These are New York Times stories - for more details go to the Los Angeles Times site .
Questions for discussion:
What could or should have been done to prevent this
corruption?
Why is the public not more outraged about
these revelations?
What ethical theories might the officers
involved use to justify their actions?
Police Corruption Inquiry Expands in Los Angeles
By JAMES STERNGOLD
LOS
ANGELES, Feb. 10 -- A long-simmering
corruption scandal has widened to encompass a
broad swath of the Los
Angeles Police Department,
with the district attorney
saying today that his office has
now found more than 40
people who were wrongly
prosecuted, and in several
cases shot, through police
misconduct.
The district attorney, Gil
Garcetti, also said in a news
conference that the investigation
had now spread
beyond the inner-city station
where it began.
Mr. Garcetti said prosecutors
would soon go to court to
ask that another 6 to 10
convictions be thrown out and
that the victims be released.
Thirty-two cases have
already been overturned.
Mr. Garcetti said in an interview
late today that he
expected more cases to be
overturned and more
prosecutors to be assigned
to the investigation. The
police have disclosed that
perhaps 100 cases might
have been tainted by planted
evidence, false testimony
or other police abuses.
More important, Mr. Garcetti
said, the investigation has
gone beyond the Rampart
Division, a station west of
downtown in a gang-infested
neighborhood where the
misconduct was first uncovered.
"It definitely can and will
go beyond Rampart," he said.
"It would be wrong to think
this is just a Rampart
investigation. We are going
where the case goes."
He disclosed that there had
been a "breakdown" in the
cooperation between the
police and prosecutors. The
police, he said, have started
to resist prosecutors'
efforts to gather information,
a sign of the rising
tensions as some in the
police department seek to limit
the damage.
Prosecutors met with police
officials this morning, and
Mr. Garcetti said they were
assured that they would get
the cooperation they needed.
"We feel, rightly or wrongly,
that we weren't getting all
the information we needed,"
Mr. Garcetti said. "The air
was cleared."
Lt. Sharyn Buck, a police
spokeswoman, said the
department would have no
comment on Mr. Garcetti's
remarks or any aspect of
the inquiry.
So far, it has been disclosed
that officers shot an
unarmed man in handcuffs,
planted guns, drugs and
other evidence on suspects,
lied in court testimony to
frame innocent people
and stole drugs and money.
Even before today, the
scandal was the most serious
instance of corruption
in the history of the troubled Los
Angeles Police Department,
but its growing breadth
and the systematic nature
of the corruption, which
apparently went unchecked
for years, has raised
questions about the ability
of the department to monitor
its officers.
"The structure was in
place there that allowed this" to
go on for so long, Mr.
Garcetti said.
"There hasn't been a structural
change" in the
department to correct
the problems.
His remarks underscored the
political tensions
underlying the investigation,
which has pitted Mr.
Garcetti's office and its
supporters against the police
department and its backers.
Bernard C. Parks, the chief
of police, has publicly
hinted that Mr. Garcetti
was moving too slowly on the
investigation. Chief Parks
has tried to pre-empt critics
by suggesting plans to improve
internal monitoring in
the department.
Several weeks ago he urged
Mr. Garcetti to overturn 99
tainted cases quickly and
to file charges against three
officers.
Mr. Garcetti has suggested
that the police, though they
uncovered the corruption,
had allowed it go on for
years and that the cases
have to be reviewed carefully
and individually.
"I understand the Los Angeles
Police Department
would like to move more
quickly and get this behind
them," Mr. Garcetti said.
"It's just going to take longer
than some people want it
to take."
Mr. Garcetti, who is up for
re-election this year, has
also been criticized by
his campaign opponents as not
moving aggressively enough.
He said he was in no
hurry to end the investigation.
The tensions escalated this
morning when The
Los
Angeles Times carried two articles that quoted from the
secret interviews with investigators
of Rafael Perez, a
former officer who has
admitted to years of abuses and
who revealed the incidents
after being arrested on
charges that he had stolen
cocaine.
