20-Day Suspension Recommended for Rampart Captain

A Los Angeles Police Department captain who failed to disclose everything he had learned in the aftermath of an alleged beating at the Rampart Division should be suspended for 20 days, an LAPD disciplinary panel concluded Monday.

The three members of the department Board of Rights said they were especially concerned that Capt. Richard Meraz, a 35-year veteran of the force, did not take responsibility for several administrative missteps at the Rampart station.

“Command accountability is a key issue,” said Capt. Gregory Meyer, who led the board.

In that regard, Meraz was guilty “of a failure of proactive leadership” and the board was “troubled” that Meraz had attempted to distance himself from that shortcoming.

“Command officers are accountable for those things that go wrong under their leadership,” the board said in its formal ruling. They should not evade their responsibility “by making excuses or pointing fingers.”

Until recently, Meraz was the commander of a controversial CRASH anti-gang unit at the Rampart Division that is at the center of a wide-ranging corruption probe. Transferred from Rampart to Central Division, he had faced the possibility of termination.

The board voted 2 to 1 to recommend the 20-day suspension that had been suggested by Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, who now will make the final determination. The panel’s lone civilian member dissented, arguing that the suspension was too severe.

Meraz is the highest-ranking officer to be disciplined in the corruption scandal so far. The 20-day suspension is believed to be the stiffest penalty ever levied against a senior LAPD commander.

In its decision Monday, however, the board insisted that the captain’s failings were more a matter of neglecting to follow the proper bureaucratic procedures than the kind of police misconduct that now has 19 L.A. County prosecutors and a dozen investigators working full time to probe the worst police scandal in the city’s history.

The disciplinary hearing arose from a March 1998 incident after an informant allegedly was severely beaten the month before during questioning at the Rampart station.

According to the board, Meraz failed to document a key conversation with an officer who knew of the incident and failed to tell investigators of a potential witness. In what the board called his most significant failure, he did not launch a separate misconduct investigation into the officer’s failure to properly register the informant, as required by departmental regulations.

With family members sitting behind him, Meraz listened without visible reaction as the board read its lengthy ruling, making a few notes with a gold ballpoint pen. He then shook hands with each of the board members and quickly slipped through a thicket of television cameras and reporters.

Meraz would not answer questions about his own punishment.

The captain heard his penalty decided while on a break from sitting on a similar disciplinary board in which he was judging another officer’s misconduct in an unrelated case.

Meraz’s attorney, Barry Levin, called the suspension harsh, but said his client probably would serve it without protest and fully expected to return to command.

“It is a harsh discipline for Capt. Meraz,” Levin said.

“At the same time, I think the process was very fair. The board did not buckle to [political] pressure or to the media pressure that this was the captain responsible for everything that happened at Rampart.

“I hope that everyone realizes how far the LAPD will go in airing these kinds of issues,” Levin said. “The department is cannibalizing itself and eating its best and brightest.”