Rampart Scandal Isolates Riordan

The question for Mayor Richard Riordan arising out of the Rampart police crisis is this: How accountable is he for the worst corruption scandal in modern Los Angeles history?

Riordan claims credit for several achievements--the city’s economic recovery, the focusing of public outrage toward the school system, the overhauling of the City Charter--but no issue is more profoundly Riordan’s than the restoration of public safety and the rebuilding of the Los Angeles Police Department. As a result, the Rampart crisis cuts to the core of Riordan’s governance. And as political outrage over the scandal has grown, the crisis is testing the mayor and--in the view of a growing number of critics and a dispirited band of supporters--finding him wanting.

The conclusion that Riordan has badly mishandled the police scandal comes from two quarters--those who fault his recent actions and those who say he has paid too little attention over the years to recommendations that might have checked the corruption before it spread and took its toll on the LAPD and public confidence in law enforcement generally.

One example:

As of this week, there is a Washington bank account that contains $163,492, money waiting to be spent by Los Angeles. The federal government set aside that cash more than two years ago to help the LAPD track the performance of its own police officers, but the city has left it untouched rather than spend it on one of the most highly touted police reforms in recent memory.

All the usual excuses for bureaucratic failure are cited in this case--confused bidding practices, a proposed vendor with a spotty record, mixed signals from various agencies--but the bottom line is: For that money to go unspent, a number of promises had to be broken.

Riordan repeatedly pledged to fulfill the 1991 reforms drafted by Warren Christopher and a prestigious group of lawyers who studied the LAPD after the Rodney G. King beating and came up with scores of recommendations for addressing racism and excessive force by police officers. City Council members similarly declared their commitments to the Christopher reforms. In 1997, leaders of the Police Commission and the LAPD told the U.S. Justice Department that they would build a comprehensive officer-tracking system--a promise that secured the still-unspent Justice Department grant. A year later, then-Police Commission President Edith Perez proclaimed that the Christopher reforms were all but complete.

Officials now concede that in key areas, the reforms--which include improved officer tracking and training, as well as structural changes, such as the bolstering of the Police Commission’s power over the LAPD--remain far from finished.

“They were awarded the money some time ago,” said David Buchanan, a spokesman for the Justice Department agency that administers the grant. “They just haven’t utilized it.”

In a rare interview last week, Christopher expressed his unhappiness with the failure to implement some of the reforms he and his commission championed nearly a decade ago.

“It’s troubling to find that there are matters of real importance that were discussed in our report of nine years ago that remain unaddressed or not fully resolved today,” he said. “The failure of personnel evaluations to give a true picture of officers’ performance; the failure adequately to track and supervise problem officers; and the lack of regular psychological testing of officers are among the items on which I would have hoped to see greater progress.”

The failure to implement those reforms made the police misconduct in the Rampart scandal harder to detect, said Merrick Bobb, a Los Angeles lawyer, nationally recognized police expert and former Christopher Commission attorney. “Had those things been in place,” Bobb said, “the events linked to Rampart would have been less likely to have escaped the attention of the chain of command.”

As those comments indicate, the failure to complete the tracking system did not occur in isolation. By the LAPD’s own admission, that is just one of many examples of forgotten or half-fulfilled police reforms from the early 1990s, and those examples help explain why Riordan is becoming increasingly isolated in the Rampart police scandal. In fact, the mayor has appeared so ineffective and unfocused in recent weeks that some observers now believe his actions actually are undermining his own objective, which is to forestall the appointment of an independent commission to look at the LAPD.

“I’m not sure if Mayor Riordan is the mayor of the city of Los Angeles or the mayor of the Los Angeles Police Department,” lawyer Charles Lindner said in a recent interview with Bill Rosendahl, the host of a local cable television show.

It’s a question that, in various forms, is being asked across Los Angeles these days. Throughout the city’s political and governmental circles--even within the LAPD itself--observers say Riordan has muffed opportunities in the Rampart case and has bolstered his opponents at virtually every turn. Predictably, Riordan’s miscues have angered his critics. But they also have bewildered and frustrated his close friends and advisors, several of whom were interviewed for this article.

