Council Writes Blank Check for Rampart Probe

After months of confusion, paralysis and mounting impatience, members of the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday finally confronted the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart scandal, voting to write a blank check to the Police Commission and its inspector general, who is charged with reviewing the LAPD’s internal investigation and recommendations for change.

The inspector general, lawyer Jeffrey C. Eglash, welcomed the council action, and said he would confer with commissioners and their staff over the next several days about the resources he needs to do his work.

“We’ll be coming up with a plan of attack,” Eglash said. “We’ll do a complete, comprehensive, thorough review. . . . It’s ultimately going to be the commissioners who decide the scope of that.”

Eglash received a huge vote of confidence from the commission Tuesday, when it voted to rule the fatal May 21 shooting of homeless woman Margaret Mitchell a violation of LAPD policy. That vote adopted Eglash’s analysis of the controversial shooting, and in the process both overruled Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and ignored suggestions from Mayor Richard Riordan’s administration about how to consider the case. The commission’s vote, therefore, demonstrates its faith in Eglash and suggests the panel’s willingness to face down political pressure.

At the same time, the commission’s vote--a bare 3-2 majority--makes clear that it is a panel badly divided. That is an extremely difficult problem for a board about to face the most daunting challenge of its tenure.

Earlier in the day Tuesday, the commission tried to demonstrate its resolve on that issue as well, voting to direct Parks to complete his long-overdue Board of Inquiry report on the scandal and turn it in by March 1. Gerald L. Chaleff, president of the commission, said the board would demand answers from the chief and would empower its inspector general to make sure that the LAPD inquiry is thorough. “We understand the significance of this,” he assured the City Council.

Council members also are weighing changes in the way police shootings are investigated and next week will consider a motion to bring in an outside investigator to probe the deepening LAPD corruption scandal.

Shocked Into ‘Paralysis’

Taken together, the council and commission actions Tuesday represented a sudden awakening of a dormant political establishment, which has fretted quietly as the scandal has expanded month after month. Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, one of the few city officials who has been outspoken on the issue, described the city leadership as having been “shocked to a degree of paralysis.”

Now, he added, “people are finally moving from being shocked to being activated to help get to the bottom of this.”

In large part, that change was sparked last week by visits that a number of city leaders got from an elected official with no formal authority over the matter.

On Friday, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a former member of the City Council, visited several council members and others at City Hall, urging them to respond forcefully to revelations about police corruption. Although Yaroslavsky declined to comment on his discussions with the city officials, others said he was passionate and demanding.

“This is the worst thing ever,” Yaroslavsky told the city leaders. “Imagine it’s 1965, [civil rights workers Andrew] Goodman, [Michael] Schwerner and [James] Chaney are killed in Mississippi, and you’re the speaker of the House of Representatives. Do you order a study or ask for a commission? Or do you go . . . nuts?”

Yaroslavsky’s conclusion, sources said: “This is a moral issue. It’s about undermining our way of life. What are you going to do about it?”

Confronted with that scathing admonition, puzzled by Riordan’s relative invisibility on an issue that threatens to redefine his legacy and staggered by last week’s public disclosures in The Times of the scandal’s breadth, council members leaped into action over the weekend--and Tuesday vented months of pent-up frustration.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter called the Rampart officers under question “disgusting” and their actions “an insult to everyone in this city.” Councilman Mike Feuer described himself as “appalled by this behavior.”

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, in approving the resolution to give the Police Commission whatever resources it needs to tackle the problem, warned Chaleff: “We have come to a very critical moment. This is one of those be-careful-of-what-you-ask-for [instances], Mr. Chaleff. You finally got it.”

Feuer and Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, two of the lawmakers visited by Yaroslavsky, introduced a motion to give the Police Commission and its inspector general all the resources they need to conduct their investigation, a proposal that they agreed to in a meeting with Riordan on Saturday.

