Police Cases Sent to D.A. Drop Sharply

The number of criminal cases the Los Angeles Police Department has presented to prosecutors involving its own officers has dropped dramatically since late 1998, when Chief Bernard C. Parks changed the department’s policy on such referrals, a Times investigation has found.

In the four years before the policy change, the LAPD sent an average of more than 80 cases a year to the district attorney’s Special Investigations Division, which prosecutes police and other public officials, according to district attorney’s records. In 1999, 17 cases were referred, the records show. Through August of this year, nine cases had been submitted, not including cases arising from the Rampart corruption probe, which is being investigated by both police and prosecutors.

The sharp decline in referrals has some prosecutors and Police Commission officials concerned that the LAPD is not referring every case it should.

Under Parks’ policy, cases against officers are referred when an LAPD “investigation [has] established a criminal act occurred and the department determines a criminal filing is warranted.”

And, the policy adds: “Under no circumstances” should a case be referred to the district attorney’s office without the approval of the LAPD’s Internal Affairs commander, a deputy chief and the police chief himself. The change in policy was made without the approval of the civilian Police Commission, which, under the City Charter, is supposed to set departmental policy.

The previous policy required a referral in any case in which there was credible evidence that an officer had committed a crime.

LAPD Deputy Chief David J. Kalish said the current approach is aimed at preventing frivolous cases from clogging the criminal justice system. Deputy Dist. Atty. James L. Cosper said he was at a meeting with LAPD Cmdr. Jim McMurray, the head of the department’s Internal Affairs Division, at which the change in policy was discussed.

“He said they didn’t want to keep flooding us with these junk cases,” Cosper recalled. “He said, ‘trust us.’ I still remember those words coming out of his mouth: trust us.”

Since then, Cosper said, “the well’s run dry.”

Parks has earned a reputation as a stern disciplinarian, firing officers at a rate far higher than his immediate predecessors, Willie L. Williams and Daryl F. Gates. Since taking office in August 1997, Parks has terminated 127 officers, according to LAPD records.

Cosper said he believes the LAPD would rather quietly fire officers than have them prosecuted publicly.

“Frankly, it’s a public relations issue,” Cosper said. “I think a lot of the time the attitude at LAPD is, ‘We got rid of a bad apple--that’s enough.’ ”

McMurray declined repeated requests for an interview.

Cmdr. Sharon Papa, the department’s spokeswoman, said the rate of prosecution had no relation to the number of cases sent to the prosecutors by the LAPD. “It looks to me like we’re doing a better job of screening.”

The Times identified two cases that were not submitted to prosecutors under the current policy until it was legally too late to prosecute. Allegations of excessive force and false imprisonment against one officer, and of on-duty sex with prostitutes and witness intimidation against another were withheld from prosecutors for 18 months and 11 months, respectively, after the officers had been fired from the LAPD.

Information on both cases was turned over to the district attorney’s office on June 14, after The Times filed a public records request with the Police Department seeking information about the two officers. Police officials declined to discuss the timing of those referrals.

There are a number of other recent cases that were not presented to prosecutors, even though the allegations against officers were potentially criminal. For example, district attorney records show that prosecutors were never asked to review cases involving:

* An officer who was fired for filing a false arrest report.

* An officer who was suspended for 22 days for excessive use of force.

* A traffic investigator who resigned amid allegations that he made female accident victims disrobe.

* A pair of officers who were suspended for 22 days for an “illegal detention” and improper search of a man.

“Considering all the circumstances, if a police department has credible evidence that an officer has committed a crime, the allegation should be referred to this office,” said Cliff Klein, the head prosecutor of the district attorney’s Special Investigations Division, known as SID.

Four months ago, The Times requested information from the LAPD on dozens of other disciplinary cases in which officers were charged internally with potential crimes or serious misconduct. To date, the department has not turned over those documents, even though LAPD officials concede that the material is public information. Many of the cases were not referred to prosecutors for review, according to district attorney’s records.

The two cases that were belatedly referred to SID this summer involve former Southeast Division Sgt. James Clark and ex-Rampart Division Officer Roy Logan.

Clark was accused of routinely having sex with prostitutes while in uniform and on duty. In one case, he propositioned a woman as he stood with his hand on his holstered gun, LAPD documents allege. Later, the documents allege, he ordered the prostitute into his police car against her will and drove her to another location, where he threatened her to obtain her silence.

