Curbs on LAPD Anti-Terrorism Unit Eased : Bombing reaction: Police Commission gives the squad more investigative tools but balks at broader loosening of civil liberties safeguards imposed after 1980s spy scandal.

The Los Angeles Police Commission took the first step Thursday toward significantly relaxing civil liberties safeguards placed on the Police Department’s Anti-Terrorist Division in the wake of a spying scandal a decade ago.

The commission acted in an emergency session at the urging of the mayor’s office, which was seeking to reassure the public that local officials were doing something concrete in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Although commissioners approved wider use of undercover operatives, electronic surveillance and civilian informants against suspected terrorists, they balked at immediately authorizing a far more comprehensive set of changes that would have allowed the department to gather information about individuals who are members of groups advocating criminal conduct, whether or not there is evidence that the individuals are breaking the law or plan to do so.

The more comprehensive changes, which would have substantially reduced the commission’s oversight authority over the Anti-Terrorist Division, had been drafted by the head of the division and were moving up the Police Department’s chain of command in a formal review process, when they were literally snatched off the desk of a deputy chief and placed before the commission Thursday.

Commissioners at first indicated that they were prepared to approve all the changes the department wanted, but when some of them read the complex, 50-page document in the afternoon, they balked.

They decided instead to submit the document to city lawyers for an expedited 30-day review, and meanwhile came up with a vastly scaled-down alternative that some officials said privately was intended as a sop.

Longstanding, strict guidelines give the Anti-Terrorist Division only seven days to substantiate a suspicion that someone is really a terrorist who poses an emergency threat, or it must call off its investigation. That period was extended by the commission in December to 60 days with little public notice, and on Thursday, with much fanfare, to 120 days. The division’s head also was given broad authority to decide what constitutes an emergency.

While these changes are significant, the bigger changes the Police Department wants would force the rewriting of guidelines developed to settle a police spying lawsuit brought against the city by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of religious, civil rights, environmental and protest groups and more than 100 people who contended that they were subjected to needless scrutiny by the division’s predecessor, the Public Disorder Intelligence Division.

That litigation disclosed, for example, that PDID officers regularly briefed top police officials on critics such as the Coalition Against Police Abuse, a group long critical of police shootings.

Although commissioners were unprepared to give the department everything it wanted Thursday, they expressed clear sentiment that Los Angeles had gone too far in hobbling some of its intelligence-gathering operations in the 1980s, and indicated that they would be prepared to make additional changes soon.

“We live in a different era now,” said Police Commission President Enrique Hernandez, who heads an international security firm. “Terrorism is on the increase. And there is no reason to believe that we are immune from it in Los Angeles.”

A report prepared by Anti-Terrorist Division Capt. Joseph Curreri outlined the larger changes desired by the department, complaining that “the guidelines have seriously hampered the effectiveness of ATD.”

Changes Curreri proposed would, for example, return authority to the department to mount undercover operations, employ electronic surveillance and use civilian informants. Authority for such activities, including the infiltration of terrorist organizations and, if necessary, peaceful organizations with links to such groups, now rests with the Police Commission.

The commission is briefed twice yearly, for example, on undercover operations and can order an operation abandoned.

Other changes Curreri is seeking would permit:

* Undercover officers to attend religious events or educational institutions when investigations so require.

* Officers to gather information on individuals who participate in nonviolent civil disobedience.

* The department to freely share its information with other law enforcement agencies and some unspecified private organizations.

Officers would still be barred from breaking the law or from encouraging others to do so to entrap them.

“The essence is that we . . . went to the commission and asked them to expand our ability to conduct investigations on selected groups--and I don’t want to say which ones,” said Cmdr. Tim McBride, the department’s chief spokesman.

Officials, however, said the department is particularly concerned about terrorism threats emanating from groups with Middle Eastern ties, including would-be terrorists who operate under the cloak of religious groups.

On March 30, the Anti-Terrorist Division issued a bulletin to Los Angeles Police Department officers, saying that several radical Islamic fundamentalist leaders had issued decrees asserting that the United States had put Islam on trial in the World Trade Center bombing case in New York City. The detectives warned that public buildings--particularly federal buildings--might be subject to terrorist attacks inspired by the decrees.

LAPD officials emphasized that they were not seeking to give the division more authority than any other section of the department.

Ramona Ripston, director of the ACLU’s Southern California chapter, said she had been unaware of the proposed changes until she heard a radio news report Thursday. But, mindful of the horror in Oklahoma City, she reacted with caution.

“I think we’ll be silent today. We’ll see what the Police Commission does, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said.

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates applauded the proposed changes. “What the guidelines did was totally freeze our ability to gather meaningful intelligence,” Gates said.

Gates said his agreement to the guidelines as part of a $1.8-million settlement of the ACLU’s lawsuit was “probably the biggest mistake I ever made.”

He said he agreed to go along only because he needed to end the ACLU suit before the 1984 Olympics. Other law enforcement agencies had stopped providing intelligence information to the LAPD about possible threats, he recalled, because they feared that the department might be ordered to turn over such intelligence to the ACLU in civil discovery.