Ex-internal affairs chief is sued by police union

A former Los Angeles deputy police chief who admitted to a sexual relationship with a subordinate while he oversaw internal affairs has been sued by the police union.

The suit alleges that Michael Berkow ordered an improper search of the work spaces of homicide detectives, including those investigating the killing of rapper Biggie Smalls.

The Police Protective League alleges in the suit filed this week that Berkow had ordered Los Angeles Police Department investigators to search the offices of 35 detectives in the elite Robbery-Homicide Division without a required warrant.

Berkow ordered the search after a civil court judge directed the city to determine whether there was improperly withheld evidence or documentation that might be relevant to a claim by Smalls’ family that the rapper’s killing was orchestrated by a rogue LAPD officer.

Berkow, who had been a top advisor to Chief William J. Bratton, resigned in October to become police chief in Savannah, Ga.

The police union is asking the court to rule that the search was improper and that similar searches of detectives’ desks, file cabinets and workplaces should not be allowed without a warrant.

“In breach and malicious violation of [the law] defendants did not conduct the search with the consent of each of the respective employees, nor with reasonable advance notice,” the lawsuit says.

The city contends that the search warrant requirement applies only to officers’ lockers, not to desks and filing cabinets, according to court papers.

“It’s on our property, and, if it’s on our property, we have access to it,” Bratton said Wednesday.

But union attorney Hank Hernandez said the department’s giving detectives permission to lock desks and cabinets creates “an expectation of privacy.”

Smalls, who was born Christopher Wallace but also was known as Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down March 9, 1997, after a music industry party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in the Mid-Wilshire district.

His family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department alleging that his slaying was the result of a conspiracy involving former LAPD Det. David A. Mack, who is in jail for armed robbery. He has denied any role in the killing.

Last year, a federal judge ordered the city to pay $1.1 million in attorney fees and costs to the family as sanctions for intentionally withholding evidence after finding that an LAPD detective hid statements linking the killing to Mack.

A detective insisted that he had inadvertently overlooked the transcripts of the statements in his desk.

On June 24, 2005, at 7:30 p.m., internal affairs investigators, under the direction of Berkow, searched the offices, desks, file cabinets and other workplace areas of about 35 detectives assigned to the Robbery-Homicide Division, only one or two of whom were directly involved in the Smalls investigation, the league’s suit says.

Locked drawers were forced open, documents removed, the confidentiality of sensitive videotapes and audiotapes was breached and documents were tossed on the floor, the suit alleges.

The league argues that state law prohibits such searches without a warrant.

Berkow also was named in a lawsuit last year by a sergeant in internal affairs who alleged the former deputy chief retaliated against her after she complained that he gave preferential treatment to female officers with whom he had intimate relations.

Berkow, who did not return calls Wednesday, is facing an internal LAPD investigation into whether an affair he admitted to with a subordinate violated department policy.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com