A Reconciliation? : Collaboration Yields Many Arrests, Fosters Thaw Between Agents, Officers : The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover and LAPD Chief William Parker sparked a decades-long feud. But now the agencies are trying to repair their relationship, arresting fugitives with astonishing success.

When it comes to corralling criminals in the city of Los Angeles, no one stands taller than the LAPD and the FBI, two of the nation’s biggest and proudest law enforcement agencies.

Yet for decades the organizations often have eyed one another with suspicion, feuding quietly at some times, noisily at others. Their differences--exacerbated most recently by the resentment many LAPD officers harbor for FBI agents who investigated the beating of Rodney G. King--have been known to hamper the efforts of both agencies.

Even today, some FBI agents stereotype LAPD officers as thick-skulled cowboys, ill-equipped for sophisticated investigations. Many police officers, in turn, deride FBI agents as little more than tight-lipped bureaucrats--”accountants with guns” is a favorite put-down.

In recent months, however, the twin towers of Los Angeles law enforcement have begun reconstructing their relationship, producing a wealth of successful cases, particularly in apprehending fugitives. It may be too soon to declare the feud over, law enforcement sources say--just last month, the FBI opened a civil rights investigation into an LAPD shooting, a move sure to anger some police officers. But for the first time in years, there are glimmers of a truce.

“It hasn’t really been a happy world between the FBI and the LAPD,” said Special Agent Geoff Bickers, who started up the Los Angeles office’s Gangster Apprehension Team, one of two fugitive units that combines FBI agents and representatives of local law enforcement agencies. “But this has been seen as a kind of a bridge. . . . Things seem to be on the mend.”

And partly as a result, certain kinds of arrests are sharply on the rise. In the early 1990s, the FBI was catching 50 or 60 felony fugitives a year. Last year, two special units--one made up of the FBI, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Justice, the other combining the FBI and the LAPD--reeled in 230.

As the collaboration progressed, the local law enforcement agencies solved some old and difficult cases: Last November, Robert Lee Perkins was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., and returned to Los Angeles to face charges that he murdered his girlfriend in 1973.

That arrest cleared a case that was buried deep in the LAPD’s unsolved homicide files, and members of the fugitive units say it helped cement the working relationship between the police officers and FBI agents.

“They handed us this case and said: You want a challenge, try this one,” said FBI Special Agent Mark Llewellyn, who supervises the Fugitive Task Force. “We kind of proved ourselves right off the bat.”

LAPD Lt. Sergio Robleto, the commanding officer of South Bureau Homicide, was among those most impressed by the quick work in that and other cases: “We’re working better together than we used to. . . . It’s been very effective.”

Such talk is quite a departure from the legendary confrontations of yore.

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said the hostilities date back to 1950--when William H. Parker took over the LAPD and J. Edgar Hoover was in charge of the FBI.

“The bad blood between the LAPD and the FBI began when Parker, as the new chief, demonstrated that he was his own man and that he would not be beholden to J. Edgar,” Gates wrote in his autobiography, “Chief: My Life in the LAPD.”

“I’m not aware of a particular incident; in fact, I don’t believe the two men ever met. But Parker made his thoughts on law enforcement clear through his speeches, articles, and the direction in which he was taking the department. All of this was duly reported back to Hoover through the local head of the FBI, whom Parker tended to ignore. In the ‘40s, I am told, Hoover enjoyed visiting L.A., hanging out with movie stars and studio chiefs. His visits abruptly ceased after Parker became chief.

“In time our officers were excluded from the three-month training academy run by the FBI.”

That may have been the beginning. But it was far from the end.

*

Take the 1981 hijacking of a Continental Airlines jet at Los Angeles International Airport. Police and FBI agents rolled to the scene. Once there, each insisted that the other agency back off.

The LAPD officers, led by Gates, declared that they would handle the crisis because it was their city; the FBI agents asserted federal jurisdiction because it was an airline hijacking. After a tense standoff on the airport Tarmac, the FBI prevailed.

