end-run around him by going directly to the police department. For over a year Sabo and Moore have been embroiled in an ongoing feud some observers have called a deep personal animosity.