LOS ANGELES--Police Chief Bernard C. Parks on Tuesday filed administrative charges against 10 officers implicated in the department's ongoing corruption probe. The charges include false arrest, excessive force, theft, perjury, unlawful searches and failing to report misconduct by fellow officers. Most of the charges, if proved, could result in termination. All but two of the officers already had been relieved of duty in connection with the corruption investigation. The other eight are or were assigned to the same Rampart Division Anti-gang CRASH unit as Rafael Perez, the former officer at the center of the scandal. In addition to the pending departmental charges, those officers also are under criminal investigation by the LAPD's corruption task force. [continues 139 words]
LAW: Memos show he wanted to indict officers in the Rampart Division scandal. LOS ANGELES - A prosecutor who urged his superiors to file conspiracy charges against several police officers was pulled of the task force investigating corruption days later, the Daily News of Los Angeles reported Sunday. District Attorney Gil Garcetti had denied on a radio talk show that Deputy District Attorney George Rosenstock sought approval to indict officers involved in a station-house beating. But when faced Saturday with confidential memos obtained by the Daily News, Garcetti's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons acknowledged Rosenstock wanted to file the first criminal charges against officers other than Rafeal Perez, the central figure in the Rampart Division scandal. [continues 209 words]
LAPD: Authorities are investigating alleged misconduct by Central, 77th and Southeast officers, including false arrests, planting of drugs and an unjustified shooting. The Los Angeles Police Department's corruption probe has spread beyond the boundaries of the gritty Rampart Division and now includes alleged crimes or misconduct in at least three other areas of the city, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Times. Internal LAPD and district attorney's documents show for the first time that authorities are exploring allegations that police crimes or misconduct occurred in the department's Central, 77th and Southeast divisions. [continues 1061 words]
Probe Of Los Angeles Police Puts At Least 400 Cases In Jeopardy THE BAD GUYS wore badges. In a city notorious for warring gangs, cops became the most feared gang of all. Rogue anti-gang officers in the Rampart unit of the Los Angeles Police Department are accused of framing, bullying, torturing and sometimes shooting innocent people and covering up their vigilantism with fraud and forgery. They are alleged to have celebrated their "kills" - the real ones and the men they sent to prison - at booze-and-gun parties where the biggest hunters won special plaques for taking down another "homie." They stole cocaine and cash, planted guns and drugs to make arrests, bragged about lying under oath. Some officers are alleged to have sold and used coke confiscated from street dealers. [continues 1634 words]
Courts: Six Overturned Convictions From Rampart Probe Bring Total To 46 LOS ANGELES - A judge threw out six more criminal convictions Thursday as part of an ongoing probe into corruption in a Police Department anti-gang unit. The dismissals brought to 46 the number of convictions overturned in a scandal that has shaken the police force of the nation's second-largest city. Superior Court Judge Larry P.Fidler quickly dismissed the six cases at the request of the district attorney's office, which said the convictions were obtained by falsifying evidence, committing perjury and employing other illegal practices. [continues 272 words]
Crime: Many of the names in the statewide database were compiled by LAPD's now-disbanded CRASH units. State and local law enforcement officials have created a computer database with files on more than 112,000 purported Los Angeles County gang members, 62,000 of whom were identified largely by officers from the now-disbanded Los Angeles Police Department CRASH units--including those in the scandal-ridden Rampart station, senior police officers say. The CRASH units were disbanded after members of the Rampart Division allegedly committed unjustified shootings, stole drugs, planted evidence and perjured themselves to frame innocent people. The heavy reliance by the database, called CAL/GANG, on intelligence gathered by such units raises questions about the reliability of the computerized information, which is available to agencies statewide. [continues 1379 words]
LOS ANGELES - A Superior Court judge on Thursday overturned six more convictions tainted by alleged misconduct by officers from the LAPD's Rampart Division. The court action brings to 46 the number of cases dismissed in the ongoing corruption scandal, district attorney's officials said. The latest round of reversals involved drug and weapons charges against three adults and three people who were juveniles at the time they were arrested by Rampart anti-gang officers from 1996 through 1997. As with most of the other cases that have been overturned, the dismissals were based in large part on the testimony of ex-officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez. [continues 104 words]
If there were no other arguments for the legalization of drugs, the corruption in the Los Angeles Police Rampart Division should certainly convince the unconvinced. This corruption is (a) primarily drug related, and (b) only the tip of the iceberg of what takes place in the rest of the country. That the problems in Los Angeles are not limited to the Rampart Division is evidenced by the O.J. Simpson trial, in which five black female jurors were chosen by the defense simply because they had witnessed police corruption in West L.A. where they lived and were, therefore, suspect of the police in the first place. [continues 934 words]
The blowup between Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is more than another institutional skirmish between two agencies whose feuds have a long and bitter history. It also is a fierce clash of personalities, a politically and legally charged confrontation, and, according to some observers, such an exercise in overreaching by Parks that it instantly turned many of the city's political leaders against him. Many of them were outraged at reports that Parks had effectively cut off the district attorney's office from files and reports related to the Rampart police scandal. [continues 1253 words]
