Hahn’s Reviews Mixed on Handling Police Misconduct

City Atty. James Hahn’s forceful response to the Rampart police corruption scandal has distinguished him from most of the civic establishment, but his long years of service in city government may make it difficult for him to escape the crisis’ inevitable political consequences.

He has forthrightly advised the Police Commission in public and private, urged cooperation between the police chief and district attorney, moved to review scores of dubious convictions, argued the merits of an independent review of the Los Angeles Police Department and tried to persuade former Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher to help the city through its crisis.

Whereas many of the city’s elected and appointed leaders have responded to the crisis in a bumbling, opportunistic and angry fashion, Hahn, a leading mayoral candidate, has appeared forceful and focused. That has heartened his supporters, who cite his performance as evidence of the city attorney’s growing maturity. With luck, they argue, Hahn’s recent actions could help inoculate him against the political consequences the scandal may yet inflict.

Hahn’s critics, however, point to a different record. They note that the city attorney and his staff long have been criticized for not taking police misconduct seriously. Some even argue that Hahn and his administration have, by their inaction, contributed to a climate in which police officers may have been tempted to think they could break laws and get away with it.

It is that record, they say, that Hahn will have to defend as he runs for mayor.

“There was a lot of complacency,” said Linda Griego, a businesswoman and former top aide to Mayor Tom Bradley. “I do think that’s going to hurt Jim Hahn.”

Hahn was elected city attorney in 1985 and has held that office through a tumultuous period in the history of Los Angeles politics and law enforcement. That period includes the crack-driven crime years of the 1980s and early 1990s, the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King, the 1992 riots, the meandering attempts at LAPD reform under then-chief Willie L. Williams, and now the spiraling corruption allegations emerging from the Rampart Division and other city police stations.

More than any civic institution, the LAPD is responsible for the city’s recurring crises. But as the city’s defense lawyer for that entire period, Hahn has had ample opportunity to hear about abusive police officers. Too often, according to his critics, he has failed to act on that information.

Hahn defends his record. He acknowledges that there have been criticisms over the years, but stresses that he and his staff have steadily improved and today are providing the LAPD with all the information it needs to track and discipline problem officers.

“We’re not perfect, we’re never perfect,” Hahn said in an interview last week. “But we’ve improved, and we’re continuing to improve.”

In hundreds of cases a year, witnesses or plaintiffs in civil suits against the city have accused police of abuse. The city often paid settlements or judgments to resolve those cases, but in many instances did not follow up by filing complaints against the individual officers. The result: Juries would conclude that officers violated the rights of suspects, the city would pay thousands of dollars to the victims, and the officers would suffer no blemish on their career record. Critics say that’s wrong.

“I think he’s a great guy, doing the best job that he can do,” said Najee Ali, a leading community activist who is supporting the mayoral candidacy of former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa. “But from what I’ve seen, I don’t think his office has really addressed allegations of police abuse fairly.”

Paul Hoffman, a leading civil rights and police abuse lawyer, agreed.

“The city attorney’s office is in a unique position. There’s really no one else in the community other than the Police Department itself that has regular information about what’s going on inside the department,” Hoffman said. “I haven’t seen any evidence that Hahn pays any attention to that information or that he acts on it.”

One warning shot on this topic was fired in 1991. That was the year police officers were caught on videotape beating King into submission, plunging the city into anger and political turmoil. The Christopher Commission was convened to sort out some of that controversy. It concluded that the city attorney’s office was not doing enough to keep the LAPD informed about misconduct allegations that arose from lawsuits against the city.

In one instance cited at the time, the Police Commission did not learn about a multimillion-dollar settlement in a shooting case until after a deal had been cut.

Hahn agreed that the Christopher Commission highlighted some deficiencies in his office, but said he and his staff moved quickly to address them. After the report was issued, the city attorney’s office stepped up its reporting to the LAPD and formed a special Police Litigation Unit.

“The Christopher Commission gave us a valuable opportunity for a fresh perspective on the way we do things,” Hahn said at the time. “We should take advantage of that opportunity and use the commission’s ideas to improve the way we do our jobs and serve the public.”

But some observers contend that the problems identified by the Christopher Commission did not disappear after that panel issued its landmark report. Seven years later, a study by the Police Commission’s inspector general concluded that assistant city attorneys still were failing to forward information about wayward police officers to the LAPD.

“The city attorney’s office has indicated to the [inspector general] that it does not track cases centrally and does not track involved department employees,” that report found, adding that those failures left the LAPD in the dark about some problem officers.

One example: A group of CRASH officers were sued by four plaintiffs who alleged that they were roughed up by the officers. One plaintiff, a 14-year-old boy, alleged that he lost a tooth when he was struck in the face with the butt of a gun.

The case was settled in August 1997 for $125,000.

