Christopher Report: It Cuts Both Ways : Courts: The findings of the city-commissioned panel could work against L.A. when jurors rule in police brutality suits.

As Mayor Tom Bradley sat in the witness chair, a thin smile played on his face. He was facing an uneasy situation that he and the city may have to get used to.

Bradley was testifying in federal court last month as a defendant in a civil rights trial. And he was repeatedly saying, yes, he fully agreed with the conclusions of the Christopher Commission, the independent, blue-ribbon panel that last year investigated the Los Angeles Police Department and found problems with management, excessive force and racism.

“You have no reservations about your agreement with those conclusions?” the plaintiffs’ attorney, Stephen Yagman, asked.

“No,” Bradley told the 10 jurors.

Bradley was testifying in a civil case in which police officers are accused of killing three robbery suspects without provocation. Police managers and Bradley are also accused in the suit of tolerating excessive force and many of the departmental problems cited by the commission.

In effect, the mayor was being cut with his own sword; after all, he was a main force behind creation of the commission. Now, the commission’s findings could prove pivotal when jurors decide if the officers acted improperly and their supervisors--right up to Bradley and Chief Daryl F. Gates--are responsible.

While the trial is the first in which the report has been brought up by plaintiffs against police and city officials, it most likely will not be the last.

Yagman, a civil rights attorney who specializes in police-related lawsuits, said he has clients with five more cases set for trial this year. He plans in each case to introduce the commission report as evidence of a Police Department that he says is out of control. Other civil rights attorneys said last week that they plan to do the same.

“It is paradoxical and sweet,” Yagman said of having such a key document essentially prepared for him by the city that his clients are suing. “The effect of having this report is like putting whipped cream on a malted.”

Meantime, Deputy City Atty. Don Vincent, in charge of defending the city against police-related lawsuits, said his staff is developing strategies to deal with the report when it comes up in trials. He conceded that his task may only be beginning.

“It is a valuable tool for all civil rights attorneys,” Vincent said. “I am sure we will be facing this for several years to come.”

Though the report has been discussed at length in front of the jury in the trial, Vincent hopes to block inclusion of the 228-page volume as evidence in the case. Though pointing out that the report makes many favorable conclusions about the Police Department, Vincent said its damaging claims are largely hearsay and opinion--not evidence.

The current case arose from a shooting on Feb. 12, 1990, in which nine members of the police Special Investigations Section opened fire on four suspects who had just left a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland after a holdup. All four men were hit by police shots and only one survived.

The families of the dead men and the survivor, who was later imprisoned for robbery, filed suit against the officers, Bradley, Gates and the Police Commission alleging that the robbers’ civil rights were violated because the police opened fire without provocation. The lawsuit also alleges that the SIS is a “death squad” that has been created and fostered by an environment of lax management, brutality and racism in the department.

More than a year later, the Christopher Commission, formed by Bradley after the outcry that accompanied the Rodney G. King beating, delivered a report highly critical of management of the department and concluded that the police force had problems with excessive force, racism and a “code of silence” among its officers.

Yagman said in a recent interview that many of the report’s conclusions mirror the allegations in the lawsuit spawned by the McDonald’s shooting.

He unsuccessfully sought to have Warren Christopher, who chaired the commission, testify as a witness. However, U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts has allowed Yagman to use the commission’s report to question witnesses such as Bradley, Gates and police commissioners.

Letts is expected to rule later whether the report will be accepted as evidence and whether jurors will be able to refer to it during deliberations.

Regardless of the ruling, the report and its conclusions are already a large part of the trial record. So much so that at one point during Bradley’s testimony, Letts interrupted and cautioned the jury that they were not deciding a case on the incident that prompted the report.

“Don’t get confused,” Letts said. “Rodney King is not here.”

Outside of court, Yagman has told reporters that his questioning of witnesses has covered “every single chapter” of the report.

But how important the Christopher Commission report will be to the case and others that follow cannot be determined until verdicts are returned.

Jurors in the McDonald’s case have heard conflicting testimony over the report. Bradley said he agreed with the report’s conclusions, while Gates testified that he believes many of them are untrue or exaggerated.

And even in testifying that he accepted the report, Bradley sought to repair any damage to the defense by stressing that the report targets only a small portion of the force. He said that, overall, the city has the finest big-city Police Department in the country.

But Yagman and other attorneys said the commission report will automatically lend a strong degree of validation to claims made in lawsuits of police abuse.

“This is not a wild-eyed civil rights lawyer saying this, it is a blue-ribbon panel appointed to fairly evaluate the LAPD,” attorney Benjamin Schonbrun said. He plans to introduce the report as evidence in two upcoming trials against the Los Angeles police.

“I’ve been saying these same things for years,” Yagman said of the report’s conclusions. “Everybody now believes it.”

Other attorneys specializing in police misconduct litigation said the effect that the report will have on how they prepare lawsuits against Los Angeles police will be significant, and possibly expensive as damages are assessed.

“By all means, it is terribly important,” said Hugh R. Manes, a civil rights lawyer in Los Angeles for more than 35 years. “I think it is a very important tool against the LAPD. It is based upon their own files and records going back 10 years and thus shows a pattern of misconduct.”

Manes said the report’s broad coverage of the department’s problems will mean that at least portions of the report will be relevant, and admissible, in almost all LAPD-related cases.

Veteran police litigator Donald Cook has a federal suit pending against Gates and the city that also alleges misconduct by the SIS.

“And guess what I am going to use as evidence?” he asked recently.

He said that, like Yagman, he will attempt to introduce the commission’s report as evidence of the department’s poor management and condoning of excessive force.

“It is a great piece of evidence--really trustworthy, credible evidence of what we have been saying for years,” Cook said of the report. “It is ironic that we are validated by the city. It is really ironic.

“I think the city is getting a dose of justice.”

Vincent, the deputy city attorney, has yet to mount the city’s defense in the current case. Though he declined to reveal specifics about his strategy, he said his task is to clearly separate the report from the facts of the shooting that is the basis for the lawsuit.

“We are going to stick to the facts of the case,” Vincent said. “Our opinion is like the mayor’s. It is still the finest Police Department in the nation.”

He said that almost all documents used as evidence in lawsuits against the police come from police-shooting reports, policy statements and disciplinary records. So facing the commission report is not a totally unfamiliar situation. Still, Vincent said, its impact may be the most difficult to deal with.

“I think it is significant,” he said. “It has certainly gotten recognition and prestige.

“But I think it is something we will effectively deal with. We think some of it is flawed. It gives a skewed view.”

That view comes from the report’s focus on problems within the department without a full reporting on positive aspects of the force, Vincent said. The report’s conclusions are too broadly drawn, he added, and jurors will be unable to ascribe them to the officers involved in the McDonald’s shooting because neither they nor their unit is mentioned in the report.

“This type of information should never be used,” Vincent said. “It has come into this case to prejudice officers that are not even named in it.”

Still, Vincent is resigned to having the task of deflecting the effect of the report in trials to come.

“I am not sure of all the ways it can be used against us,” he said. “So we are thinking about it.

“We are just going to take it one case at a time.”