Case Not Closed Yet for LAPD

In the five years since the Rampart Division corruption scandal stunned the city and voided more than 100 criminal convictions, the Los Angeles Police Department has struggled to reform itself under a controversial court decree.

Officers today face more rigorous training and supervision, confidential informants are monitored more closely, and use-of-force incidents are more thoroughly investigated.

Yet, by its own admission, the department has fallen short in important areas.

As a result, U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess is expected as early as May 15 to extend the five-year federal consent decree for at least two more years, a move that would not only embarrass city officials and LAPD brass but serve as a costly and continuing distraction.

LAPD officials say the city has substantially complied with 149 of the 191 consent decree mandates agreed to under threat of a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice. And beyond the strict requirements of the decree itself, the LAPD has tallied other signs of improvement -- use of force has declined relative to arrests, and crime has dropped year after year.

A federal monitor assigned to review the progress also credits the LAPD with gains but paints a less rosy picture. Monitor Michael Cherkasky puts the number of mandates met at 121.

And left undone, Cherkasky says, is the single reform that could make the biggest difference: a computer system -- dubbed TEAMS II -- that would track vast amounts of performance data, from the number of times officers fire their weapons to the number of citizen complaints they incur.

The city is already spending more than $10 million per year and dedicating 110 officers and civilians to the task of bringing the LAPD into compliance. And the current costs include an $11-million, five-year contract with risk consultants Kroll Inc., Cherkasky’s firm.

In addition to the Rampart decree, the LAPD operates under nine other court orders struck to ward off lawsuits either threatened or filed, some dating to 1980. Two, for example, prodded the department to reshape its once-lily-white ranks into a force more reflective of the city’s racial diversity.

But Police Chief William J. Bratton says it may have been unrealistic for the city to have agreed to achieve all the Rampart reforms in five years.

“In hindsight, it might have been an overly ambitious calendar goal for what proved to be an incredibly complex set of initiatives, all of them depending on the crown jewel of the TEAMS II computer system,” Bratton said. “When it was created, nobody fully understood the complexities of what they were creating.”

Some city officials and civil rights leaders say they are baffled as to why the department has failed to comply across the board.

“It’s just unacceptable,” said City Councilman Jose Huizar. “Five years is more than enough time to get this done.”

Catherine Lhamon, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the LAPD’s failure to meet all requirements “bespeaks a lack of full commitment.”

Although the cost of extending the decree could make it tougher for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to balance a budget already facing a roughly $270-million shortfall, he said he remains committed to living up to the agreement.

“Complying with the consent decree and reforming our department is essential, and we are going to work real hard to meet those requirements,” Villaraigosa said.

The 93-page decree requires the city to improve how police officers are trained, supervised, transferred, investigated and disciplined, and how they use informants, handle drug contraband, process citizen complaints and fight street gangs.

In the Rampart scandal, members of the LAPD’s Rampart Division anti-gang unit were accused of shooting and beating suspects, planting evidence and using confidential informants without registering them with the department, leaving their reliability unchecked.

One officer, Rafael Perez, admitted that he and a partner obtained an assault rifle from an informant and shaved off the serial number before planting the weapon on a wounded man. In another case, officers were accused of providing crack cocaine to an informant in exchange for information.

A review of cases handled by the rogue officers caused more than 100 criminal convictions to be overturned, and about a dozen LAPD officers resigned or were fired. The city also paid $70 million to settle lawsuits by more than 200 people, many of them suspected drug dealers and gang members who alleged that they were shot, beaten or framed.

Jeffrey Eglash, who was inspector general for the Los Angeles Police Commission when the decree was signed, said one of the most important reforms implemented involves the department’s handling of serious use-of-force cases, including officer-involved shootings.

“They are looked at much more carefully and thoroughly,” he said, noting that initial investigations are now reviewed by supervisors, the inspector general and the Police Commission, a civilian panel that oversees LAPD policies and procedures.

Gerald Chaleff, the LAPD administrator in charge of implementing the decree, said the department also has developed model procedures for handling people who are mentally ill and for using audits to verify reviews of officer conduct.

Civil rights attorney Constance L. Rice, who was appointed by the Police Commission to assess the LAPD’s progress, said the department got off to a slow start.

“In the beginning, there was the usual squad-room resistance and dragging of feet,” Rice said.

Hiring Bratton as chief in October 2002 and putting Chaleff, a former Police Commission president, in charge of compliance helped the reforms gain momentum, she said.

Police officials say many of the unfulfilled reforms are on their way to being completed and are not as significant.

Although Police Commission President John Mack said the department has made good progress, he said he remains troubled by delays in putting video cameras in every patrol car to record traffic stops.

Although the cameras are not required by the decree, he said they would help police achieve the decree’s goal of collecting better racial data on those who come in contact with the LAPD. Since officers today are required to put that information on paper, he also predicted that installing cameras would cut down on paperwork. (On Tuesday, Bratton said that the mayor’s budget, to be unveiled today, would take “a major step” toward providing the cameras.)

Like others, Mack said he was concerned about the failure to put the TEAMS II computer system in place.

Merrick Bobb, a national expert on policing who monitors the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for the Board of Supervisors, said that agency has had something comparable to TEAMS II for more than a decade.

Federal authorities note that a system for tracking problem LAPD officers was initially recommended by the Christopher Commission, set up in 1991 to investigate the police beating of Rodney G. King.

“The city’s efforts at constructing TEAMS II is a joke,” said City Councilman Jack Weiss.

Intended to function like an early warning system, TEAMS II is supposed to track every time an officer uses force, discharges a firearm, engages in a car chase, has a traffic accident, receives training or discipline, or is the subject of a citizen’s complaint, internal affairs probe, civil claim or lawsuit.

But the system is two years behind, said Deputy Chief Dave Doan.

It got off to a bad start when officials tried to make the computer capable of running the department’s personnel system. It hit several glitches along the way, including six months spent pursuing technology that LAPD officials eventually decided would not meet their needs.

Doan said it took a year to get the Justice Department to agree to the TEAMS II design. And then there were problems with vendors.

In all, he estimated that the city has spent $20 million on consultants, hardware and software, plus an additional $10 million in salary and benefits for 40 city employees assigned to the project.

Currently, two of the four elements of TEAMS II are operating. The remaining parts, which include one on risk management data, should be operating by July, although it may take months to work out bugs.

But Bobb said missing the deadline on some consent decree reforms should not take away from the city’s success in implementing dozens of others.

“The department has made substantial progress over the last couple of years,” Bobb said. “The whole purpose of the consent decree is to lessen the risk of another scandal happening again. I think it is less likely to happen today than it was five years ago.”

*

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this report.