Former Inspector General Katherine Mader, who would not comment for this article, noted at the time that her office questioned LAPD officials several months after the settlement and concluded:

“1. The department had no record of either the lawsuit or the settlement and was not notified regarding the facts, negotiations or settlement by the city attorney;

“2. There is no corresponding department personnel complaint investigation addressing the conduct of the involved officers;

“3. Neither of the officers’ supervisors, when contacted by the [inspector general], was aware of the existence of the above-described lawsuit or settlement.”

As of 1998, those problems persisted--and were amplified by internal organizational problems at the LAPD as well, Mader later concluded.

“Employees from Internal Affairs Division state that they receive verdict or settlement information from the newspapers rather than from Legal Affairs Section,” she wrote in an internal memo dated July 27, 1998.

Hahn bristled at those accusations, but agreed there was room for improvement.

“She was correct that there were problems,” Hahn said last week. “It’s fair to say that we’ve improved our communication since then.”

Indeed, even Hahn’s critics concede that there has been marked progress. The city attorney’s office now includes a special section to handle all aspects of police activity and is headed by Cecil Marr, a respected lawyer with long experience in the field. Today, the LAPD receives monthly reports on litigation, updating police officials about the progress of cases. Representatives of the two departments also meet weekly to discuss issues and concerns.

And yet, despite the years of complaints and evidence of recent progress, the disconnect between the city attorney’s office and the LAPD is sufficient that supervising police officers do not have at their fingertips some of the same information that their counterparts at the Sheriff’s Department have.

Imagine, for instance, a case in which a police officer is named as a defendant in a lawsuit and is accused in that suit of beating a suspect. At the Sheriff’s Department, that information is routinely updated in the department’s computer system, so the officer’s captain could easily note it and ask the officer about the circumstances. Even if the captain does not notice it on the computer, the information is assembled every six months by the county counsel’s office, reviewed by the risk-management operation inside the Sheriff’s Department and distributed internally.

In the city of Los Angeles, that does not happen. There is no regular update of the LAPD’s computerized officer-tracking system to take civil cases into account. Internal Affairs officials might have access to that material, but field supervisors do not. As a result, captains make decisions on promotions, assignments, raises, discipline and countless other matters without having any idea whether the officers under their command are being accused of wrongdoing just a few miles away.

That breakdown is by no means the sole fault--or even mostly the fault--of the city attorney’s office. Throughout the early 1990s, the LAPD stalled and equivocated on the subject of computerized officer-tracking. It took sustained attention by the Police Commission to get a tracking system launched, and when the commission’s attention wavered, there was no one to back it up. Even after city leaders pledged to upgrade that system, not only did they fail to do so, but they let a federal grant for that purpose sit unspent in a Washington bank account.

But critics say the city attorney’s office bears some responsibility as well. And one reason for the office’s failure to respond more forcefully on the issue, observers say, lies in its inherently conflicted role.

Hahn is responsible for protecting the city treasury and for defending Los Angeles in lawsuits. It is thus arguably in his interest to avoid creating records that could be turned against his lawyers in court. Stuck between their responsibility to the city coffers and their obligation to thwart wrongdoing, Hahn’s deputies may opt for the former, some say.

“That’s a serious, structural problem that calls for some independent authority,” Hoffman said.

Hahn responded that his office has a larger incentive: to reduce the number of lawsuits filed against the city. One way to do that is to identify problem officers and call the LAPD’s attention to them, Hahn said. Considered that way, there’s no conflict.

“The fewer lawsuits that I defend because fewer incidents have occurred--that’s what I want to happen,” he said.

Finally, there is the issue of Hahn’s evolving views of how tough to be on police who misbehave. Today, Hahn is vociferous in his insistence that police officers who abuse their office be severely punished.

But in 1995, when he was waging a tough reelection fight against lawyer Ted Stein, Hahn struck a different note. He backed federal legislation to limit punitive damage awards against abusive police officers to $10,000.

His reason: Officers who faced the threat of expensive lawsuits might opt to avoid doing their jobs. “Unless officers have to get involved, they figure why should they risk their house and their savings?” Hahn asked at the time.

In the interview last week, Hahn said he’s no longer sure he would support such legislation. He continued to argue--as he did in 1995--that police officers should not be inhibited by the threat of punitive damages, and he also noted that punitive damages sometimes are awarded arbitrarily by juries. Still, Hahn added: “Maybe I’d think about that again before I supported it.”

Despite the criticisms, many observers agree that Hahn has grown in his office and say his record on this subject and others is far better today than it was a decade ago. That sentiment is expressed by civil libertarians and police union members, by lawyers who sue the LAPD and by senior officers of that department--a rare point of accord.

“Our access to materials about police officers has been enhanced over the last couple of years with the police litigation unit and what appears to be a reinvigorated city attorney’s office,” said LAPD Chief of Staff David J. Gascon, who supervises the department’s Internal Affairs operations. “We had nothing like this just a few years ago.”