Inaction, Miscues Plagued Riordan on Rampart

Over the past seven years, Mayor Richard Riordan has invested more of his energy and reputation in the Los Angeles Police Department than in any other civic institution; now, the U.S. Justice Department effectively has told him that it no longer trusts him or the rest of the city’s civilian leaders to run the LAPD without outside help.

In fact, it is hard to imagine a more direct or scathing repudiation of Riordan’s administration than that delivered by the federal government last week. Moreover, the Justice Department’s brusque ultimatum to the city--agree to reforms or face a lawsuit--also ends what has been the Riordan administration’s attempt to deal with the Rampart scandal largely as a public relations crisis.

The administration’s most recent attempt to take control of the scandal--by issuing a news release May 7 announcing the city’s progress toward improving the LAPD’s officer-tracking system--only highlighted what many observers see as the mayor’s baffling inability to come fully to grips with the police corruption issue.

It was, those critics say, as if Riordan honestly believed that an eleventh-hour statement would somehow dissuade the Justice Department from following through on conclusions it had reached over the course of four years.

Among Riordan’s friends, there is a widely expressed lament: The mayor missed an early opportunity to welcome the federal government’s help in cleaning up the long-troubled department.

Instead, Riordan has privately fumed about the federal action while publicly remaining noncommittal, releasing a statement that expressed hope for a resolution without litigation, but that stopped short of suggesting that the city agree to a formal consent decree, supervised by a federal judge.

For the mayor, however, that might not be possible to avoid.

“Riordan really has no choice at all,” one elected official said. “He needs to admit failure and negotiate the best deal he can.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a USC law professor who headed the elected charter reform commission, said the spectacle of the federal government challenging local authorities’ ability to handle their own affairs is one for which many are responsible. The police chief, the Police Commission and the mayor all need to be held accountable for the LAPD’s failure, Chemerinsky said.

“You have to hold the mayor accountable for not pushing for reforms,” he said. “He was very effective at pushing for expansion of the Police Department but not for reforming it.”

Riordan’s moves in recent days only have highlighted his narrowing options and isolation from the rest of the city’s political establishment.

While most city officials learned on Friday, May 5, of the federal government’s decision to convene a meeting on the prospective lawsuit the following Monday, Riordan’s staff elected not to inform him that day because he was celebrating his birthday--a decision that angered the mayor when he read about the meeting in the next day’s paper.

When he did hear of the government’s intention to seek a consent decree, Riordan initially told some associates that he believed the city should fight it out with the Justice Department in court. Few observers, including leaders of the Police Department, think that course would be wise, either legally or politically.

Then, rather than cancel a scheduled trip to Washington, D.C., on other matters that coincided with the Monday session in Los Angeles, Riordan elected to skip the meeting with the Civil Rights Division lawyers. From Washington, he continued to argue that management of the LAPD would be best handled locally.

Riordan returned to Los Angeles on Wednesday and met that evening with Acting Civil Rights Division Chief Bill Lann Lee, a Los Angeles lawyer whom Riordan recommended for the federal post.

On Thursday, the mayor released a statement in which he pledged to work with the Justice Department to avoid a lawsuit, but he also refrained from endorsing any specific solution that would turn over control or monitoring of the LAPD to a federal monitor or judge.

“Together we want to identify the most effective remedy to ensure that Justice Department concerns are addressed and that best serves the interests of Los Angeles and its Police Department,” Riordan’s statement said.

More significant, Riordan’s opinion about the best course for the city is fast becoming irrelevant. City Council members overwhelmingly favor entering into negotiations with the Justice Department on a consent decree, and as long as a majority of the council advocates that course, there’s nothing Riordan can do to stop it.

That will change slightly on July 1, when the city’s new charter takes effect. At that point, Riordan will have the authority to veto a deal, and it will take 10 votes rather than eight to overrule him.

But at the moment, only one member of the 15-member council appears eager to resist the consent decree, so the two-vote difference imposed by the new charter appears academic.

