THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Battered LAPD Image Faces Its Own Trial

The O.J. Simpson trial is subjecting the Los Angeles Police Department to the toughest scrutiny it has received since the Christopher Commission investigation after the Rodney King beating.

The Simpson trial, of course, is not supposed to be a probe of the LAPD. It is a double-murder trial, and the examination of the LAPD is the result of the defense strategy of trying to persuade jurors that Simpson was framed by racist, incompetent cops.

The Christopher Commission, headed by current Secretary of State Warren Christopher, focused largely on the practices and culture of street cops. The Simpson defense team is aiming higher--at the detectives who investigated the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. As lead defense lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. put it, the investigators “contaminated, compromised and corrupted” their probe of the crime scene. In particular, the defense wants to destroy Detective Mark Fuhrman, whom they describe as a racist who may have planted an incriminating bloody glove at Simpson’s mansion.

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Smearing the cops is an old defense tactic. What makes this different is that the televised Simpson trial will be watched by many millions whose view of the department has already been tarnished by the King beating and the LAPD’s slow response to the riots.

Silent during weeks of Simpson team attacks, the department fought back this week. On Monday, Enrique Hernandez Jr., president of the Police Commission, called Chief Willie L. Williams and said “the circumstances demand that we speak out.” Williams replied that he was precluded from commenting on the case, Hernandez said. He suggested that Williams clear it with Judge Lance A. Ito or have Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti do it.

Williams agreed, and on Tuesday he, Hernandez and other police commissioners strongly defended the department. “The idea that you could get detectives from several different units, police officers, civilian technicians . . . and who knows what else together and try to plot, carry out and keep it secret is unbelievable,” Williams said.

I was surprised by the vehemence of their counterattack. After all, defense attorneys have been beating up on cops forever. So on Wednesday, I talked about the defense strategy with retired judge Burton S. Katz, a former prosecutor who was a member of the D.A.’s team that prosecuted Charles Manson. He also writes a column on the Simpson trial for the Malibu Times.

Katz said it’s not unusual for the defense to try to destroy the cops, “but he (Cochran) has raised it a couple of notches.”

The defense has been able to attack so vigorously because much of the evidence against Simpson is circumstantial. In a circumstantial case, Katz said, “you have to rely on the integrity of the investigators.”

That is why Fuhrman is so important to the case. “Unfortunately, Fuhrman gave the defense an opening that allowed it to run with the ball,” Katz said. That was his alleged conversation with real estate agent Kathleen Bell in 1985 or 1986 in which he is said to have derided African Americans and admitted he would manufacture evidence if it would implicate an interracial couple.

It was a blow to the prosecution when Ito admitted Fuhrman’s statements. “It is state of mind evidence,” Katz said. He said it supports the idea that “he is a racist and will plant evidence to get those people. . . . Fuhrman has given them the key. You could not support a frame-up theory unless Fuhrman was there.”

None of this, he said, should come as a surprise to prosecutors or cops. They have been told many times that cases are lost through slip-ups, careless remarks, poorly written reports, mishandled evidence and other sloppiness or bad behavior.

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Expect the attack on the department to be unrelenting. That was clear Tuesday when Cochran questioned Detective John Edwards, who had been sent to Simpson’s mansion when Nicole Simpson called 911 in 1989. He referred to Edwards as “sergeant” rather than detective, and he looked contemptuous when Edwards said he had been a patrolman for 19 years. The cruel and unfair message was clear: Poor, dumb L.A. cop.

On Wednesday, Cochran’s associate, Carl Douglas, was even tougher on retired cop Ron Shipp, who said that he was a friend of Simpson and that O.J. had told him he had dreamed of killing Nicole. After getting Shipp to admit he had never been to dinner or a Raiders or Trojans football game with Simpson, Douglas got Shipp to confess that he was “like everybody else, one of his servants. I did police stuff. I ran (looked up) license plates.” A few minutes later, Shipp admitted that he once had a drinking problem.

Shipp was still an active detective during part of this period. Under Douglas’ questioning, he emerged as a cop-gofer for Simpson, looking up automobile license numbers for the famous man for purposes still unknown.

This sounds sordid, but it will get worse. We will be drawn step by step through the homicide detectives’ investigation. We’ll learn more than we want to know about how bodies should be handled, how evidence must be preserved.

The Christopher Commission taught us how the LAPD fights crime on the streets. The Simpson case will show us how the department shapes up in the intellectual department, in the crime-solving world of the detective and the crime lab technicians.