Garcetti’s Key Third-Term Goal: Rampart Scandal Cleanup

On March 7, GIL GARCETTI faces two challengers in his quest for a third term as district attorney of Los Angeles County. The 58-year-old Garcetti, a career prosecutor, was first elected in 1992. He led the office during the trials of O.J. Simpson and Lyle and Eric Menendez and takes credit for major initiatives that have helped to cut crime countywide. Garcetti was interviewed by Times staff writers Molly Selvin and Tim Rutten.

Question: Let’s talk about the Rampart scandal. Is this the most distressing thing that’s occurred?

Answer: It is. It is the most important case my office has ever handled since I’ve been the D.A. It is my obligation now to get to the bottom of this, and I will, we will, be working closely with the LAPD. I think we will have a better police department when we finish with this, because not only will officers be fired, but I think they will learn that it’s simply not worth it, because you are very likely to go to state prison.

Q: How do you respond to those who question your own deputies for having relied on the testimony of these officers . . . in hundreds, dozens, thousands of cases perhaps?

A: Our role is to seek justice based within the law and the ethics that we have as prosecutors. But prosecutors are human beings, they’re not clairvoyant. When a police officer tells you that this is what happened, and there doesn’t seem to be any independent inconsistency of that other than a defendant saying that’s not the way it happened, and you have no other reason to disbelieve this officer, you haven’t seen other cases where there’s a doubt or a question or a gut reaction, you’re going to go forward.

Q: Is there anything that you feel you’ve learned from this about the necessity of additional skepticism regarding police testimony? Any change you’ve adopted, things you’ve put in place, attitudes you’re attempting to cultivate through training? Because clearly, this could happen again.

A: It could happen again. There have been some small changes. And some of those have been at our direction, some have been, you’re just a more aware prosecutor. I’m the one who does the final hiring, and I bring up this issue about police officers and their testimony. And their fudging and their lying, [prosecutors] have to be aware of that. We have an incredible training program that we didn’t have some years ago. And then we finish training and I meet with them all, for two or three hours, and this is one of the issues I bring up: when you have a doubt, when you have a question. We talk about that when something hits me wrong, or I know this officer lied, or whatever, that’s your responsibility to know how to go forward. But most important, when you do have an officer who you believe is lying, that has to be reported to the [head deputy D.A.]. We prosecuted officers for perjury. We’re not talking about a bucketful of officers, but we do that.

Q: Other than Mark Fuhrman, when was the last time an LAPD officer was prosecuted?

A: I can’t answer that. I don’t know about LAPD, but we just prosecuted the police chief of Hawaiian Gardens for testifying in court, for perjury.

Q: If the LAPD had had an honest officer-involved shooting evaluation system, maybe it would have noticed the bad shootings in Rampart. Same question for your office. If you had had the “roll-out” teams (a recently reactivated program in which prosecutors go to the scenes of police shootings), if you guys had gone to Shatto Place--where two apparently unarmed men were shot, one fatally, by police in 1996--would it have been different?

A: Certainly if we had gone to [disgraced former Officer Rafael] Perez, it would not have made a difference.

Q: How about Shatto?

A: I don’t think so. Based on what I know, I can say categorically, in the [Javier Francisco] Ovando case [in which officers shot an unarmed man, planted a gun on him and perjured themselves to send him to prison], when they had two police officers [Perez and Nino Durden] who said this is what happened, we had no other criminal evidence, the physical evidence all corroborated what the officers said, and we didn’t have any reason at that time to doubt the two officers. So we show up, and there is nothing we’re going to find.

I know, based on my experience, that the vast majority of officer-involved shootings are not close cases in terms of being criminal conduct. Maybe bad tactics, judgment, whatever. But there is, based on the facts we’re able to establish, there’s no criminality on the police officer’s part. In an Ovando shooting, perhaps even the Shatto Place shooting, where you have one bad shooting, is it worth it to have roll-out teams that maybe would have uncovered it? My answer would be yes. It is worth it. We started this program again.

Q: You’ve been in office for eight years. Even the president of the United States doesn’t serve three terms. Why should voters reelect you again?

A: Both the experience and the wisdom that I have gained out of difficult experiences have made me a better district attorney and a more effective district attorney and, with humility, a more respected district attorney. I believe I can accomplish a lot more because of that. In my second term, I was a more effective D.A. than in the first term, and I can even do better in the third term. There still is a lot to do. I really want to focus on juvenile crime. Juvenile crime to me is where we can do more to prevent crime rather than simply react to the latest crime and prosecute it.

Q: What’s your position on Proposition 21, on juvenile crime?

A: I’m neutral. Most of it I like. I don’t like the continuing expansion of the death penalty. If we continue to expand the death penalty, pretty soon all first-degree murderers are going to be special circumstance cases.

I think juvenile crime is so important right now. The system has ignored the first, second, even the third-time minor offender. We kiss them off until he or she has committed a violent crime, and then we come down on them like a ton of bricks. There’s a huge mental health problem with kids who are coming into the juvenile justice system, and everyone kind of kisses that off. Why do we wait for them to physically mature? No one’s taking care of the mental illness problem until, again, they kill someone or rape someone, and then they’re put in prison, and they’re still not getting any real help there.

