Police Panel Chief Backs Bid to Ease LAPD Curbs

Los Angeles Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher, a respected civil rights advocate, on Friday endorsed relaxing restrictions on the LAPD’s Anti-Terrorist Division and said he is confident that proposed changes will safeguard citizens from police abuse even as they give detectives greater latitude.

“Any system can be abused,” said Fisher, who heads the five-member civilian body that oversees LAPD policy. “But this system has some very thoughtful checks in it. . . . There is accountability.”

Fisher’s endorsement of the changes--which would replace rules imposed in a 1984 consent decree that settled a police spying case--is considered key to their approval by the full board and vital toward reassuring skeptics that the modifications are needed. A former clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Fisher served as deputy general counsel to the reform-minded Christopher Commission and is a member of the boards of the Legal Aid Foundation and the Constitutional Rights Foundation--all of which make him a trusted member of the city’s civil rights community.

Fisher and other commissioners noted that while the LAPD in decades past was feared for its cavalier treatment of the civil rights of its critics, the department today works under much tighter civilian scrutiny. And Fisher stressed that the Police Commission will remain vigilant in its oversight of LAPD anti-terrorist operations under the new guidelines, which give detectives greater leeway to start and pursue investigations of people they believe are connected to terrorist activity.

LAPD officials say they are not seeking the new authority to investigate any particular terrorist organization, but rather to be freer to follow up leads as they come in. That freedom, they say, is necessary in an era in which incidents of terrorism are increasing.

“That is a political reality and a social reality,” Fisher said.

In a memorandum distributed Friday to his colleagues on the commission, Fisher outlined the history of the issue and concluded: “I am now satisfied that this document will provide the ATD with the tools they need to perform their job as efficiently and effectively as possible and will permit them to adequately protect the citizens of Los Angeles from the possibility of terrorist activity. There remain in the proposed guidelines safeguards which will protect the rights of all citizens to the constitutionally protected freedoms we cherish so highly.”

Commissioner Art Mattox, vice president of the board, agreed.

“My understanding is that the checks and balances that are needed are there,” he said.

Not all observers are convinced. Leaders of the Coalition Against Police Abuse, Police Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union--organizations that have often expressed misgivings about the LAPD’s conduct--say they are troubled by moves that might allow police to resume spying on citizens.

Similarly, other longtime LAPD critics voiced concerns.

“I’m not aware over these last 12 years that the LAPD has been unable to conduct its intelligence-gathering activities,” said county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the City Council during the police spying scandal. “They’re talking about weakening [the guidelines]. I’m asking myself: Why?”

Among other things, the new guidelines would reduce the threshold for launching an investigation from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion” of wrongdoing. They also would eliminate the need for the department to conduct preliminary investigations before launching full-fledged ones. Under the current rules, most surveillance techniques are barred during preliminary investigations.

But the new regulations still would require LAPD officials to brief a member of the Police Commission about anti-terrorist investigations and still would subject the Anti-Terrorist Division to regular audits by the civilian commissioners.

Under the proposed guidelines, rules regulating the conduct of undercover officers would no longer be publicly available but instead would be stored in a confidential manual. Any changes relaxing those rules, however, would have to be considered by the commission in public session.

Capt. Joseph Curreri, commanding officer of the Anti-Terrorist Division, said Los Angeles’ growing place as an international center has made it increasingly vulnerable to terrorism, and argued that the Police Department needs to be able to investigate people suspected of criminal wrongdoing.

“Our diversity is a great thing,” Curreri said of the city. “We have people who represent all parts of the world. But that means we also have people who sympathize with people who are killing people in other parts of the world.”

The police spying scandals of the 1980s revealed that the Police Department had used officers as spies to infiltrate leftist organizations and to gather information on critics of the LAPD. Some of the targets included Mayor Tom Bradley and members of the Los Angeles City Council.

Confronted with a volatile scandal that refused to go away, the city agreed in 1984 to a consent decree ending a lawsuit by the ACLU and other organizations. That decree imposed strict limits on the methods that the LAPD could use to investigate people suspected of plotting anti-government activity.

From the start, the LAPD chafed at the restrictions, which were the toughest imposed on any American law enforcement agency. Police officials said the limits curbed their ability to identify suspects and conduct surveillance, leaving Los Angeles vulnerable to terrorists inside its borders.

Some observers argued that the LAPD’s weakened intelligence operations undermined the police preparedness for the riots that broke out after the verdicts in the first Rodney G. King beating trial.

Among them is Steven S. Lucas, a lawyer in San Francisco and counsel to the Webster Commission, which analyzed the LAPD’s riot response.

“The world is changing,” he said. “The threats are changing. We can’t be stuck in this notion of punishing the LAPD for its past transgressions.”