As chairman of the council’s Budget Committee, Feuer had been inclined to go straight to Eglash and ask him for a report on staffing and other needs. He was dissuaded from that course, however, and agreed to the compromise offered Tuesday.

“City leaders are really on trial here,” Feuer said. “The test of our mettle is whether collectively we have the will to assure an independent, thorough, extensive examination of what we anticipate will be a lengthy Police Department Board of Inquiry report.”

Miscikowski agreed, and echoed her colleague’s reflections on the historic importance of civic leaders’ response to the Rampart scandal.

“This is a very critical juncture in the crossroads of our city,” she said. “What this really underscores is the need, the demand and the process now set in place for an outside, comprehensive, independent review that is going to be conducted by our Police Commission, with whatever resources they deem necessary.”

The Police Commission itself is struggling with the Rampart matter, torn between a mayor who appointed its members and strongly supports Parks and a restless police reform community that questions the LAPD’s ability to get to the bottom of corruption in its midst.

Those tensions have given rise to speculation that Riordan is unhappy with his commission, particularly Chaleff for failing to support Parks sufficiently. Riordan did little to erase that feeling when, in his remarks to the council, he described the resolution as “an important step to showing the public that the chief, the City Council and I stand together in support of our Police Department,” omitting any reference to Chaleff or the commission.

A spokeswoman stressed later that Riordan’s oversight was merely an accident, and the mayor appeared at a news conference with Chaleff, Parks, Council President John Ferraro and council members Feuer and Miscikowski.

“We spoke with one voice,” Ferraro said afterward.

Their show of unanimity was not universally welcomed, however.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California rejected the council action to steer more money to the Police Commission. Ramona Ripston, executive director of the local ACLU and a longtime supporter of bringing greater civilian oversight to the LAPD, said she and her organization have lost faith in the commission’s ability to exercise its authority.

“The Police Commission is too much a part of the organization,” she said. “We need an independent commission,”

The ACLU bought advertisements in several newspapers today calling for appointment of an outside panel to investigate the allegations.

“Mayor Riordan: the stakes are too high to sit this one out,” the ads say. “The time has come for real reform.”

Similarly, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) said that outside intervention is the only thing that will clear the air at the LAPD. Hayden called for the U.S. Department of Justice and the state attorney general to launch their own investigations.

James Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, criticized Parks’ request for millions of dollars to beef up LAPD internal investigative functions. Lafferty described that plan as “a cynical pitch,” and added that Parks’ recommendation to hire additional captains and sergeants is misguided, because “those supervising the line officers are as guilty as those they were supposed to supervise.”

Clamor for Outside Inquiry

Faced with those increasingly pitched criticisms, the city’s political leadership faces a tough campaign to forestall outside review of the LAPD.

Indeed, Councilman Joel Wachs is proposing that option. Although no action was taken on it Tuesday, Wachs’ proposal--to convene an independent commission along the lines of the 1991 Christopher Commission that studied the LAPD in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating--has supporters inside and outside City Hall. Some observers predicted that if the Police Department’s Board of Inquiry report fails to put all doubts to rest about the scandal and the LAPD’s investigation of it, the city could soon face growing demands for an independent commission.

“Chief Parks has done a superb job investigating what happened,” said Wachs, a longtime supporter of the LAPD and a candidate for mayor in 2001. “But while the department proceeds with investigating what happened and punishing those responsible, we need outside help to determine why it happened and what can be done to prevent it from reoccurring.”

Yaroslavsky agreed.

The supervisor called Tuesday’s decision by the council “a step in the right direction,” but only a very small one.

“It’s a compromise between doing nothing and launching a broader inquiry by an outside panel,” he said. “Some people view this as a public relations problem. It’s not a public relations problem. It’s a criminal problem. And, even more important, it’s a moral problem. . . . Eventually, they [the city political leaders] are going to have to go further. There’s going to have to be outside review.”

Times staff writer Peter Y. Hong contributed to this story.