Ex-Rampart Commander a Focus of Probe, Sources Say : Investigation: Questions arise about LAPD captain’s leadership of division at center of corruption scandal.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Nick Salicos is known as “Nick the Knife,” a nickname he earned from subordinates who complain that he leans hard on them and is quick to punish.

Now, however, the tables have turned, sources say: It is Salicos who is the object of investigators’ interest, as a newly formed LAPD board of inquiry turns to an apparent series of troubling lapses in leadership at the Rampart station. Salicos ran that division from 1993 until last year.

During Salicos’ stint as the commanding officer of Rampart, officers allegedly stole drugs, shot unarmed suspects, beat up a young man in a station house cell and slipped beyond the control of their supervisors. A lieutenant Salicos personally brought to the station has retired amid an intense investigation of officers who at one point were under his supervision. And Salicos’ highest-ranking subordinate is facing the prospect of a 21-day suspension, which some City Council members have objected to in closed session as too little, for failing to act on allegations of misconduct.

Asked whether Salicos was the object of internal investigation, one person close to the inquiry said: “Let’s put it this way. The highest-ranking person in this will not be a sergeant.”

Salicos, 54, is less than two months away from his 30th anniversary with the LAPD. Trained as a lawyer, he is considered smart, meticulous and articulate. Some Rampart residents express gratitude to him for his part in pushing down the area’s crime rate, and he has some surprising allies, including the leader of the local American Civil Liberties Union. But he is widely criticized among officers and departmental brass, some of whom see him as both capricious and judgmental. Salicos did not respond to requests for an interview.

Among the questions being asked about Salicos’ management of the embattled Rampart Division: Did the captain place too much faith in a strong-willed lieutenant, the now-retired Dan Hills? Did he err by allowing anti-gang officers with CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) and other specialized unit members to base their operations outside the main police station, removing them from day-to-day oversight? Should he or his subordinates have caught potentially troubling details in police reports, such as the use of unnamed confidential informants by uniformed officers, a practice that generally violates LAPD policy?

Officers Complained About Captain

As might be expected for a captain with a reputation for pushing hard, Salicos does not rate well with the rank and file. The Los Angeles Police Protective League polled its members last year about the LAPD’s captains. Salicos rated below average in every category, and his picture was accompanied by the following comments: “Tends to be unsupportive of officers. Leaps to conclusions. Doesn’t seem to care about field officers.”

In the unfolding Rampart probe, Salicos’ personal conduct and judgment also could be at issue.

One current LAPD officer and another who recently retired--both of whom asked not to be identified--recall Salicos sending a judge a letter that vouched for the character of a woman facing drug-related money laundering charges--a move that enraged agents in the case.

Others complained of Salicos’ relationship with local merchants in the Koreatown area. Although some officers believed Salicos was rewarding favored merchants with extra police protection, others saw those overtures much more innocently, noting that Koreatown was badly hit during the 1992 riots and clamoring for more protection.

Still, one officer said he was so troubled by the issue that he wrote to then-Police Chief Willie L. Williams, expressing concern about Salicos’ leadership. Williams, who then was waging a protracted and unsuccessful attempt to keep his job, did not respond, the officer said.

Some officials who are familiar with the LAPD’s two internal investigations of Rampart--the Internal Affairs probe into allegations of police misconduct and the new board of inquiry into potential systemic breakdowns that allowed that misconduct to occur--say there were troubling signs from the station long ago.

One area of concern involves Lt. Hills. Although he has retired and could not be reached for comment, other current and former officers describe Hills as strong-willed, willing to challenge his bosses and question department leadership. Those qualities contributed to his ouster from the traffic unit in Central Bureau, two department sources said.

But Hills also was a friend of Salicos, who was then the new captain of Rampart. So Salicos picked up Hills and installed him in the division, later promoting him to what the LAPD calls a Lieutenant II and putting him in charge of detectives--including the CRASH unit.

An officer who worked in the division at the time said CRASH under Hills acquired a reputation as a place for highly aggressive police work, sometimes too aggressive. Referring to the LAPD’s notorious 39th and Dalton case, in which officers in 1988 tore an apartment building apart looking for drugs, Rampart officers used to joke that sooner or later their CRASH officers would make some intersection just as famous.