I’m still answering your question about why I still have the passion about being district attorney. We really have to do something about financial elder abuse, because you have a huge, vulnerable group of people there. It’s over 900,000 people in the county of Los Angeles who are age 65 or older, and we’re going to hit 950,000 by the end of this year or next year. In the area of cyber-crime, we have one lawyer and three investigators assigned to it right now. We are the first office in the nation, local prosecutor’s office, that has this. And we prosecuted some cases. I will guarantee within a couple years you’re going to have 20 lawyers there. Cyber-crime is just taking off. And the vulnerability and what it could mean to individuals, families and businesses is immense. And I want to be on the cutting edge of that. What we continue to do with family violence: I’ll take a fair amount of credit for the somewhat dramatic reduction in the number of domestic homicide cases in L.A. We go into the bars and clubs where young people go and try to warn the women about drug rape, because that’s a huge problem in the community. And [we] try to tell the guys you may not be a street thug, but you’re a rapist, and you’re going to go to prison for the rest of your life if you engage in drug rape. This is what the D.A. should be doing. The last thing is in the area of hate crimes. Since I created the nation’s first hate crime unit, it has been hugely successful.

Q: Back to Rampart, do you think you ought to provide more information to the defense bar?

A: No. We have provided the defense with as much information as I think we can without compromising the integrity of our investigation. We gave information to the public defender, and they can do whatever they want with those cases. If you want to go seek a writ, that’s our responsibility. I really don’t want to compromise that investigation. We’re not talking about the extraordinarily large number of cases that has been printed. We’re in reality talking about a few hundred. It is my responsibility not only to hold the guilty accountable but to protect the innocent.

Q: How much of what occurred in Rampart was made possible because of the taint that attaches to the words “gang membership?”

A: I don’t know if I can answer that question. You had an officer who was by all accounts an excellent officer, who at some point went 180 degrees. What made a cop go bad, I don’t know. Is it money? Is it power? Is it just an evil streak that comes through?

Q: Virtually everybody caught up in these injustices, though, were immigrants or children of immigrants; they almost all have Latino surnames. They almost all were alleged to be members of gangs or associates of gangs. Did the system accept the word of police officers against theirs more readily because of who they were?

A: The answer is no. I’ve never seen evidence of that. Does the system treat the kind of individual you described a little harsher? Maybe. There is no perfect system of justice in the world. This is, I think, the best it gets. Are there going to be mistakes? Absolutely. It’s going to cut both ways. It’s really hurtful, I think, when an innocent person is convicted or pleads guilty or is forced into that position.

Q: Let’s talk about the Belmont Learning Complex. What should the D.A.’s office be doing on this? Why no action yet?

A: There has been plenty of action by our office. We have been working with [LAUSD chief investigator] Don Mullinax for a very long time. We’re not an investigative agency, we’re a prosecutorial agency. So we have to rely 99% of the time in our cases on an investigating agency, be it the police department or regulatory agency, to handle the investigation. With Belmont, I can tell you we’ve been extremely active for a long time. We have at least five or six people working full-time as a team on reviewing all of Belmont to determine, is there evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a crime is committed, first. Second, that a particular individual committed that crime. I want to prosecute that case because I was as outraged as everyone else about how much that has cost. And the kids who are suffering as a result. But I also have to understand the ethics and the legal responsibilities I have. I don’t prosecute people who are dumb, who are incompetent, who are less than criminally negligent. When we’re ready to move forward on something, we’ll move forward.

Q: Is there a sense of when that might be?

A: My guess is that this team that I just told you about will be working together for several months.

Q: Several months more?

A: And probably working longer than that. Will we have anything before that, in terms of criminal prosecution, I don’t want to speculate.

Q: How about the assignment of trial deputies? Is there any merit to allegations that internal politics and favoritism somehow militate against having the strongest prosecutors in the toughest cases?

A: I rarely get involved directly or indirectly in the assignment of lawyers to cases. I do occasionally get involved. And it’s strictly on the basis of who is the best trial lawyer that we can put on this case who is available, who can handle this particular case given the circumstances of the case, given the nature of the case, given the likely defendant and defense lawyer in the case. We have to consider all of that, and do. Since I’ve been D.A., I have probably been directly or indirectly involved in the assignment of half a dozen. All the others are done usually by the head deputy.

Q: Is there anything else you want to say?

A: I’m very proud of where we’ve come in eight years. We begin with the hiring of the deputies. I’ve changed the diversity of our office, and I think it benefits everyone to have as much diversity as we have. The training that we had was really shameful. I directed a change in that. We now have a full month of training to start off with. We’re second to none in the nation on training. They come back after six months for an additional three days. The computerization of our office. That was a big undertaking, but everyone has a computer. The morale of the office, contrary to what my opponents say, I think is extremely high. I easily won the plebiscite [conducted last month among deputy district attorneys] here. Pay raises have been beyond anyone’s expectations. I have fought for them. And they got parity. Even my detractors, who said I’d never get it done, were amazed that we were able to get parity with the county counsel. And the promotions. The promotions have been immense. Women and minorities have seen the change in the office. I’m proud of that. Because our office now more closely resembles, I think, the community that it serves.