The articles quoted Mr. Perez,
who is cooperating with
the police in order to reduce
his sentence, as saying that
nearly the entire antigang
unit at the Rampart Division,
including supervisors
were involved. He is also quoted
as saying that officers
at other police stations were
involved.
The newspaper provided details
of a case in which the
police were reported to
have shot an unarmed gang
member, then planted a gun
near him as he bled to
death.
Mr. Garcetti would not go
into detail, but said, "I didn't
read anything in the articles
that was inaccurate."
Dozens of civil suits have
already been filed by those
wrongly imprisoned, and
more suits are expected.
The Los Angeles city attorney,
who handles the civil
litigation, said that settling
the civil complaints could
cost $120 million, with
some outside experts saying the
figure could top $200 million.
---------------------------------------------------------
February 15, 2000 NYT
Police Corruption Case Draws Quiet Response
By JAMES STERNGOLD
LOS
ANGELES, Feb. 14 -- Raul Rodriguez
remembers his two and a half years in jail on
murder and drug charges
as a journey through shades of
blackness. He refused to
allow his youngest son to visit
him. He lost a promising
job as a salesman at a
software company. The gangs
that he had tried to
escape by leaving central
Los Angeles surrounded him.
Deepening his despair was
the ridicule that he endured
from fellow inmates when
he talked about being
exonerated. "I told them,
'I think I'm gonna beat this
thing,' that I was framed
by the police," recalled Mr.
Rodriguez, 30.
"They laughed and said, 'Man,
you don't understand.
Nobody beats the cops in
this town. Nobody's gonna
believe you!' "
Eventually, Mr. Rodriguez
was indeed acquitted of the
murder charge. He subsequently
served time for drug
possession, but he is now
free and is suing the police
because, he said, they fabricated
evidence against him
and conducted an illegal
search. The trumped up
murder charge, he said,
led to his drug conviction.
More important, he has company.
His is one of scores
of lawsuits charging the
police with a range of abuses
in what has already become
the largest scandal in the
history of the Los Angeles
Police Department.
With many of the most egregious
examples of brutality
disclosed, Mr. Rodriguez's
case underscores the
complex course the scandal
is now taking and helps
explain the surprisingly
quiescent attitude of the public
and many politicians
in response to repeated
disclosures of unjustified
shootings, beatings, lying and
fabricating of evidence
by police officers.
Most of the people now
filing lawsuits are, like Mr.
Rodriguez, current or
former gang members with arrest
records, precisely the
kinds of people that police
officers had been trained
to intimidate.
Not only is the public reluctant
to express outrage over
the mistreatment of such
people, but many of the civil
suits now emerging are
not as clear-cut as some of the
first cases that came
to light.
Mr. Rodriguez admitted, for
instance, that he had
marijuana in his home when
he was arrested on the
murder charge, but he has
insisted the search was
illegal because it was based
on evidence fabricated by
the police.
In another case, Cynthia
Diaz, who admitted that she
was addicted to crack, is
suing the police for breaking
into her apartment, stealing
thousands of dollars and
various appliances, and
forcing her to flee briefly to
Arizona in fear for her
life.
In neither case have the
police acknowledged
wrongdoing, and if the cases
come to trial they may rely
on testimony from people
who are still in prison, as is
the case with Ms. Diaz's
boyfriend, or people with
criminal records, raising
the same troubling issues of
credibility that Mr. Rodriguez
had once confronted in
the darkness of his cell.
No one doubts the depth
of the corruption. Some 70
police officers are reportedly
under investigation and
more than 40 convictions
have been or are in the
process of being overturned
by the office of District
Attorney Gil Garcetti
with the promise of more to
come.
The city is preparing
for what some estimate could be
more than $200 million
in settlements.
Yet there have been only
a few calls for an independent
investigation and little
in the way of public
demonstrations.
"We're talking about people
who belonged in prison,
just not for those reasons,"
a former police official
said. "The police may
have stepped over the line, but
they had to be tough
with these people, let's be honest."
