Setting LAPD Priorities

There’s a question about which issue stands first these days in the mind of Los Angeles Police Department Chief Bernard C. Parks. Is it the scandal over bad cops in the LAPD, which now extends beyond the Rampart division to include other police stations and allegations of drug trafficking and use of prostitutes? Or is the chief preoccupied with internal LAPD politics over limiting the investigative authority of the inspector general?

The inspector general is charged with auditing, overseeing and investigating the LAPD’s handling of complaints of police misconduct for the Police Commission. The five-member commission is the boss of both the police chief, who runs the department, and the inspector general. The potential conflict over the powers of the chief vs. the powers of the inspector general have rankled Parks since he became chief in 1997.

But at this point in the LAPD’s burgeoning scandal--the hardest allegations of abuse of power in decades--Parks’ continuing preoccupation with the rules of engagement is troubling. It projects the image of the top cop blocking the doorway to full disclosure by fighting the department’s civilian watchdog and the Police Commission over every inch of ground.

Example No. 1: During the week that allegations surfaced about corrupt cops, falsified police reports, perjured testimony and the cover-up of a bad shooting by Rampart’s anti-gang CRASH unit, Parks was huddling with key advisors and insisting that Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash had not received full authority to investigate the LAPD.

Example No. 2 came last week, when Times reporters disclosed that the department had known for at least four years that some of its elite CRASH units were involved in serious misconduct. Chief Parks was in the news, too, when the Police Commission blocked a special order from Parks that the commissioners felt would limit the inspector general’s authority.

Parks defended his actions. If he wasn’t focused on ferreting out corruption, Parks said, he wouldn’t have convened the largest single LAPD inquiry ever into almost every aspect of how the department functions. He said it would not be right to focus entirely on the scandal, just as it would not be right for the department to curtail its crime-fighting until all of the bad cops are weeded out.

Parks argued that he was not preoccupied with the inspector general, but rather engaged in a worthy battle to clarify the chief’s authority to run the Police Department without improper infringement. Parks has previously pointed out that he has done more to get rid of problem officers than his predecessor, Willie Williams.

In another time and place, one in which specialized police units are not alleged to have been involved in numerous questionable shootings, to have profited from using prostitutes to sell illicit drugs, and then to have frolicked with these prostitutes and other women during work hours, the issue of the inspector general could rightfully take up much of the chief’s time. But right now he needs to maintain a strong public and private focus on the ongoing investigations into police corruption.

A certain level of denial is evident at all levels of the department, such as the spokesperson for the Police Protective League, the police union, telling KNX radio that the league was helping the investigations, but referring to just “one or two” bad cops, and to corruption that “we know is not widespread.” At this point, no one knows how far the scandal will reach.

The city needs reassurances that Chief Parks is focused not on an internal department power struggle, but on getting to the bottom of what is becoming a deepening scandal.