Police Panel Votes to Loosen Curbs on Intelligence Work

The Los Angeles Police Commission voted Tuesday to roll back 12-year-old limits on LAPD intelligence gathering, a move opposed by longtime critics of the LAPD but accompanied by assurances that the department’s civilian bosses will carefully monitor police performance under new, looser guidelines.

The controversial topic was the focus of a long, sometimes impassioned Police Commission discussion before Tuesday’s vote, with the debate turning on a decades-old tension in Los Angeles: the desire for strong law enforcement versus the fear of police abuse.

In the end, commissioners voted to loosen rules imposed in 1984 after a police spying scandal, but said they would continue to exercise strong oversight. Police officials still will be required to brief the commission on undercover operations and to remain open to commission audits.

Before the vote, activists urged the commission to strike a harder line. They passionately reminded commissioners of the LAPD’s past problems and urged the board not to loosen the reins on a department that had previously used its intelligence-gathering authority to spy on liberals, political leaders and LAPD critics.

“They abused our rights,” said Michael Zinzun, chairman of the Coalition Against Police Abuse. “I don’t think we’ve forgotten that.”

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the LAPD was dogged by revelations about its Public Disorder Intelligence Division. Although that unit was created in 1970 to head off threats of public violence by terrorist groups, a number of officers infiltrated peaceful left-wing groups and others spied on city leaders critical of the Police Department.

After press reports disclosed that one officer had shared files with right-wing political groups, the city dismantled the PDID and replaced it with the Anti-Terrorist Division. At about the same time, the city settled a lawsuit by agreeing to a consent decree that placed strict limits on its intelligence gathering.

Neither LAPD officials nor commissioners made any attempt Tuesday to defend the PDID’s activities. But police officials stressed that the mounting threat and changing nature of terrorism demands that the LAPD have better investigative techniques at its disposal.

Under the new rules, the LAPD is allowed to use electronic surveillance and all other legal law enforcement techniques as soon as it opens an investigation; the old rules first required the department to conduct a preliminary investigation, during which its investigative options were tightly circumscribed.

The new rules also allow the Anti-Terrorist Division to conduct undercover operations based on a “reasonable suspicion” of criminal wrongdoing. That is a lower standard than the current threshold, which requires officers to show “probable cause” of illegal activity. Officers working in the Anti-Terrorist Division have been limited to five years in the unit; that too will change under the new guidelines, which allow for longer tenure.

Capt. Joseph Curreri, commanding officer of the Anti-Terrorist Division, said those rules could have helped in a number of recent cases. For instance, he said a suspect several years ago was able to continue his activities because LAPD rules did not allow the department to conduct electronic or other surveillance on him.

That suspect, Christian Nadal, later turned out to be making machine guns and silencers and selling them to white supremacists. The FBI investigated Nadal in connection with a probe of skinheads who plotted to kill Rodney G. King and others. He was arrested and later convicted in federal court of 15 counts of selling and transferring illegal weapons. But Curreri said that had the LAPD been given greater leeway to pursue Nadal, the Police Department could have shut down his operation sooner.

“There would be fewer machine guns in Southern California today” if the looser guidelines had been in effect then, Curreri said.

Curreri would not elaborate on terrorist threats being investigated by the LAPD today, but he agreed with Commissioner Art Mattox that “the face of terrorism has changed over the years.”

“We do not only look at left-wing groups,” Curreri said. “We look at the spectrum.”

In addition, Curreri cited other examples--both real and hypothetical--in which he said looser guidelines would make it easier to track and stop terrorists of all political ideologies.

Curreri said the case of Dean Harvey Hicks was one in which freer rein for the LAPD might have protected the public. Apparently angry over a tax deduction that was denied, Hicks terrorized Internal Revenue Service employees in Laguna Niguel, Los Angeles and Fresno from 1987 to 1991. He later was convicted of four federal counts of using a destructive device and one count of impeding the IRS.

According to Curreri, Hicks parked a car at the Los Angeles IRS building in 1990 and packed it with material similar to that used to destroy the federal office building in Oklahoma City. Although Hicks’ bomb did not detonate as planned, it could have destroyed a city block, Curreri said.

“I believe the new standards would have enabled us probably to identify him earlier,” Curreri said after the meeting Tuesday. “That would have prevented some of his bombings.”

At the same time that the commission agreed to relax the restrictions on the anti-terrorist unit, Commission President Raymond C. Fisher, a noted civil rights advocate, pledged personally to monitor the division and stressed that he believes that sufficient safeguards remain in place to prevent another police spying scandal.

“Believe me, I am, from my own professional history and background, sensitive to the concerns,” Fisher said. “I do believe that the document that is before us today is a thoughtful document.”

Police Chief Willie L. Williams remained silent throughout Tuesday’s debate but said afterward that he supported the looser restrictions. Asked whether he believed that the new rules safeguarded the public against police spying, he responded: “I’m confident that under my leadership, they will.”

Allan Parachini, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he did not question the motives of Fisher, Williams or the Police Commission. But he said that the changes would someday be monitored by others who might not inspire the same confidence. Moreover, Parachini joined other opponents in arguing that the changes would give too much power back to the police.

“We’re afraid that this commission and the department are about to lose a very, very precarious balance,” Parachini said. And once it is lost, he added, the city may “descend all too quickly into the abyss of political spying again.”

Like Zinzun, Parachini urged commissioners to postpone a final vote on the new guidelines at least until after holding a special public hearing. Commissioners, who have been mulling changes in the guidelines for nearly two years, did not respond directly to those requests, but instead moved directly to a vote.

The commission’s vote to relax the guidelines is effective immediately. Although the City Council could review that decision, commissioners said they have received no indication that the council will exercise that authority.

* POLICE EVALUATIONS

A proposed system to evaluate LAPD officers is delayed. B3