Feuds Over Rampart Report to Test Divided Police Panel

Confronted by the Los Angeles Police Department’s stinging self-analysis, city leaders Wednesday reeled, argued and puzzled over what to do next, a debate that thrust the divided Police Commission into the biggest quandary of its recent history.

How the commissioners resolve that dilemma may determine the future of civilian oversight of a department that historically has been one of Los Angeles’ most powerful and controversial institutions.

With its work analyzing the events surrounding the Rampart police scandal barely begun, the commission already is showing signs of strain, both internally and in its relationship with Mayor Richard Riordan, who appoints its five members. In a briefing Tuesday night, the LAPD’s leaders presented commissioners with the department’s Board of Inquiry report, and Riordan asked panel members to appear at a news conference Wednesday morning alongside Chief Bernard C. Parks to receive the document.

Sources said that Police Commission President Gerald Chaleff balked at that idea, worried that the commission’s presence would imply endorsement of a report the panel is charged with reviewing in coming weeks.

At that, the sources said that Deputy Police Chief Michael Bostic, one of the authors, erupted in annoyance and complained that the commission’s reluctance to publicly accept the report was an insult to him and his colleagues.

On Wednesday, Chaleff declined to discuss the meeting, saying only: “We have to examine this report with a critical eye. The future of local civilian control is in our hands.”

But despite the issue’s importance--or perhaps because of it--tensions among the city’s top officials escalated Wednesday and spilled over into new arenas, as Los Angeles’ leaders insulted and annoyed one another, tried to deflect blame from themselves and engaged in a theatrical, embarrassing face-off in the mayor’s news conference room.

Riordan Denies Prejudging Report

Riordan used his news conference to lavish praise on the LAPD report, calling it thorough, detailed, professional and nothing less than the most candid self-appraisal ever performed by a public agency “in the history of mankind.”

Then, moments later, Riordan argued that he had not prejudged the document, which he said he had not finished reading, and he stressed that he expected his police commissioners to give it a tough review. Later, a spokeswoman said Riordan’s preliminary appreciation of the report is not meant to put pressure on his commissioners; in the past, Riordan and police commissioners have come to different views on key issues, most notably the appointment of an interim chief in 1997, when commissioners defied Riordan and he stood by them anyway.

This time, however, the issues are far graver--a fact that Wednesday seemed to bring out the worst in the city’s leaders.

As Riordan addressed a crowded room of reporters, five City Council members thumped on the locked door of the press room. They had been locked out on instructions of the mayor’s staff. Once the mayor finished, the council members burst inside and announced that they had been threatened with arrest. They furiously attacked Riordan for keeping important information out of their hands as they contemplate their role in the unfolding police scandal.

“This is symbolic of this administration and its desire to control information,” Councilwoman Laura Chick said. Councilwoman Rita Walters complained that a guard had shut the door on her arm.

Walters, Chick and council members Mark Ridley-Thomas, Ruth Galanter and Jackie Goldberg--who form the core of the council’s anti-Riordan contingent--joined in denouncing the mayor’s refusal to let them attend the press briefing. They called it typical of a mayor who they feel has contempt for the city’s legislative body.

On the substantive issues, the lawmakers differed in some respects, but generally expressed skepticism about the Police Commission’s ability to examine the LAPD’s work.

Goldberg questioned whether the commission is sufficiently independent of the mayor to conduct a genuine review of the LAPD and said later that she was nervous about the prospect that commissioners would feel pressure from the mayor to accept the LAPD report as written. Similarly, Chick said her faith in the commission’s oversight had been shaken by the report and other revelations about the Rampart scandal.

“What have they been doing for the last 6 1/2 years?” she asked. During much of that period, Chick headed the council’s Public Safety Committee, which also has responsibility for LAPD oversight.

Faced with ever-expanding evidence of a Police Department that failed its city, officials spent much of the day juggling admissions of general responsibility with defenses of their individual actions.

Riordan shrugged off the suggestion that he should be held personally accountable for warnings about hiring too many police officers too quickly.

At his news conference, the mayor adamantly denied that former Chief Willie L. Williams ever warned him against carrying out Riordan’s campaign pledge to hire thousands of police officers in his first term. Pressed on the matter by reporter Joe Domanick, a longtime observer of the LAPD who wrote a well-received book on the department, Riordan asked Domanick for the source of his information and, when Domanick declined to provide it, the mayor brusquely insisted that Williams had never warned him of any risks.

“He didn’t tell it to me,” Riordan said.

Whether or not Williams expressed his reservations directly to Riordan, the then-chief made his view of the buildup abundantly and publicly clear. On July 13, 1993, Williams said in an interview with The Times: “We cannot hire, train and put on the street a net increase of 3,000 in the next four years. We don’t have the capacity.”

An article quoting Williams to that effect appeared on the paper’s front page the following day.

Williams, in that interview and several published follow-ups in ensuing days, pledged to try to hire as many officers as possible, but he continued to warn of the dangers of a rapid buildup of the force.

“I’m going to try to meet the mayor’s goal,” Williams said. “That’s the job of the chief of police, but I’m sure the same as the mayor, that we don’t want to do anything that’s going to put an inappropriate or inadequately trained officer out on the street.”

The issue of rapid hiring has emerged as one of many in the wake of the Rampart scandal. The Police Department’s review concluded that for years, the LAPD has failed to conduct adequate background checks on its officers. The report added that the background check issue continues to hamper the department, and Riordan said Wednesday that he intends to take immediate steps to resolve it.

Commission Divided Over Inquiry

Riordan’s initiatives, however, are finding increasingly tough going with council members and others.

That has complicated the work of the Police Commission, whose own members are deeply divided about how to go about their work.

Sources say that two commissioners, Chaleff and Dean Hansell, are inclined to pursue an aggressive inquiry, perhaps hiring outside help. At least one, Raquel de la Rocha, is said to be leaning toward a briefer investigation.

That makes Herbert Boeckmann and Warren Jackson the commission’s swing votes. Boeckmann is ideologically conservative but not doctrinaire and sources say it is hard to predict where he will come down in the current debate. For his part, Jackson managed to irritate both sides in a recent controversy over the shooting of a homeless woman by an LAPD officer, and his vacillating on that and other issues has made him a wild card on the panel.

Despite the fading confidence of some council members in the commission’s independence--particularly its independence from Riordan--others remain convinced that it is the best agency to conduct the review that now is before it.

Council members Cindy Miscikowski and Mike Feuer said they have complete confidence in the commission.

“The first step in this process is to provide the resources the commission deems necessary to perform this crucial oversight,” Feuer said. “Ideally, they will rise to the challenge. . . . In order to hold the commission accountable, you have to create the conditions where the commission can be effective in its role. It is premature to say this structure cannot work.”

Miscikowski agreed.

“The commission is now at a critical juncture,” she said. “I expect that it will do its job--and that is to perform an aggressive and independent analysis of the report.”

And yet, the commission is struggling, painfully at times, to have itself taken seriously.

At the Police Department’s news conference Wednesday, four commissioners attended, as Riordan had asked them to do. They sat at the side of the room, listening to the contentious exchanges between the police chief and reporters.

When Parks concluded his remarks, the commissioners were invited on stage to discuss their role in evaluating the Board of Inquiry report. By that point, however, much of the audience had had enough. As Chaleff read his statement, television crews collected their microphones, and much of the LAPD’s command staff headed for the exit.

One commission source later described the news conference as an embarrassment for the panel.

Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this article.