3,300 and Counting

It’s been a while since anyone believed that the scandal in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division would be limited to a few officers and a handful of potentially tainted prosecutions. But its dimensions have grown bigger than even the skeptics imagined: The number of suspect convictions comes to a staggering 3,300 and counting. And another police division is now under scrutiny.

About 800 of the cases can be laid to a corrupt former LAPD officer-turned-songbird, Rafael Perez. The Rampart scandal begins with Perez, who since September has spilled tales of bad police shootings, falsified testimony under oath, police drug dealing and much more. His disclosures stem from his effort to reduce his jail time for stealing cocaine from a police property room. The other 2,500 cases involve current or other former officers under suspicion.

The taxpayer cost is huge. Even if every conviction in question is proved valid, it will take many prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges years to get to the bottom of it all. And every overturned conviction of a person imprisoned for a crime not committed represents still another juicy lawsuit against the city. So far, four inmates who were improperly convicted have been released. There will be others.

There are other costs that are difficult to quantify. One is the increased skepticism that jurors will bring to police officers’ testimony, especially when an officer’s word is crucial to the prosecution’s case. The scandal might not have gone on so long or gone so deep if others had done their jobs better. For one, prosecutors who always accept the stories of police officers, no matter how dubious those accounts might be. For another, the overworked and sometimes careless defense attorneys who scoff at the professed innocence of their clients and strongly urge them to plead guilty to lesser charges. Even judges who threaten defendants with stiffer sentences if they exercise their right to a trial.

It is a credit to the Police Department that it is pressing the probe so vigorously, but that doesn’t diminish the scandal. The last Los Angeles police scandal approaching the magnitude of this one was in the 1930s. Then, it was vice cops on the take, a payoff in a murder case and police digging up dirt on certain politicians and grand jury panelists at the behest of other politicians. It took years to rehabilitate the image of the city and the LAPD.

The city’s leaders must provide ample resources and tackle the issue of potentially tainted convictions with all due speed to avoid a repeat of those old years of shame.