D.A. to Revive Unit That Investigates Police Shootings

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office will revive within 60 days the so-called roll-out team that sends prosecutors to the scene of police shootings, officials said Tuesday.

In response to the ongoing scandal in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division, numerous public officials have urged Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti to re-create the unit, which he eliminated during the county’s 1996 budget crunch.

His agreement Tuesday is the most concrete result of the Rampart scandal yet. Potentially, it has countywide implications because a representative of Garcetti’s office told the supervisors that the unit would travel to the location of any police shooting in the county, provided that the police agency in question had a standing agreement to allow prosecutors on the scene.

The district attorney last week said that he wanted to restore the operation but that he needed an extra $1 million from the Board of Supervisors. Tuesday, however, his office acknowledged that it already has enough money on hand to revive the operation this year.

“It is not a panacea for the problems that exist, but it is a potential solution,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael Tranbarger told the board Tuesday, as supervisors unanimously passed a resolution urging Garcetti either to find money for the program in his own budget or to secure state or federal grants to fund it.

After his testimony, Tranbarger told reporters that the unit would probably be resurrected “within the next 30 to 60 days.”

But the supervisors’ reluctance to fund the program out of their own pockets creates questions about its future. This year, it probably will be paid for with seized drug proceeds that are now available to Garcetti’s office but that may not be replenished after they are spent. And supervisors said they want to be certain the team is able to do its job before making it permanent.

Many officials Tuesday offered suggestions for how to make the new roll-out team more formidable than its predecessor, which had been cut to the bone over the years and was criticized by some as not being aggressive enough in its investigations of police shootings.

County supervisors cited problems the previous team encountered, such as Los Angeles police officials who kept prosecutors back from shooting scenes, then for days would not allow prosecutors to interview the officers involved in the incidents.

“What’s the point if you’re blocked by law enforcement?” asked Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, urging prosecutors to demand that police agencies commit to allowing free investigations of their shootings. “If you’re not getting cooperation from law enforcement . . . then I think it’s your department’s obligation to go out to the chief of police and raise hell with him. Now’s the time to do it--right now, while the spotlight’s on them.”

Supervisor Gloria Molina warned that if departments do not cooperate, the unit could lull the public into a false belief that shootings were investigated, even though they were not. “There’s a lot of cover-up that goes on,” she said. “It has a two-edged sword [aspect] as well.”

Molina questioned whether the roll-out team would have discovered corruption in the LAPD’s Rampart station, which allegedly involved LAPD anti-gang officers shooting unarmed people and then planting weapons to make the shootings look justified.

In response to questions from Molina and Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Tranbarger acknowledged that there had been few prosecutions during the program’s existence. That, he said, is because there is little to prosecute. “We find that police do a very good job,” he said.

The original roll-out team was created by then-Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp in 1979 over strong opposition from police agencies. Garcetti was a member of the unit.

“It put a spotlight on what [police] were doing, and you saw over a period of time that the number of police shootings declined,” Van de Kamp said last week.

He said his successor as district attorney, Robert Philibosian, essentially dismantled the unit by cutting it severely, but the program continued until its formal demise in 1996. “It was very unfortunate they disbanded it,” Van de Kamp said. “I’m sure it won them political points with police agencies.”

Garcetti has said that the supervisors’ stinginess during the county’s brush with bankruptcy in 1996 forced him to end the operation. But he has never formally requested money from the board to revive it, even as his budget has grown by $100 million since 1996.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council had planned to seek ways to help Garcetti revive the unit, but Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski said that move was unnecessary now that the district attorney was ready to announce formation of the new squad.

To ensure better oversight, City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg suggested adding a member of the Los Angeles Police Commission’s inspector general’s staff to the district attorney’s team.

The inspector general monitors police shootings and discipline for the Police Commission, the civilian panel that oversees the Police Department

Dennis Zine, a director of the Police Protective League, told the council that the police union also supports the roll-out team approach.

“We welcome the oversight,” he said. “We need to establish public confidence.”

Zine said the union was “shocked and dismayed” by the allegations of corruption arising from the anti-gang unit at the Rampart Division.

“We are professionals,” he said. “We will not tolerate any form of corruption inside the Police Department.” Councilman Mike Hernandez reminded his colleagues that they supported his motion two years ago calling for the reinstatement of the teams. Hernandez said that motion arose from a controversial police shooting in his northeast Los Angeles district.

Once again, Hernandez said, the city needs to rebuild public confidence in the department and remove “that cloud of suspicion” that hangs over police.

*

Times stories on the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division scandal are available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/lapd.