Abuse Claims Went Unprobed at 77th St. Station

As the police corruption scandal grows around the Rampart Division, accusations against anti-gang officers in another part of Los Angeles underscore the city’s lax handling of misconduct claims through much of the 1990s, including those involving its hard-charging CRASH units.

In five weeks in late 1995, officers from the LAPD’s 77th Street Division anti-gang squad were accused of brutalizing and trampling the rights of two families at gatherings in their homes--cases that cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars to settle.

A 15-year-old was smacked in the mouth with a shotgun butt in one incident, court records show, and his father was suffocated until he passed out and ended up in a hospital. Family members in both cases say that they complained to police about the alleged misconduct in South-Central Los Angeles.

Yet, despite the seriousness of the allegations and the cost to the city treasury, the LAPD did not conduct investigations of either incident. The result was not just an oversight breakdown in a pair of highly charged confrontations.

According to longtime LAPD critics, those cases also are emblematic of a larger failure: A Police Department that despite years of prodding and demands for change, nevertheless persisted in ignoring credible claims of misconduct and in resisting calls for systems intended to identify problem officers.

And today, with the Rampart disclosures regularly rocking the LAPD, the allegations out of 77th Street also suggest that the LAPD missed important opportunities to improve its systems of oversight and supervision. Had it done so, department leaders might have been in a better position to spot troubling patterns in Rampart and elsewhere.

At the center of the alleged abuses in 77th Street was a well-known officer--described by a supervisor as notorious among gang members--who was later fired. His credibility as an officer was permanently damaged, an LAPD discipline board found, when he gave false statements to investigators after he unnecessarily choked a man in an off-duty altercation.

LAPD officials, in response to the Rampart scandal, are scrutinizing the supervision and operations of the elite anti-gang units known as CRASH, or Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums.

At least 12 officers have been relieved of duty as authorities probe accusations that Rampart CRASH members illegally shot suspects, framed one man, improperly beat another, stole drugs, falsified evidence and covered up a wide range of misconduct.

Years Later, Many Questions Unanswered

Many of the alleged abuses occurred in the mid-1990s, after city officials had been warned by a panel examining the Los Angeles riots that units such as CRASH were straining relations in some neighborhoods. Moreover, the city had been alerted repeatedly about gaps in the LAPD’s tracking of misconduct allegations by officials and watchdog panels such as the Christopher Commission, which studied the LAPD in the wake of the 1991 Rodney G. King beating by officers in Foothill Division.

Even now, despite improvements made under Chief Bernard C. Parks, the LAPD and city lawyers are unable to answer basic questions about the controversial CRASH squads.

Officials, for example, can’t say how many misconduct complaints have been lodged against the anti-gang details. Nor are they able to calculate how much the city has paid in civil judgments and settlements involving CRASH officers.

“It’s sad. . . . We have for all these years lost the value” of a comprehensive system to track misconduct claims filed against officers and units such as CRASH, said Capt. Rick Wahler, who has taken over the department’s risk management unit.

The LAPD will begin tracking legal claims against officers and units next year, Wahler said. It was only last year that the department began centrally compiling all citizen complaints against officers and referring legal claims to the Internal Affairs Group for possible investigation.

Filing a misconduct claim or paying settlements does not prove wrongdoing, city officials stress.

Still, some observers say it is disturbing that the LAPD couldn’t or wouldn’t move sooner to improve how it has tracked and investigated misconduct claims.

“Putting together that kind of information would be an important management tool to allow higher-ranking LAPD officers to determine potential problems and patterns and 1/8decide 3/8 what, if anything, should be done about it,” said attorney Mark H. Epstein, former deputy general counsel for the Christopher Commission.

This is especially critical for units such as CRASH, which operate in an intense and volatile environment and have built reputations for aggressive police tactics. But the cases from 77th Street suggest that the LAPD was lax even there, where supervision and tracking were needed most.

Former LAPD Officer Addis “Bart” Simpson, at 6 feet 2 and more than 250 pounds, was a physically imposing and well-regarded member of the 77th Street CRASH crew. Simpson did not respond to requests for comment.

On a warm evening in September 1995, Simpson and his partner stopped near 104th Street and Figueroa to tell a woman not to let her child ride her tricycle in the street. The officers, on loan to the Southeast Division, said in depositions that they were concerned about the youngster’s safety. But according to the officers, a female shouted profanities at them and a man tossed a bottle at their cruiser.

The melee that ensued was captured in part by a camera crew from the television show “LAPD: Life on the Beat.” As a result, there is videotape of officers and residents shouting back and forth and of officers wrestling some family members to the ground.

But the camera didn’t capture the action in the house, where officers said they subdued the suspected bottle thrower, Kunta Kinte Costello, because he became aggressive. “He swung at me with a closed fist,” Simpson said in his deposition.

Family members had a different version, claiming that Simpson initiated the confrontation by shouting at the woman outside the house.