The growing uneasiness about Riordan’s role has helped convince even many sympathetic observers that an outside investigation now appears likely.

“It’s not a question of if,” one LAPD official said with resignation. “It’s a question of when. And that’s because of the mayor.”

A few examples cited by those who fault his recent actions:

On the day the LAPD released its Board of Inquiry report, Riordan praised it before he finished reading it, which some saw as evidence that he was willing to rely uncritically on police officials’ interpretation of the scandal. Behind closed doors, the mayor leaned on his commissioners to thank the report’s authors, and critics saw that as a demonstration of his lack of faith in their ability to do the right thing. In private conversations that have quickly leaked out, Riordan made clear to others that he doubts Police Commission President Gerald Chaleff’s abilities--sources say that on at least two occasions, the mayor has floated the idea of firing Chaleff, only to be dissuaded each time. That fueled the sense that Riordan is willing to undermine his own appointee.

Riordan Finds Reports Misleading

Riordan dismissed those criticisms, blaming some on misperceptions created or fueled by what he believes are misleading news reports, especially in The Times. On the issue of endorsing the LAPD’s Board of Inquiry report, for instance, the mayor said he had been thoroughly briefed when he praised it and described it as the most self-critical analysis by a public agency “in the history of mankind.”

Given that briefing and his familiarity with the report’s executive summary, an article in The Times that mentioned he had not finished reading the document was “a gotcha--cheap shot,” Riordan said.

Also, the mayor acknowledged having disagreed with Chaleff over how to handle the LAPD report, but said that, too, had been blown out of proportion. “It wasn’t a fight,” he said. “It was a disagreement.”

On the larger question of his performance, Riordan acknowledges some mistakes but stands by his record overall.

“I think we’re doing an excellent job,” he said. “It’s not perfect by any means. . . . But the most important thing a mayor can do is to pick strong people and delegate to them and empower them.”

Beyond those issues is another one that troubles many observers. By failing to implement the tracking system and other key recommendations of the Christopher Commission, the mayor fueled suspicions that he uses the recommendations when they suit his objectives--ousting former Chief Willie L. Williams, for instance--but has little fundamental regard for them.

Former Secretary of State Christopher did not accuse any single official of dropping the ball. But while others agree that there’s plenty of blame to go around, they are particularly critical of Riordan and Williams.

Change in Chiefs Didn’t Speed Reforms

Riordan himself said recently that he inherited Williams as chief and that Williams was singularly ineffective. Even Riordan’s critics concede that Williams often seemed paralyzed by the task of running the LAPD, much less reforming it, and that he was an obstacle in the way of implementing recommendations for retooling the organization.

But Riordan has had his own chief since 1997, and Bernard C. Parks’ more forceful style has not uncorked the logjam of reforms--as the chief’s own Board of Inquiry made clear. Moreover, Riordan rarely tolerates ineffective officials when they stand in the way of something he really wants.

Take the school system, for instance. There, Riordan has no authority whatsoever, but he launched an overthrow of the school board and continues to play an active role--both conferring with school officials and waging his own, freelance efforts to build new schools and help children.

There is little evidence of comparable commitment to police reform.

But Riordan has taken some actions related to the Rampart investigation. He convened a meeting of top city and county officials at one point. He has joined with Chief Parks in publicly prodding the district attorney into bringing charges against some of the suspect police officers. His staff forwarded a proposal for diverting anticipated tobacco settlement money into a litigation fund to pay judgments and settlements arising out of Rampart cases.

In light of that, some observers are particularly critical of the mayor for what they see as his selective use of Christopher and Christopher’s report--citing them to justify resistance to an outside inquiry, ignoring them when he or the LAPD doesn’t like the recommendations.

Overarching all those questions is one of style. Where Riordan tends to operate on his own, ignoring or even actively slighting the City Council--most notably when his staff locked council members out of a press briefing on the Board of Inquiry--some observers question whether that’s the right approach under the circumstances.

“I’m probably the mayor’s biggest supporter on the City Council,” said Councilman Joel Wachs. “And he’s yet to ever speak to me, not one word, about the Rampart crisis. . . . We’ve got a crisis in this city. We’ve got to pull together.”