Hills was so tough that when the department restructured certain operations and required that detectives and other officers be supervised by a captain rather than a lieutenant, Hills’ influence nevertheless remained. Capt. Richard Meraz, brought in as the station’s second-highest-ranking officer, allowed Hills to keep the supervisor’s office, two police officials said. The result: Hills held court in the office, while his boss, Meraz, sat out in the squad room.

One senior LAPD officer involved in the board of inquiry that will review Rampart said that should have been a warning sign to Salicos that something was wrong--as well as a sign that Meraz was struggling to assert his own leadership.

The LAPD already has moved to discipline Meraz. Sources say Meraz, now assigned to Central Division, is accused of failing to supervise officers under his command because of an incident that occurred when a supervisor and another officer came to him to talk about a beating in the station house jail. Meraz’s response, the sources said, was to say he did not want to hear the details.

That reaction, which high-ranking department officials consider inexcusable, in some ways reflects an apparently long-standing concern about Meraz. In its evaluation of him, the police union was generally positive, praising Meraz’s caring and his effect on morale, but added: “May be too hands-off on what’s going on in the division.”

Another indicator that Salicos or other supervisors might have caught was a troubling problem with arrest reports coming out of the division. According to one well-placed LAPD official, those reports in many instances featured uniformed police officers explaining arrests in part by saying they relied on unnamed “confidential informants.”

The LAPD manual strictly regulates the use of such informants. Their identities must be shared with supervisors, and the commanding officer of each station is required to keep a file that lists undesirable informants--those who have endangered police officers, tipped off suspects, used the Police Department to further their criminal careers or who try to pit law enforcement agencies against each other.

The purpose of those rules is to see that informants are treated carefully, and patrol officers are discouraged from using informants at all. The department prefers that contacts be limited to detectives and that approvals for the use of informants come from commanding officers, not lower-level supervisors.

In Rampart, said one LAPD official: “You had sergeants approving, lieutenants approving. . . . You didn’t have someone taking aside a patrol officer and saying, ‘Son, you don’t have an informant. You’re a patrol officer.’ ”

CRASH Unit’s Off-Site Placement Questioned

Finally, and to some most disturbingly, was Salicos’ decision to house the station’s CRASH unit off site.

In some respects, this problem went beyond Salicos. Starting with the election of Mayor Richard Riordan in 1993, the LAPD launched a major expansion.

The influx of new officers created crowded, rundown working conditions, forcing many commanding officers to improvise solutions to their overcrowded stations. At 77th Street, for instance, some officers worked out of trailers, while men and women alternated in the restrooms and locker rooms.

So Salicos was not alone in facing a quandary of how to house his officers. Where top LAPD officials today fault him, however, was in his decision to put his most aggressive officers, the CRASH unit, farthest away from day-to-day supervision.

That decision allowed CRASH officers to come and go as they chose. Sometimes suspects even were taken to the CRASH office, sources said, rather than to the station. That created ample opportunities for abuse.

Although it is the handling of internal matters that will form the basis of the board of inquiry’s probe, Salicos also amassed a mixed reputation outside the station’s walls.

Some community members complained that Rampart under Salicos was reluctant to cough up crime information, and that he alienated some residents with his bluster.

“Complete control on the surface, fear and lack of understanding beneath it,” is how one Echo Park community activist put it.

On the other hand, Salicos cultivated an unusually positive working relationship with the American Civil Liberties Union, whose offices are in Rampart and whose executive director, Ramona Ripston, worked closely with the local captain.

“He and Ramona met often, staff members went on ride-alongs. . . . In terms of community relations, he did a good job, at least from our perspective,” said Elizabeth Schroeder, associate director of the Southern California ACLU. “Still, it’s troubling that he was the captain and didn’t know what was going on in his command.”

At the bottom of any investigation into supervision lies a difficult question to answer: When is it fair to hold a manager responsible for the actions of subordinates? Can every captain be expected to know what every officer is up to, particularly when LAPD captains typically manage more than 300 officers?

Asked that question, one of the LAPD officials who will investigate Salicos’ performance answered: “If you’ve had five prisoners escape from your jail, you better be able to say . . . you changed the locks.”

* A SOMBER GRADUATION

Police Academy graduation strikes a somber note in wake of scandal. B1