Costello denied tossing a bottle and claimed he was jabbed in the chest with a club when he requested a search warrant. He also alleged that officers closed the front door and began striking him. “I balled up so I couldn’t get hit,” he said in a deposition. “ 1/8I 3/8 was feeling fists. I was feeling metal, everything.”

Several people were arrested on charges ranging from assault on an officer to interfering with police, but most of the accusations were later dropped or not proven. The smashed bottle that allegedly sparked the confrontation was never collected as evidence.

But Simpson paused at the TV camera to recount how he was assaulted by the woman who allegedly shouted profanities. “She was hitting me in the face,” he chuckled, asking: “Am I still cute?”

Partly because the family had witnesses supporting their version of events, the city paid $350,000 to settle various claims.

A month later, Simpson was back in the middle of the action. Hearing shots fired in the area, officers from the 77th Street CRASH crew burst into Santos Medina’s home during a birthday party near Figueroa and 49th streets.

The CRASH officers, with a crew from the same TV show in tow, claimed they were assaulted when they had to force their way into Medina’s backyard to investigate. “It was not a friendly party for the police,” one of the officers said in a deposition.

Officers said they pursued suspects into the house, including Santos Medina, who was pulled away in the yard as he was being arrested. Inside, as officers swarmed toward the father, Simpson hit 15-year-old Santos Medina Jr. in the mouth with the butt of his shotgun, breaking a tooth and bloodying his mouth, court records show.

Simpson maintained that his life was in danger. “He grabbed my shotgun 1/8and 3/8 was pulling real hard,” Simpson said in his deposition. The teenager, whose birthday was being celebrated, insists Simpson struck without provocation.

In a bedroom, the Medinas said, an officer pinned the father on a bed, pressing his face into the mattress until he passed out.

“They were on him completely, just choking him,” the son said in an interview, fighting back tears.

The father, now 62, was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where he spent several days.

Seven people were arrested in connection with violations ranging from interfering with an officer to felony resisting arrest. The charges were later dismissed or reduced to misdemeanors.

As it turned out, the father said, a tenant living in a rear shed earlier that evening had fired shots into the ground in a corner of the large backyard. Police recovered a rifle from the shed and a handgun but apparently never followed up to determine when the shots were fired and by whom.

The city paid $125,000 to settle claims for damages, partly because the officers’ justification for being at the home was in dispute. Also, a video showing children hitting a pinata, and adults preparing food, supported the family’s claim that the gathering was peaceful.

In both cases, city attorneys say, they believe the officers’ versions, but settled the lawsuits to avoid potentially larger costs.

Families Say They Were Ignored

There was another problem. Before the city settled the Costello case, an LAPD discipline board recommended that Simpson be fired. He had been found guilty of being discourteous, using unnecessary force and giving false statements to LAPD investigators. The charges stemmed from an off-duty altercation outside a 77th Street Division social gathering.

Simpson contested the firing, but a Superior Court judge ruled last month that the evidence supported the LAPD’s action. Simpson’s attorney said the decision may be appealed.

Family members in both cases say that they complained to officers or investigators about alleged mistreatment, according to interviews and records.

LAPD policy has long required that even verbal complaints of physical abuse made at a station be officially recorded and forwarded for review to Internal Affairs, which can either open its own personnel investigation or refer the matter back to the station to be probed.

The Police Department’s failures to follow up on civilian complaints, however, are legendary. In 1991, the LAPD ignored complaints about the beating of Rodney King. The result: The videotape ended up at a local television station.

Similarly, relatives in the 77th Street cases apparently were shunted aside, according to records and interviews. LAPD officials could not recall the episodes or explain why no personnel investigations were ordered. They did note that some complaints still were disposed of informally at stations in the early and mid-1990s.

Indeed, the Christopher Commission noted in 1991 that the LAPD had failed to launch personnel investigations in a number of excessive force claims that led to lawsuits. Concerned about such slipshod procedures, the panel recommended that all such complaints be investigated by Internal Affairs, and that a computerized tracking program be used to better monitor complaints and potentially costly litigation.

The same year, City Council members also complained that many lawsuits alleging police misconduct were being settled without internal investigations of officers’ actions.

Five years later, Special Counsel Merrick J. Bobb reported to the Police Commission that the LAPD still lacked the comprehensive personnel tracking system recommended by the Christopher Commission. Again, in 1997, the LAPD inspector general reiterated some of the same concerns.

LAPD officials say they now are tracking all complaints and alerting Internal Affairs to legal claims. Since that system was implemented last year, a significantly larger number of complaints are being formally logged against officers. But one result is that Internal Affairs investigators, always pressed for time, are probing a smaller percentage of overall complaints.

Even some attorneys who defend the LAPD support more Internal Affairs misconduct investigations, saying they can help spot patterns, locate witnesses and gather evidence while the incident is fresh.

“It often turns out that it’s in our favor,” said Deputy City Atty. Suzanne Christiansen, who represented the LAPD in the Costello case.