D.A. Spurns Many Police Prosecutions

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s office rejected more than 75% of officer misconduct cases that the Los Angeles police and sheriff’s departments referred last year for criminal prosecution, according to the special counsel hired by the county Board of Supervisors to oversee the sheriff.

Among the cases that prosecutors rejected were that of a sheriff’s deputy accused of lying on the witness stand, of a deputy accused of stealing $6,000 from a jail inmate and of a deputy who allegedly had sex with an inmate in a jail closet.

The finding is in sharp contrast to the office’s general decision-making on criminal filings. Prosecutors filed charges in 75% of the more than 57,000 felony cases referred for prosecution in 2002, according to statistics on the state Department of Justice’s website. In 2004, prosecutors declined to file charges in 111 of 141 officer misconduct cases referred by Los Angeles sheriff and police departments, according to the special counsel’s report.

“The D.A. simply does not bring substantial numbers of cases that have been developed by the LAPD or LASD” against police officers.... “It’s not easy to prosecute cops and the D.A. doesn’t like to lose cases,” said the counsel, Merrick Bobb, whose report is scheduled for release today.

Bobb’s report comes amid several high-profile cases of alleged police misconduct. Last year, an LAPD officer was videotaped hitting a car-theft suspect with a flashlight. The officer was fired from the department but not charged with a crime.

The district attorney is considering charges against another officer who in February fired into a car he had been chasing, fatally wounding 13-year-old Devin Brown.

Some community activists have complained that officers accused of wrongdoing are not adequately punished -- let alone prosecuted -- for their actions. But the district attorney’s office lost the last high-profile police brutality case that it tried. Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse was tried twice in state court on felony charges in the videotaped beating of teenager Donovan Jackson. Juries in both cases deadlocked, and the district attorney’s office dropped the charges.

A top district attorney official defended the office’s record Tuesday, saying that the percentage of filings is low because police departments refer marginal cases so that prosecutors can provide an extra level of scrutiny for problem officers.

“They’re afraid that someone is going to accuse them of covering up a case. So they bring us a great many cases they know are going to be rejected,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Hazell, adding that his office aggressively pursues cases against officers when they are supported by evidence.

Sheriff’s Chief Bill McSweeney agreed with Hazell, saying that his office often asks prosecutors to review cases that they don’t expect will result in criminal filings.

“Whenever there’s reason to believe that a police officer may have committed a crime, some segment of the public may have concerns we’re not pursuing that matter. So we discuss every case that might fall in that category with the district attorney. We show them lots of meritless cases so nobody can say we hid it,” McSweeney said.

Bobb’s report, however, said the low filing rate might contribute to sheriff’s officials failing to aggressively pursue criminal charges against deputies.

“The D.A.’s apparent reluctance to prosecute cases against law enforcement officers is a frustrating fact of life for investigators and commanders,” Bobb wrote in the report.

In a phone interview, Bobb said the cases he cited in the report were ones that police officials had asked the district attorney to prosecute, not marginal cases unworthy of criminal charges.

“I’m not talking about weak stuff that’s rejected on the telephone,” Bobb said. “What I’m talking about are the cases worked up and submitted to the D.A. believing that a crime occurred. Based on our investigation, we found a number of cases we thought were prosecutable that were rejected.”

In one case, a sheriff’s deputy testified falsely during a criminal trial that he was present when a witness identified a criminal suspect. The deputy later conceded that he had made a mistake in his testimony, and had not really observed the identification. Sheriff’s officials referred the case for a possible perjury prosecution, but prosecutors declined to file charges.

“It is difficult to imagine a more solid perjury case, yet the [prosecutor] handling the matter found that reasonable doubt existed about the likelihood of winning a conviction,” Bobb wrote.

In another case, prosecutors did not file charges against a sheriff’s deputy suspected of pocketing $6,000 that was in a suspect’s possession when she was booked into jail. Prosecutors were concerned because there was no independent witness to the alleged theft and because an officer from another department also handled the suspect’s money, according to Bobb’s report.

In a third case, prosecutors declined to file charges against a sheriff’s detention officer who allegedly had sex with a female inmate at the county jail. Prosecutors declined to prosecute after the inmate who said she had sex with the officer told them she did not want to testify.

Hazell defended that decision, saying that a court cannot force the victim of a sex crime to testify.

“In all of the years, he’s found three cases he disagrees with. That’s not bad,” Hazell said. “Reasonable minds can differ on three cases.”

Bobb said he believes that the Sheriff’s Department should more aggressively pursue criminal cases against deputies. He said in his report that the department did not pursue allegations that the deputy accused of having sex with the inmate also had sex with other inmates.

The report also said that the sheriff’s internal affairs investigators rarely employ sting operations -- in which undercover deputies attempt to catch rogue deputies in the act -- although the practice has been used successfully by Los Angeles police.

In 2004, Los Angeles police referred 109 cases of alleged criminal misconduct by officers to prosecutors. Sheriff’s officials referred 32 cases involving deputies during the same period, according to Bobb’s report.

With about 9,200 officers, the LAPD has about 1,000 more officers than the Sheriff’s Department.

McSweeney questioned whether it would be an appropriate use of resources to assemble a team of deputies to set up sting operations.

“You can have stings or you can have homicide investigations,” McSweeney said. “I don’t believe we have a lot of undetected police criminals. We have a lot of undetected murderers on the streets and a lot of 911 calls we don’t get to.”

Bobb’s report also said the department is about 1,000 deputies short of its staffing level just a few years ago.

He said the department loses many deputies because they don’t like spending years assigned to jail duty before being allowed more prestigious assignments, such as patrol.

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Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.