Pubdate: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: James Sterngold Bookmark: For L.A. police corruption scandal: http://www.mapinc.org/rampart.htm Bookmark: For WOD related corruption items: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm LOS ANGELES POLICE REPORT CITES VAST COMMAND LAPSES LOS ANGELES, March 1 -- In a long-awaited report on a burgeoning scandal, the Los Angeles Police Department today offered a scathing indictment of what was by its own admission a near collapse of its command and control systems and the creation of a culture that permitted brutality and corruption to flourish for years. But the complex 362-page report left some civic leaders here troubled by what it left unsaid. The document was issued at a news conference where the police chief, Bernard C. Parks, said he was proud of his department for having uncovered the wrongdoing, an assertion critics have widely disputed. Those critics also contended today that Mr. Parks was using the report largely as a cudgel to fend off the growing demands for an outside investigation of the department's management. Mr. Parks did not propose taking any action against officials who failed in their management responsibilities, although he said a separate report might address them later. And he dismissed suggestions that he resign to take responsibility for the departmentwide lapses. The assessment issued today was undertaken nearly six months ago, after a rogue officer, Rafael Perez, agreed to disclose widespread abuses in an effort to reduce his sentence for stealing cocaine from a police evidence room. He reportedly detailed vast wrongdoing at a single antigang unit, but now the criminal investigation of wayward officers is extending to other divisions. The report included a list of 108 recommendations to the Police Commission, a civilian oversight board, among them dozens of measures that would give top police officials more power and financing. It did not, however, recommend increased outside scrutiny, a step critics had been hoping for. "The report is vague or silent on the question of real concern, which is the root problem of how this was allowed to go on throughout the department," said Merrick Bobb, a lawyer who is an adviser to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and helped draft a police reform plan eight years ago in response to the beating of Rodney G. King. "The L.A.P.D. has got to show that it's as willing to let others look at it as it has shown itself willing to look at itself. This is a first step, not an end product." Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who is the author of a coming book on civilian oversight of police departments, said the Los Angeles department had been fighting effective civilian control for years and was trailing the police of other major cities in that regard. "This report begs the real question," Professor Walker said. "It's a very damning indictment, but it doesn't answer the basic question of why this was allowed to happen, why their own policies weren't followed." "This," he added, "really does indicate that the L.A.P.D. is incapable of ensuring accountability of itself." The report says the criminal investigation of corrupt officers is not complete, but it concludes that the corruption resulted from "a few individuals" whose wrongdoing "had a contagion effect on some of those around them." Management shortcomings are addressed as well, however. In some instances, the report says, officers were hired in spite of knowledge that they had problems like narcotics use or a history of violent behavior. At the news conference, Michael Bostic, a member of the board of inquiry that drew up the report, described the system for regularly evaluating officers as "an atrocity." There were too few supervisors in station houses, and when they had days off their officers sometimes went completely unsupervised. Civilians' complaints about police officers were not taken seriously or investigated properly, the report says, and patterns of complaints were ignored. The report also cites a startling lack of internal audits. As a result, it says, officers routinely ignored policies, in the knowledge that "the likelihood of anyone discovering the use of shortcuts is practically nil." It says there was "near universal ignorance" of the department's policies regarding the use of informers. The report attributes police wrongdoing in part to the mediocrity that it contends was allowed to flourish. That notion was dismissed derisively by several experts here, with one senior law-enforcement official commenting: "Mediocrity is not corruption. It doesn't make an officer shoot an unarmed man in the head." In that previously disclosed instance, an officer confessed that he and his partner had handcuffed an unarmed gang member, shot him in the head, then planted a gun on him and lied in court when he was charged with attacking them. His conviction, and 39 others, have already been overturned as a result of the uncovered corruption, with many more likely. Further, experts have warned that the city faces $200 million or more in civil liabilities. The report's findings were especially troubling to some critics because just eight years ago, after the King beating, the initial acquittal of the officers involved and the ensuing riots, an independent panel headed by Warren Christopher proposed sweeping reforms that were supposed to put a stop to the sort of systemic abuses now being disclosed. In August 1998, Mr. Parks told the Police Commission that 87 percent of the reforms had been implemented. Yet some of the same shortcomings were apparently allowed to continue under Mr. Parks, without any clear indication that anyone within the department was being held accountable. "That is the point: Why would I have confidence in the same entity that has resisted the Christopher Commission reforms and that offered false assurances about their implementation?" Laura Chick, a member of the City Council and former head of its Public Safety Commission, said today. "We need other perspectives," Ms. Chick added. "It cannot come from the department or the Police Commission, which swallowed the chief's assurances." Mayor Richard J. Riordan, who has consistently supported Mr. Parks throughout the unfolding of the scandal, offered another endorsement of him today. "I have never been so proud of the Police Department," the mayor said in a radio interview. "To have self-criticized themselves like this, I have never seen in the history of mankind any government agency do that. So we are going onward, upward, and I think everybody will be proud of us." Gerald Chaleff, a lawyer who is the president of the Police Commission, said it intended to assemble a large staff of experts to analyze the report and make their own recommendations to the commission. "We will go beyond the scope of the report," Mr. Chaleff said, "to ensure the department and the commission are held accountable, and to ensure that this doesn't happen again." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake