‘Tarnished’ LAPD Seeks Outside Check of Crime Laboratory

Saying the Los Angeles Police Department’s reputation “has to be tarnished,” a highly placed department source said Tuesday that police officials have decided to seek an outside review of its crime laboratory to determine how it apparently bungled the ballistics tests that led to the arrest of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

The review will be proposed today to Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who was out of town Tuesday, the source said. Gates’ top lieutenants are prepared to ask him to approve bringing in outside experts, possibly from the FBI and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “to see if the lab is functioning 100%,” the source said.

Included in the review will be the expertise of the personnel who conduct ballistics tests, the source said.

“The reputation (of the LAPD) has to be tarnished” after the stunning dismissal Monday of murder charges against Rickey Ross, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

‘Above Reproach’

“I am willing to do anything to re-establish its reputation,” the source said. “If (the LAPD) is going to be a professional police department, it has to be above reproach.”

Ross, 40, an 18-year Sheriff’s Department veteran investigator, was accused earlier this year of slaying three South-Central prostitutes with his service handgun. Based on findings by LAPD crime lab forensic experts, Chief Gates and Sheriff Sherman Block told a press conference last February that Ross had been arrested for the murders.

But two subsequent tests on Ross’ 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol by independent ballistics experts from Northern California concluded that it did not fire the fatal bullets.

Neither Gates nor Block commented publicly on the Ross case Tuesday.

After his arrest, Ross was dismissed and sheriff’s officials have not commented when asked if he is to be reinstated. Prosecutors continue to describe him as a “suspect.”

Ranking Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said Tuesday that, as upset as they and many of their colleagues are over the LAPD’s handling of the Ross case, they do not believe that it will lead to any enduring animosity between the region’s two biggest law enforcement agencies.

“I don’t expect open hostility between officers,” said one sheriff’s official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But caution will be exhibited in our dealings with them, at least for a while.”

But it was obvious that some sheriff’s officials were attempting to restrain themselves.

‘Tough to Believe’

“It’s tough to believe that this happened,” said a sheriff’s source, who asked that he not be named. “It may have been a good-faith, honest error. Any rush to judgment is wrong. We’re brothers in uniform.”

Another sheriff’s official raised questions about the ballistics testing itself.

“There are major questions about their handling of the ballistics test,” said the official in reference to the examination of the alleged murder weapon by LAPD Officer James M. Fountain and Detective Jimmy L. Trahin.

“Can we see the photos of the testing when the gun was originally tested?” the official asked. “Did they have somebody incompetent doing the test or was there tampering? Do the recent (ballistics) photos look the same as the originals? If they do, why would they say now that it doesn’t match?”

Case ‘Still Unfolding’

An LAPD spokesman, Lt. Fred Nixon, said he could not answer these questions because the Ross case is “still unfolding.”

But Nixon said he had “no concerns” about the future relationship between the Sheriff’s Department and the LAPD. “We’re talking about a couple of great organizations and the relationship is in no jeopardy,” he said.

Although not as sensational as the Ross case, tempers did flare between the two law enforcement agencies less than two years ago over the mistaken arrest of two sheriff’s deputies by two LAPD patrolmen.

The two sheriff’s deputies, in full uniform in an unmarked car, were hunting a cat burglar in Carson in September, 1987--inside the sheriff’s jurisdiction--when they were ordered out of their car at gunpoint at 1 a.m. by the two LAPD officers. The deputies were then forced to lie face-down in the street until backup help arrived.

The two LAPD officers said their actions were triggered by reports of police impersonators robbing illegal aliens in the area. Both officers were suspended without pay by Gates, one for 10 days, the other for five days, after a Board of Rights hearing.

Sheriff’s deputies expressed outrage at the embarrassment of two of their own--and retaliation was immediate.

Women Prisoners

For about a week after the incident, the Carson sheriff’s station would not accept women prisoners brought in by Los Angeles police officers--forcing LAPD personnel to drive 15 miles away, to the Sybil Brand Institute, to drop off prisoners.

And a cartoon lampooning the LAPD appeared in the sheriff’s monthly in-house newsletter, the Star News, depicting a sheriff’s sergeant speaking at roll call. “One last briefing item,” the sergeant says. “Some LAPD units have been seen in our area, so let’s all be careful out there.”