Added a prosecutor: "The
broad majority of citizens in
this city don't care
that a bunch of drug dealers have
been put in jail on trumped
up charges. The guilty going
free is more politically
volatile than the innocent being
declared guilty."
Some reform advocates expressed
anger over such
attitudes. "That to me is
so utterly corrupt, so utterly
corrosive," said Merrick
J. Bobb, a special counsel to
the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department and a
former counsel to a police
reform commission after the
beating of Rodney G. King
in the early 1990's. "That's
what's really frightening."
Mr. Bobb and others say they
are not optimistic about
the prospects for changes
because of the lack of public
reaction.
"There was no video in
this instance," he said. "There
was no personality for
this to coalesce around. The
victims are gang members.
They don't command public
sympathy. That has stopped
the community from coming
together on this."
Even so, many experts say
the evidence shows that the
abuses were widespread and
insist that reforms will be
required.
"I don't think this was aberrational
at all," said Paul
Marks, a retired police
captain in Los Angeles, in
response to assertions by
some police officials that the
abuses were limited to the
Rampart Division, a station
west of downtown. "I was
disappointed when this came
out, but not surprised.
I'm telling you, this goes on
outside Rampart. It's not
just going on at the lower
levels of the department.
It couldn't be."
Mr. Rodriguez was raised
in the Rampart neighborhood
by his mother. She worked
two jobs, he said, and he
was alone most of the time.
He joined one of the most
notorious gangs in the city,
the 18th Street gang, he said,
in 1982. He was 12.
He admitted that he constantly
tangled with police
officers from the antigang
division..
But his problems began in
1996. He had moved in 1994
to West Covina, a city about
15 miles east of Los
Angeles, with his girlfriend
and three children. He got a
job as a technical support
officer and a salesman at a
software company. He was
going to college at night.
But a phone call at 4 a.m.
changed all that, he said.
Police officers were on
the line, saying that his house
was surrounded, that they
had a warrant for his arrest
and that they wanted him
to come out, unarmed, with his
hands up. .
He said his arrest was filled with police errors.
And the police kept referring
to him, he said, as
"Clever," when his old street
name had been "Oso."
Mr. Rodriguez said he came
close to accepting a plea
agreement and a 10-year
jail term because of his doubts
that the system could ever
work for him.
But he decided to fight and
he was eventually acquitted
on the murder charge.
But he was immediately jailed
on charges that when he
was arrested some marijuana
was found. He accepted a
plea bargain, he said.
In all, he was in jail from Feb. 5, 1997, until last July.
Ms. Diaz moved here from
Brooklyn when she was 6
years old.
"I was a Rampart Police Explorer,"
she said. "I was
with this group that used
to spend time at the station.
We'd ride along with the
cops."
She said her life changed
when, at 17, she got pregnant.
When she had the baby her
mother told her to forget her
dream of joining the police.
"I just sort of lost it after
that," said Ms. Diaz, 35. "I
just sort of started hanging
out."
She said she developed a
drug habit and was convicted
of drug possession, for
which she received probation.
Then one day she left her
apartment in the Rampart
neighborhood with $50, to
pay the weekly rent, and had
an officer jam a gun in
her face.
She said the officer handcuffed
her and threw her
against a wall. She was
eventually taken back to her
apartment where, she said,
the officers insisted that she
and her boyfriend hand over
drugs and provide the
names of dealers.
Finally, she said, she told
the officers where to find
$2,700 in cash hidden behind
a heater. The policemen
took the money and left.
Ms. Diaz and her boyfriend
fled, only to discover later
that the officers had
returned, she said, and
walked off with their television,
VCR, camcorder, a pager
and some jewelry.
Eventually, her boyfriend was jailed on drug charges.
Mr. Rodriguez said he wants
a normal life, if one can
be salvaged. He is working
at an aluminum plant by
day, while going to college
at night.
"I'm angry, but I'm trying
not to be angry in a negative
way," said Mr. Rodriguez.
"If you let yourself be like
that you give that attitude
to your kids."
He added, "When I see those
cops go to court, I'll know
justice is being done."