We Sowed Seeds of Rampart Scandal

That corrupt cops patrol the streets of Los Angeles should shock no one. Yet today, when crime is well under control, when people are actually safer in Los Angeles than they have been in decades, that fact seems to shock everyone. It shouldn’t. Nor should it be tolerated. But it was tolerated, and for a very long time.

When several people a day were dying violently in Los Angeles, when incidents of multiple homicides were so routine as to be barely newsworthy, people wanted the police to do something, anything, to got murderers off the street. When certain alleys and streets in Los Angeles were virtually nothing more than drive-through drug markets, honest people screamed with rage that drug dealers needed to go to prison. When gang members terrorized everyone who wasn’t part of their evil kingdoms, when they held choke-holds on entire neighborhoods, people demanded that the police take action.

So they did. No one asked how the police should recapture the streets, just that they do. Police officials and politicians pored over all kinds of crime statistics. Police sweeps generated what were then deemed to be commendable numbers of arrests. Noteworthy arrests were highly publicized. Narcotics seizures were measured and often became the source of press conferences. Crime ebbed, then plummeted. The police were heroes.

Now, when crime is at historically low levels, the public is becoming conveniently less naive, and is learning how much of that crime reduction was achieved. They suspect now that planted evidence and perjury were not limited to the Rampart CRASH unit. Undeniably, those practices have existed in every patrol division and every detective squad room within Los Angeles, probably since the city was incorporated.

The issue of police corruption goes farther than the boundaries of our city, traversing Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, New York and every municipality in between. It goes to the very essence of every community. No one wants crime. Everyone wants to be safe at home, at work and during leisurely pursuits.

Can officers be effective without being dishonest? Perhaps we are on the verge of finding out. Maybe the next time a generation is justifiably afraid of crime and its brutal carnage, it will ask for more than action. Maybe it will specify which rules apply--those intended to keep us safe or those that are designed to make us feel good about ourselves.

Few, if any, officers begin their careers intending to engage in contemptible, felonious conduct. Most, if not all, graduate from the police academy gushing with pride, full of respect for the law and determined to do good things for society. They make it a personal goal to be society’s guardians against evil. That many lose perspective, become cynical and corrupt is as much a commentary on the moral character of the community they serve as it is on the officers themselves.

Those vast and courageous multitudes of officers who remain honest, who do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons, deserve our sustained admiration and support. They deserve a work environment consistent with the standards of contemporary society. Those officers who deviate from moral enforcement of the law are, of course, more problematic. As we condemn them and their conduct, we need to make sure we know not just what they did, but why. Then we need to commit our social conscience, our political resources and our economic abundance to make sure it does not happen again.

We need to answer two key questions in the current crisis convulsing the Los Angeles Police Department. Did Los Angeles Police Officers Rafael Perez and Nino Durden and their corrupt cohorts take the law into their own hands, or was it given to them?

The second question is, what are we willing to endure to get it back?