Taking Out Insurance Against Rampart Disasters

Up in smoke.

That’s where all those lovely millions may go, the city of Los Angeles’ divvy out of the $206 billion in conscience money wrested from the nation’s tobacco companies by all the states and cities suing over decades of medical bills for their smoke-sickened citizens.

As they say--easy come (cough, wheeze, hack), easy go.

Like seismic aftershocks, the Rampart police scandal just won’t stop shaking the city up--or shaking it down. The price tag for the frame-ups, thefts, perjuries, bad shootings and cover-ups is already pegged at $125 million for 99 people done wrong by Rampart cowboys.

Mayor Richard Riordan says he favors converting much of the $316 million coming the city’s way into a fund to pay the hundreds more who will likely join the long line to sue the cops and the city that hired them.

This has not gone down well with some city leaders, nor with many Angelenos. This is our nest egg, our rainy-day stash of cash, some are hollering. It’s blood money and should pay to keep more life’s blood from being shed in enslavement to Big Nicotine, others argue more sensibly.

They’re right--but then what? How else to pay the tab? Float yet more bonds and perhaps imperil the city’s credit? Cut services that are only now recovering from the slash-and-burn budgets of the ‘90s?

Rampart’s $125-million down payment alone could probably fill every pothole in town. It could fund the entire library system for about a year, the Department of Animal Regulation for 10 years, and the city ethics commission for 85 years--which maybe it should, opening a branch office at every police station.

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Three times in two pages, the tobacco settlement declares that its purpose is to stop children from getting hooked on smokes. But across the nation, less than 10% of the tobacco windfall is being earmarked for that.

True, San Diego is considering using most for health care programs, and Los Angeles County supervisors intend to use the lion’s share to replace County-USC Medical Center.

But Orange County supervisors, climbing back from bankruptcy, voted to spend most of the tobacco money on cutting debt and adding jail cells. Ventura County has been advised to use the first settlement check to mend its tattered financial affairs.

Still, compared with other states, California has long-standing and successful anti-smoking programs already up and running.

Two cigarette taxes--Prop. 99, passed in 1988, and Prop. 10, which took effect last year--put almost a billion bucks a year into health, childhood and anti-smoking programs that have ranked the state second only to Utah for the lowest percentage of smokers. Yet Prop. 10’s 50-cent-a-pack cigarette tax is at risk; a measure on the March 7 ballot would repeal it and the millions it raises that must go to childhood programs.

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Naturally, that tobacco settlement money glittered like Vegas slot winnings to cities and counties that essentially live paycheck to paycheck, a condition that has been made worse by millions of dollars being paid for out-of-line and over-the-top police work. We the people become we the check-writers.

Rodney King cost L.A. $3.8 million. In 1999, the city paid out $32 million in police-related lawsuits. But L.A. County still holds the dubious record--$23 million, including interest, for the time deputies waded into the bridal shower of a Samoan family in Cerritos. The county floated bonds to pay the judgment, but then turned around to recover money from each of the cities that hires county sheriff’s deputies as their police force.

Those cities contribute into a liability trust fund which still comes nowhere close to $23 million. Many contract cities have groused that while they have no say-so in hiring or training or disciplining deputies, they’re still on the hook to pay the bills when things go bad.

Perhaps it’s time to consider two ideas:

An upfront offer the victims of Rampart misdeeds can’t refuse--no protracted suits, no huge legal fees.

And maybe officers of the law should carry, besides guns and badges, their own liability insurance, as doctors and lawyers carry malpractice coverage, the premiums varying according to each officer’s job performance.

The taxpayers of the city of L.A. will be taking hits for Rampart for years. Eight out of 10 LAPD officers do not live in L.A.; why not ask a little something more from them, to help out the city that employs them?

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Patt Morrison writes today for Al Martinez, who has the day off. Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.