LAPD's Parks Denies That He Is Withholding Information, But Says He Is Giving The FBI And U.S. Attorney Priority LOS ANGELES -- The probe of one of the worst scandals in LAPD history degenerated into a free-for-all Wednesday, with the district attorney accusing the police chief of not cooperating, and the chief implying the D.A. may not be up to the task. Chief Bernard C. Parks, who has repeatedly criticized local prosecutors for moving too slowly in bringing charges against corrupt officers, said his department is continuing to cooperate with Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, although he has serious reservations about Garcetti's efforts. [continues 801 words]
In a significant breakthrough in the Rampart corruption investigation, a Los Angeles police officer implicated in the scandal has corroborated testimony from former Officer Rafael Perez about an alleged beating by police in 1998, sources close to the criminal probe said. The development is considered good news by prosecutors and detectives who have been searching for witnesses to substantiate the allegations of Perez, an admitted perjurer, who has testified that a band of Rampart officers planted evidence to arrest innocent people, beat suspects, covered up unjustified shootings and perjured themselves, among other abuses. [continues 780 words]
There is a familiar ring to the laundry list of internal problems that the Los Angeles Police Department Board of Inquiry says allowed corruption in the Rampart Division to fester. That's because such deficiencies as inadequate screening of new officers and the inability of the LAPD to track use of force and monitor problem officers were identified by the blue-ribbon Christopher Commission after the beating of Rodney G. King nine years ago. The LAPD's failure to adopt the most significant reforms the commission recommended to resolve those problems has caused some reformers to question whether the department can police itself--especially since less than two years ago the LAPD said it had dealt with many of those issues. [continues 2505 words]
Corruption: Federal lawyers arrive in L.A. to question why LAPD failed to implement promised changes and how it plans to move forward with reforms, sources say. Concerned about civil rights violations arising from the Police Department's Rampart Division corruption scandal, high-ranking U.S. Justice Department officials flew to Los Angeles Sunday to meet today with LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks and other top city leaders. Bill Lann Lee--the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division in Washington, D.C.--wants to find out why the LAPD has not implemented some long-anticipated changes and to learn how the department plans to move forward on other key reforms, according to a government official familiar with the federal probe of alleged civil rights abuses by Los Angeles police officers. [continues 926 words]
How could anyone, much less Chief Parks, insist that the Christopher Commission's recommendations are essentially all in place? The facts prove otherwise. The Los Angeles Police Commission and its staff face a task that would have been unimaginable as recently as a year ago--restoring credibility to a department that long rested on its reputation for incorruptibility, a reputation we now know to be hollow. The LAPD's own internal inquiry makes it clear that a climate ripe for abuse has long existed in the department and continued to exist even after the 1991 Christopher Commission identified key shortcomings in LAPD hiring, training and supervision. [continues 861 words]
Mexican-Americans Numb To The Violence LOS ANGELES - Police bullets crashed into the spine of Javier Francisco Ovando, and only the judge who sent the paralyzed 19-year-old to prison had any harsh words about the shooting. He admonished Ovando for being a danger to society. When police shot Juan Salana, officers left him unattended long enough that he bled to death. The events weren't big news in East Los Angeles, a poor, immigrant-populated area just a five-minute bus ride from the high-rises that mark the city's skyline. [continues 1414 words]
Mayor Richard Riordan's office and the City Council clashed sharply Wednesday over how to pay hundreds of millions of dollars the city could owe from judgments and settlements arising from the L.A. police corruption scandal. The council's Budget and Finance Committee urged rejection of the mayor's proposal - to sell $300 million due the city over 25 years as its share of the national tobacco lawsuit case, for about $100 million now. The panel recommended instead the council take a go-slow approach by immediately setting aside $23 million into a special fund that would be increased over the years. If needed, the city then could issue judgment bonds. [continues 690 words]
The district attorney's criminal investigation into the Los Angeles Police Department scandal has identified at least 10 Rampart Division cops and other officers as suspects, sources close to the probe said Wednesday. Sparks fly over Rampart cost The officers, named in federal court motions, are under suspicion for a myriad of crimes, including evidence planting, perjury, assaults and attempted murder, according to the sources. The motions were filed this week to delay trial of civil cases growing out of the scandal in which officers allegedly abused suspects and planted evidence on them, leading to wrongful convictions of dozens and possibly hundreds of people. Prosecutors argued that the delay is justified to allow the criminal investigation to move forward. [continues 838 words]
Thoughtful and worrisome words by Walter Prince (Commentary, March 2) about the several options available to L.A. as the city faces the upcoming Rampart litigation. [L.A. should] end its own version of the failed and hideously expensive war on drugs. The city has no obligation to enforce federal laws. The war on drugs is one of the root causes of the runaway scandal; for another, consider racism. The O.J. Simpson jury tried to tell L.A. that it had a problem but nobody listened. But then so did the Kerner Commission, circa the late 1960s. Emeryville, Calif. [end]
An explosion of evidence about dishonest officers in the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart division is rippling through Orange County courtrooms and police stations. The Rampart scandal grew from an officer convicted of stealing $1 million in cocaine held as evidence. The officer, Rafael Perez, admitted framing suspects by planting evidence and lying at trial, and implicated others in the misconduct. As a result of those allegations, more than 20 officers have been relieved of duty and 40 criminal convictions overturned. [continues 912 words]
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. [continues 987 words]