The next year, when Armenian terrorists murdered the Turkish consul general in Los Angeles, the LAPD and the FBI again butted heads: The FBI claimed jurisdiction because the crime involved terrorists and a diplomat, while the LAPD asserted itself because murder is a state offense. In that case, each agency came away with a piece of the action. The federal government investigated and prosecuted a related firebombing. The LAPD and state authorities handled the murder.

The agencies’ cooperativeness was tested yet again when the Olympics came to Los Angeles in 1984. The FBI touted its expertise in combatting terrorism; the LAPD trotted out its highly acclaimed special weapons and tactics forces and other specialized units and said it was prepared to play the lead role. Gates visited Asia, Europe and the Middle East to learn more about the business of terrorists, and he steadfastly refused to pledge that he would defer to the FBI in the event of a terrorist attack.

Frustrated, FBI Director William H. Webster pulled Gates aside at a meeting in Washington and urged him to reconsider. Gates stood firm.

“You guys will screw the thing up and go back to Washington and you’ll leave me to deal with this,” Gates remembers telling federal officials. “No way.”

Instead, Gates agreed that if there was an attack and national security was threatened, he would consider turning over jurisdiction at that point. There was no attack, so the agreement was never tested.

“There’s always a little bit of tension between local authorities and federal authorities,” said Stephen S. Trott, a federal appeals judge who was the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles during the early 1980s. “That’s been especially true in Los Angeles because the LAPD is a very proud agency and feels it can handle any situation.”

That is as true today as it was then, but longtime observers of the Los Angeles law enforcement scene say the FBI and LAPD began warming to one another about two years ago. A key breakthrough, officials say, occurred in the wake of the 1992 riots.

With public attention riveted on the brutal beating of trucker Reginald O. Denny and other motorists during the opening hours of the riots, it was an FBI informant who first identified Damian Monroe Williams as one of the attackers. The FBI passed that tip on to the LAPD, whose detectives joined with FBI agents to investigate the crimes that occurred at Florence and Normandie avenues.

“That’s how all this started,” said FBI Special Agent Joe Waggoner, who supervises the Gangster Apprehension Team.

Just as important as that tip and its repercussions have been the changing faces at the top of the two agencies. Special Agent-in-Charge Charlie J. Parsons was named as the FBI’s Los Angeles field division chief in July, 1991, and he quickly set out to court the LAPD. He appeared in public on several occasions with Gates, most visibly in the wake of the riots when the two men announced the arrest of Williams and others involved in the Florence and Normandie attacks.

*

Parsons’ overtures helped initiate a thaw between the agencies. But the most important personnel change for sealing the new cooperation, according to longtime law enforcement sources, was Gates’ 1992 departure from the Police Department, now headed by Willie L. Williams. As was evident in the jostling over the 1984 Olympics, Gates was fiercely committed to the notion that the LAPD could take charge of any situation.

“Daryl would arrive at a scene and plant the flag,” one law enforcement source said. “He would announce: ‘We can handle this.”’

Gates agrees. “It’s always been an uneasy situation with the FBI,” he said. “They don’t have expertise in a lot of areas that they get into. . . . I wasn’t afraid to say that.”

However, if Gates’ departure expedited a detente, the Rodney G. King case certainly set it back. In that case, FBI agents were assigned to investigate LAPD officers, and they pursued their quarry with a vengeance that angered many police officers.

Some officers thought the investigation and prosecution were politically motivated; others accused the federal government of violating the accused officers’ right not to be subjected to double jeopardy--a claim with little legal merit but great emotional significance.

At the end of that case, two LAPD officers went to federal prison. Many of their colleagues blamed the FBI and the Justice Department.

“I felt they prostituted themselves to the politicians,” said LAPD Detective Bill Arnado, a 28-year veteran who stressed in an interview that he was speaking only for himself, not the department. “I know a lot of fine street agents, but the FBI, as an agency, was overzealous and was right on the verge of violating police officers’ rights.”

