71 More Cases May Be Voided Due to Rampart

Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn said Monday that at least 71 more criminal convictions may have to be overturned because of credibility problems with LAPD officers implicated in the department’s ongoing corruption scandal.

The misdemeanor cases--many of them involving drug and gun arrests--are in addition to the 99 felony convictions that authorities previously identified as being tainted by alleged police misconduct.

“We want to make sure that people aren’t suffering under this cloud of having a conviction if they don’t deserve one,” Hahn said in an interview with The Times. “A criminal conviction is a criminal conviction, even if it is a misdemeanor. It can seriously affect your life.”

The city attorney said he expects that his prosecutors will come across many more convictions that may have to be overturned as their review of cases continues.

The cases in question involve officers who are under investigation in connection with the Rampart corruption probe and whose testimony was deemed key to the convictions. Misdemeanor convictions can carry punishments of up to a year in jail and thousands of dollars in fines.

Hahn also said he is implementing a host of reforms within his office to ensure that officers are identified and investigated as soon as prosecutors suspect that they have committed misconduct. Specifically, he said, high-level managers in his office will directly contact the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division whenever there are serious questions about an officer’s credibility.

Hahn said a formal procedure needs to be established because prosecutors’ complaints to officers’ supervisors were not always pursued in the past.

“We realized you can’t depend on the LAPD anymore,” said Hahn. The Rampart scandal looms as a major issue in the campaign for mayor, in which Hahn is a candidate. In recent weeks he has been at pains to stake out an independent position on the issue.

Hahn, for example, said he will recommend to LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks that the department take steps to improve officers’ skills in writing arrest reports. Hahn said prosecutors have noticed that LAPD officers do not always properly document their observations or activities in those reports.

Ex-officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez, the man at the center of the scandal, has told authorities that Rampart anti-gang officers routinely fabricated observations in arrest reports as they framed innocent people.

Hahn said he also would like to see officers use audiotape recorders during undercover operations whenever possible to augment the evidence in cases.

“This would greatly enhance the efficiency of prosecution in that we would anticipate an increase in pleas as well as an increase in jury trial convictions,” Sue L. Fraunes, a supervising city attorney, wrote in an internal memo to Hahn.

Fraunes said that in many instances, undercover LAPD officers already are wired because of safety concerns. “Clearly the technology exists,” she said, to tape-record the officers’ conversations with suspects.

On another issue, Hahn said the LAPD should make sure that only officers who are certified as drug experts are allowed to render expert opinions in police reports and in court on issues involving narcotics. Too often, the city attorney said, officers without the proper training and certification present themselves as experts when they are not.

“Hindsight is 20/20 here, but we have to think about how we can do our job better,” Hahn said. “Officer credibility is going to be a big issue in all the cases we’re prosecuting now.”

Shortly after the corruption scandal broke in September, eight lawyers from the city attorney’s office embarked on a massive review of misdemeanor cases dating back to 1995 and involving at least one of the LAPD officers under investigation. The LAPD provided the city attorney’s office with the names of 25 officers under scrutiny, and prosecutors identified 16 other officers from media reports and documents from the district attorney’s office.

After reviewing more than 650 misdemeanor cases, city prosecutors have found 71 that may have to be overturned. Those were given to the LAPD for further investigation.

Prosecutors pulled cases that either directly or substantially involved current or former Rampart officers under investigation. They also included cases in which the reports, as written by the officers, seemed suspicious.

For example, Hahn said there was one case involving multiple defendants in which, if the police are to be believed, each defendant had precisely the same amount of money in his pocket when arrested.

Hahn said he wants the LAPD’s corruption task force to question Perez about cases identified by his office. The city attorney said the defendants, officers and witnesses in all those cases also should be interviewed.

In addition, Hahn said, prosecutors already have gone to court successfully seeking the reversal or dismissal of nine other misdemeanor cases. All of those cases involved Perez.

“How are you ever going to rely on the credibility of a Perez case?” Hahn asked. “He’s a punched ticket in terms of credibility. And there are other officers that I think are going to be falling into that category.”

Across the street from City Hall, county prosecutors also are busy looking for tainted convictions. To date, at least 60 felony cases have been thrown out of court as a result of alleged police misconduct. Although the LAPD has publicly acknowledged that 99 defendants have been wrongly convicted of crimes, prosecutors and legal observers estimate that the actual figure is much higher.

At least 30 LAPD officers, including three sergeants, have been either relieved of duty, suspended, fired or have quit in the wake of the probe. At least 70 officers, including the 30, are under investigation for either committing crimes or misconduct or helping to cover up such activities.

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* PAYING PRICE FOR RAMPART

Mayor’s proposed budget allocates $41 million for costs linked to the LAPD scandal. B1