Rampart Scandal Rolls On

Far from the limelight of last week’s Democratic National Convention, serious negotiations continued on the troubles of the Los Angeles Police Department and what will be done about its corruption scandal. The main goal should be for city officials and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to avoid a costly and drawn-out federal lawsuit.

What is widely known as the Rampart scandal remains undiminished by recent events. Consider the following developments:

* On July 28, LAPD Officer Nino Durden was arrested and charged with attempted murder in the 1996 shooting of a suspect, Javier Francisco Ovando. Durden is the former partner of Rafael Perez, whose confessions opened the scandal. The new charge was the most serious to date against an LAPD officer in the Rampart case.

* On Aug. 8, the City Council agreed to pay a $580,000 settlement to a man jailed for eight months after he was allegedly framed by two LAPD officers. This third Rampart-related payout brings the direct cost to city taxpayers to $980,000 and counting. There are more than 60 cases and 59 claims pending in which Rampart Division misconduct is alleged.

* That same day, a Superior Court judge overturned a drug sales conviction because jurors had not been told that the prosecution’s chief witness, an LAPD officer, had been relieved of duty for allegedly using drugs himself. That was one of 100 convictions that have been thrown out in the scandal.

* One day later, a San Fernando Valley murder case was dropped after prosecutors’ only eyewitness said he was pressured into identifying the defendant by an LAPD sergeant, who has since been charged with unrelated crimes in the Rampart affair. And on that same day, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office said that it expected 250 to 275 lawsuits to be filed in federal court on behalf of alleged victims of police corruption in the Rampart Division.

City finances and services are in peril already because of the potential cost. What folly it would be for the city to thumb its nose at the federal pressure and the vast mountain of evidence arrayed against it and dare the Justice Department to file a lawsuit.

The Justice Department wants to use the strength and commitment of a federal consent decree to finally force the city toward true police reforms. Adding weight to this position are the unfulfilled goals of the 1991 Christopher Commission, the LAPD’s failure to heed warnings in 1997 from the city’s first police inspector general and the shocked tone of the LAPD’s own internal review and its acknowledgment of a nearly complete breakdown of internal supervision.

Justice officials want an outside monitor to report on the progress of reforms, a revamping of internal police investigations and the addition of powers to the department’s civilian oversight. They want expansion of the LAPD’s internal affairs division, a major upgrade of its computerized system for tracking officers, the creation of new training programs and a bolstered civilian leadership for auditing and publicly reporting on the Police Department’s performance. All of that seems reasonable and necessary. The City Council, which has the authority to commit the city to such a course, should decisively embrace those requirements.

There are some caveats. The Justice Department must clarify, publicly, that its professed goal of strengthening civilian oversight would leave the city’s Police Commission and inspector general with stronger, well-defined powers. Justice officials must also make clear that the outside monitor would not assume or infringe on the powers of the local civilian overseers or get involved in the day-to-day operations of the LAPD.

If the city and Justice Department can settle reform issues soon, Los Angeles and its Police Department can set out on the proper path for the future. The Rampart scandal has already cost Angelenos plenty, in all sorts of ways.