Some officers throughout the city still bristle at the mere mention of the FBI, and the agents and officers who work with the fugitive unit say they have felt that tension on occasion.

“At times, I’ve met a little resistance,” said Detective Robert Vanina, an LAPD officer who works with the Fugitive Task Force. “There are people in the department who are of the opinion that because of Rodney King, we shouldn’t have anything to do with the FBI. It may be too much to say that they think the FBI’s the enemy, but they sure don’t think they’re friends.”

Nevertheless, Vanina said, many police officers are gradually coming around, persuaded by the success the task force has enjoyed.

Vanina heads the LAPD’s half of the Fugitive Task Force, one of two units combining federal agents and local authorities to round up fugitives. The other, the Gangster Apprehension Team, was the first to get under way. Although it too originally included LAPD officers, today it combines the FBI, the Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Justice.

*

Both groups hunt for fugitives, and both have racked up impressive numbers of arrests. Moreover, the cases they produce are a prosecutor’s dream because most of the suspects have been convicted of crimes and often are sent straight to jail once they are caught.

Those arrests have ranged from the mundane to the spectacular--from run-of-the-mill attackers to a more exotic stripe of criminal. There was the art thief who would call prosecutors every year and boast that he would never be found; he committed suicide when the task force showed up at his door. Then there was the Gypsy accused of robbing elderly people who turned himself in after the Arizona king of the Gypsies intervened on his behalf.

“I got a call from his lawyer who said: ‘Do you want to talk to the king of the Gypsies?’ ” recalled FBI Special Agent Scott Hanley, a member of the Fugitive Task Force. “I said: ‘Sure, put him on, I’ve never spoken to a king before.”’

*

Hanley told the Gypsy king that if the suspect turned himself in, he could save himself the punishment for fleeing a federal warrant. Two weeks later, the suspect returned from Arizona and surrendered to the LAPD.

As the fugitive and gang units embark on their second year, law enforcement officials warn that they alone will never entirely end the wariness between federal and local law enforcement.

But success has a way of smoothing over differences, and police officers and federal agents say the fugitive units have dramatically served the interests of both agencies. That may be the strongest foundation for a new law enforcement alliance, they say.

With Cooperation, Arrests Soar

The FBI and local law enforcement agencies--including the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the California Department of Justice--joined forces in late 1992 to seek out and arrest fugitives. Since then, arrests have skyrocketed.

Year Arrests 1990 63 1991 53 1992 129 1993 230

Note: The Gangster Apprehension Team was formed in October, 1992; the Fugitive Task Force was formed in March, 1993.

Fugitive Profiles

There are thousands of felony fugitives at large in Los Angeles County. Members of the federal-local law enforcement teams say there are a few they are especially eager to find. Among them:

* Sarkis Vartan Peltakian

* Age: 32

* Description: White male, 5’8” tall, 200 lbs., black hair, brown eyes. A native of Lebanon, Peltakian legally immigrated to the United States in 1976.

* Why he is wanted: On July 2, 1993, Peltakian allegedly lost control of his vehicle on a freeway and hit a pickup, knocking the truck off an overpass. Seven teen-agers riding in the truck were killed and two other people suffered major injuries. Peltakian was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and seven counts of vehicular manslaughter. About three weeks after the accident, he quit his job and moved out of his apartment.

* Jong Pal Kim

* Age: 30

* Description: Asian male, 5’7” tall, 165 lbs., black hair, brown eyes. Kim has a silver front tooth.

* Why he is wanted: On Nov. 12, 1989, Kim’s girlfriend tried to end her relationship with him. The two argued, and witnesses said Kim yelled: “If I can’t have you, no one can!” According to police, he then pulled out a pistol and shot his girlfriend in the right temple, killing her. Police spotted Kim in 1990 in Honolulu, but he escaped. He is thought to have returned to California, where he still is wanted in the murder.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles Field Division.