That sentiment is widely voiced and little heeded, as council members, the city administrative officer and the mayor all continue to follow their own courses, often at odds with one another.

Even in the face of such divisions, other mayors might have explored ways to soothe a tense community. New York’s Rudy Giuliani, for instance, braved hecklers and protesters to meet briefly with the family of Amadou Diallo after police killed Diallo in a hail of gunfire. Riordan has not made contact with any of Rampart’s victims.

Scandal Seen as Having a Lower Priority

In fact, some officials argue that the Riordan administration has essentially advertised its indifference to the Rampart scandal. Last month, in discussing her move to take over the host committee for this summer’s Democratic National Convention, Deputy Mayor Noelia Rodriguez, one of Riordan’s longest-standing and most trusted aides, said her transfer demonstrated that the mayor’s No. 1 priority for 2000 was a successful convention. At best, that makes resolution of the worst police scandal in Los Angeles history the mayor’s second-highest priority for his final full year in office.

“That,” said one longtime Riordan friend and admirer, “was just the wrong thing to say.”

The mayor does regularly denounce the actions of the officers implicated so far in wrongdoing associated with the scandal. Riordan has pronounced himself “disgusted” by those actions, which he says are the doings of a few bad officers in a force of largely honest, dedicated and devoted ones.

Riordan also has described what he sees as the long-term way to address police corruption. “We have to punish the supervisors if we’re going to stop this kind of stuff from going on,” he said in an interview last week, as he has on a number of recent occasions.

Critics acknowledge those moves but say they add up to a thin record.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has been one of the area’s most outspoken public officials on the Rampart scandal, said Riordan’s handling of the matter has bolstered the case for an independent investigation. Wachs, a leading advocate of that approach, agreed. Even political officials and candidates wary of confronting the mayor directly say they too are coming to believe that an outside review of the LAPD is needed, partly because of the mayor’s actions and comments.

“In the last analysis, everything comes down to whether the work is believable,” said Wachs, whose approach is echoed by an unlikely coalition of liberals, civil libertarians and police union leaders. “I really believe strongly that an independent commission is needed.”

If there is one area where Riordan has done the most to sow doubts about the Police Commission’s independence, it is in his relations with Commission President Chaleff.

Outwardly, Chaleff and Riordan are cordial. Each praises the other in interviews, and they have made a few public appearances in recent weeks in an attempt to demonstrate unity.

In private, however, Riordan time and again has fumed about what he sees as Chaleff’s unreliability. Beyond his public statements, the mayor has done little to disguise that impression, going so far as to share his unhappiness at Chaleff with other officials who like and support Chaleff, thus all but insuring that news of his displeasure would leak out.

Riordan has contemplated demanding Chaleff’s resignation from the commission at least twice, associates of the mayor said. The idea came up once when Riordan believed Chaleff was considering endorsing City Atty. James Hahn for mayor. (Riordan supports commercial real estate broker Steve Soboroff as his successor.) It surfaced again when Chaleff and two of his commission colleagues defied Riordan and voted to overturn Chief Parks’ evaluation of last year’s fatal police shooting of a homeless woman, Margaret Mitchell.

The idea of removing Chaleff has been opposed by a variety of Riordan aides and advisors, but one case in particular is curious. Sources say Chief Parks, whose distaste for Chaleff is one of the city government’s worst-kept secrets, warned Riordan that firing Chaleff under the current circumstances would ignite a major controversy that would do more harm than good.

Whatever his previous misgivings, Riordan said last week that he now has full confidence in Chaleff.

“I have total faith in the Police Commission and in the chief of police,” Riordan said. “They will go ahead in looking at and . . . improving the Board of Inquiry report.”

Riordan will soon have a chance to demonstrate his faith in his commission. While the City Council effectively told the Police Commission that it would support any budget increase it needs to pay for the Rampart investigation, Riordan has directed his commissioners to first submit their budget request to his staff.

In the interview last week, Riordan and Chief of Staff Kelly Martin stressed that they do not intend to exercise line-item oversight but rather merely want to see that the request seems well-drafted and reasonable. So far, neither has any reason to be concerned, they said.

“It sounds to me like they are on exactly the right course,” Riordan said.