Harsh Views of Critics

Whatever Riordan does now, critics say, his actions--as well as those of his Police Commission and his police chief--already have eroded the Justice Department’s faith in local authorities.

“The mayor’s office is trying to downplay the severity of what is being critiqued,” said City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, once a mayoral ally but increasingly a critic. “They do not wish to acknowledge publicly or otherwise the depth of the crisis and the extent to which their policies and priorities may have aided and abetted this crisis.”

More bluntly, he added: “The wrongheaded policies of the Riordan administration have come home to roost.”

Ridley-Thomas and others cite several specifics in defense of that view. Riordan’s emphasis on increasing the department’s size put reform of the LAPD on the back burner, they say.

The administration delayed creation of the LAPD’s inspector general’s office and it allowed the LAPD to drag its feet on installing and updating a computerized officer-tracking system.

It has also blocked creation of a meaningful system of psychological testing for police officers, an issue in which former Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher, head of the independent commission that investigated the LAPD after the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King, has expressed personal interest--and dismay at the department’s lack of progress.

Had the Riordan administration pushed as hard for those changes as it did for LAPD expansion--an area where the mayor did, with federal help, register huge gains--some of the problems that surfaced in the Rampart Division and elsewhere might have been avoided, critics and even some Riordan supporters argue.

In defense of Riordan’s record, others say the mayor did support strengthening the inspector general’s office under the new charter and did preside over the successful completion of a number of other LAPD reforms, though Riordan was rarely the leading advocate for those changes. More broadly, the LAPD today also is larger and better equipped than at any other time in its history.

As it seeks to extricate itself from the current mess, the Riordan administration has sent several signals that it hopes to cut a deal with the federal government that stops short of a consent decree. In particular, Riordan Chief of Staff Kelly Martin, speaking on KCRW’s “Which Way L.A.” radio program, argued that the city might be better served by entering into a memorandum of understanding.

In essence, the difference between those approaches is that a consent decree would be overseen by a federal judge and any deviation from it could invite the judge to impose sanctions for contempt. A memorandum of understanding is more like a contract: It would be entered into by the two sides and, if either believed the other had failed to live up to it, the aggrieved party could file a lawsuit.

It’s easy to see why local officials would prefer the latter route, but harder to see why it would appeal to the federal government. Without a formal decree, the government’s ability to press for reform would be significantly reduced, especially because a new administration will soon be in place in Washington.

What’s more, the principal point of frustration for the federal government is the sense that Los Angeles, for all its promises of police reform, has failed to carry it out. A memorandum of understanding would have more force than some of the previous commitments, but it still would lack the bite of a consent decree.

“Whether Justice would accept anything other than a consent decree is very much up in the air,” said City Councilman Mike Feuer. Feuer added that the emphasis now, whether through a consent decree or other mechanism, must be for the agreement to advance the cause of police reform and to do it in a way that strengthens local systems of civilian oversight over the Police Department.

The worst-case scenario would be for the federal government to take over police reform entirely, leaving the city unprepared for what would happen when the issue returns to local control.

As a result, many observers believe local officials are fooling themselves if they think they will get out of this situation without a federal court’s involvement. One reason, they say, is the federal government’s evident frustration over the city’s inability to upgrade the LAPD’s computerized officer-tracking system.

Though it’s a small issue compared with the overall problem of police misconduct, the city’s failure on that system has emerged as an important symbol in Washington. Not only did the federal government urge creation of that system, it also went so far as to give $162,000 to Los Angeles to build it, only to have the local government dawdle and allow the system to languish.

As of today, that money remains unspent, though council leaders and the mayor’s office have pledged to complete the upgrade within a year.

Various members of the government blame one another for that breakdown, but none denies that the breakdown occurred. That is precisely, some sources say, why the federal government needs to step in: because local officials have proved that they are not up to the task.

And that, legal experts and others say, is one strong reason why the federal government is likely to insist on a consent decree, not some lesser remedy.

“I think, frankly, that that’s the direction everything’s headed,” said Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor. “Anything else is just another promise. Los Angelans have had a lot of promises.”