Minority Officers Hail Bias Accord : Discrimination: They say the settlement of a state complaint will ensure that the LAPD’s upper ranks reflect L.A. population.

With sweaty palms and a dry throat, Sgt. Emilio Perez walked into Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’ office one spring day in 1984 to complain that Latino officers were being held back in promotions and pay raises.

Gates listened politely to the training officer and issued a challenge. “The chief said, ‘If you can prove these things occur and affect the service we provide the community, I’ll do something it about,’ ” said Perez, then-president of the Latin American Law Enforcement Assn. (La Ley).

But a few years later, Perez still was unhappy with the response of the department’s brass. So he took the concerns to a private attorney--and to state authorities who filed a discrimination complaint in 1989 against the city and the 8,300-member department.

To avoid litigation, the Los Angeles City Council agreed Tuesday to settle the complaint filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing by promising to promote more Latino, African-American and Asian-American officers to the ranks of detective, sergeant and lieutenant.

The council also approved a motion by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky to include the department’s 1,100 women officers in the promotion goals established by the landmark agreement that will affect the 3,000 minority officers on the force.

On Wednesday, Perez was among half a dozen minority officers who, along with their attorneys, held a news conference at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s downtown headquarters to hail the settlement, which was designed to ensure that the ethnic makeup of the department’s upper ranks reflects the population it serves.

“The purpose of the settlement is to build a promotion system at the department that is based on merit and open access to all officers rather than to favoritism that favors Anglo officers,” said Theresa Fay-Bustillos, attorney for La Ley.

While the city has been operating for 10 years under consent decrees requiring that the department increase recruitment of minority and women officers, those agreements “did nothing for promotions,” Fay-Bustillos said. “As a result, you had a very frustrated sworn police force of Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians.”

Between 1983 and 1989, Anglos won 76% of all promotions to detective, 70% of promotions to sergeant and 85% of promotions to lieutenant, Fay-Bustillos said.

Today, there are seven Latinos, seven blacks and no Asian-Americans above the rank of lieutenant. There is one minority, a black, among the department’s seven deputy and assistant chiefs, according to department figures.

“We are not looking for an unfair advantage, just a system that is fair to everybody,” said Sgt. Al Ruvalcaba. “Right now, we are up against institutional bias and a good-old-boy system.”

Ruvalcaba, 42, said he knows firsthand.

Although Ruvalcaba had 15 years of experience with the department, “I had to take oral exams 29 times over a seven-year period before I won a pay-grade advancement,” he said. “The existing system is slow and we’re merely trying to squirt oil on the wheels of justice.”

Jess Gonzalez, a senior staff attorney for the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said, “I can’t prove that there is a good-old-boy network in the department, but my gosh, statistics indicate that Anglo candidates have been favored over eligible minorities.”

The settlement aims to shatter a so-called “glass ceiling” that has prevented minority officers from rising in greater numbers to supervisorial levels and coveted positions in the department.

“This is a breakthrough for all minority officers because it gives them the opportunity to compete equally with non-minority candidates,” Gonzalez said. “It also provides for scholarships, tutorial and training programs to help eligible officers prepare for written and oral exams.”

Specifically, the settlement requires that the Police Department promote 80% of the officers in each ethnic group who either qualify or apply for promotion each year.

At the end of three years, the number of minorities in top positions must be equivalent to the percentage of each group in the general population.

The city must make progress reports to a state administrative law judge. If the department fails to meet these goals, city officials must explain the problem in a federal court hearing.

The settlement--which needs to be finalized in federal court before the end of the year--also calls on the city to set aside $1.5 million for training and counseling programs, and an unspecified amount for a black narcotics detective who joined the complaint.

The city is to deposit $500,000 of that amount to create training programs to prepare minority officers for administrative and supervisory positions, and $1 million for scholarships and retirement benefits for minorities who have been victims of discrimination.

Fay-Bustillos said women were not included in the initial complaint because “we couldn’t find a female officer willing to come forward and file a charge of discrimination because of fear of reprisal.”

Yaroslavsky’s motion seeks to include all female officers in the settlement’s promotion goals. “Although they are not part of the consent decree, they are beneficiaries,” Fay-Bustillos said.

Gates was unavailable for comment Wednesday. But Cmdr. Bob Gil, spokesman for the department, said, “The chief is satisfied with the settlement.”

“The chief’s position,” Gil said, “is that he wants to do everything he can to create a system that will provide everyone with an opportunity to compete and be evaluated in a fair, objective and impartial manner.”

Detective George Min, president of the Korean-American Law Enforcement Assn., recalled having to deal with taunts from other officers when they learned an Asian-American was seeking a promotion.

“They’d say, ‘There’s so few of you in the department, why do you want to be promoted?’ ” Min said. “I’d say, ‘It’s a not a popularity contest, we just want a crack at a better position.’

“The settlement was important,” Min added, “because people’s attitudes are hard to change.”