Clark denied the allegations at his disciplinary hearing, but police officials did not find him credible.

“The board views your participation in the sexual encounters as potentially criminal in nature,” wrote then-Cmdr. Kalish, who also presided over Clark’s discipline hearing. “Not only was evidence presented that you paid two prostitutes for sexual acts, but this board believes, based on the evidence presented that neither [of the victims] were entirely willing. . . . The board believes that you acted under the color of authority, forcing your demands on [the victims].”

Deeming Clark’s actions “a great embarrassment to the Los Angeles Police Department and to the law enforcement profession,” the board unanimously recommended his termination on Aug. 30, 1999. Parks fired Clark a short time later.

Then, for 10 months, Clark’s case sat in Internal Affairs. In June of this year, more than two years after Internal Affairs was made aware of the allegations, the case was presented to SID.

Prosecutors declined to file charges, saying the statutory deadline on the solicitation allegations had expired. The prosecutors said felony charges of false imprisonment and witness intimidation were still possible if the LAPD could find and interview the prostitute who fled town after she was allegedly threatened by Clark. In August, The Times tracked the woman to Las Vegas, where she still was working as a prostitute at the corner of Fremont Avenue and 15th Street, east of downtown.

In the other delayed referral, Officer Logan is accused of detaining a suspect without cause and then, among other alleged offenses, subjecting him to a humiliating form of abuse known in cop slang as a “screen test.”

In that exercise, a suspect is handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a patrol car without being secured with a seat belt. The driver of the car accelerates, then suddenly hits the brakes. The suspect flies forward--face first--into the wire partition, or screen, separating the front and rear seats. If the screen withstands the impact, it “passes the test,” hence the phrase.

According to police documents, Logan and his partner Ross Hay were on patrol on Oct. 19, 1997, when they pulled over a pair of men driving near the intersection of Oxford and Sierra Vista avenues about 3:15 in the morning. The officers said they stopped the men as part of a drug and vice investigation.

The men, who were not arrested, alleged they were mistreated by the officers. Although the driver was eventually released at the scene, the passenger was handcuffed, put in the squad car and driven to a nearby alley, LAPD documents allege. On the way, he was allegedly subjected to the “screen test,” records show.

When they arrived at the alley, the man was taken out of the car and allegedly roughed up by Logan, according to police documents. The man claimed that Logan kicked his ankles and pushed him into a fence.

Logan and Hay denied any wrongdoing. When the matter went before separate LAPD disciplinary panels, opposite conclusions were reached. Hay was found not guilty of the serious charges leveled against him and given an official reprimand for being discourteous. Logan, however, was found guilty of kicking and pushing the man and administering the screen test. He was also found guilty of an “improper detention.” He was fired.

In an interview with The Times, Logan maintained that he was innocent of all the alleged acts of misconduct.

More than a 1 1/2 years later, the LAPD submitted the case to prosecutors. Again, the district attorney’s office said the statutory deadline had already passed for misdemeanor filings of improper detention, false imprisonment and battery. Even if true, allegations of assault did not constitute a felony, prosecutors concluded.

Prosecutors said they were surprised that the LAPD had referred the two cases to them after so much time had elapsed. They said that such late referrals and incomplete investigations by Internal Affairs investigators have historically contributed to difficulties in filing charges against LAPD officers accused of crimes.

But it is unclear whether the decrease in the LAPD referrals has had a significant effect on the number of criminal filings against officers. A Times examination of district attorney’s files dating to 1995 shows that only about 8% of the more than 350 cases against LAPD officers referred to the district attorney’s office for potential prosecution resulted in the filing of charges.

Although none of the LAPD’s referrals this year has resulted in a criminal filing--notwithstanding the Rampart cases--there were six filings as a result of 1999 referrals, according to SID records. Referrals from 1998 yielded three filings, 1997 referrals produced 11 and 1996 referrals resulted in three.

The decline in referrals by the LAPD is a source of concern for both prosecutors and police commission officials. The question, they say, is not whether the policy is flawed, but how the LAPD is exercising its discretion.

Police Commission Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash said he has asked department officials on several occasions to refer cases they had neglected to send to prosecutors.

“Decisions as to whether charges should be filed against an officer, and what charges should be filed, should be made by the district attorney, the U.S. attorney or other law enforcement officials,” Eglash said, “not the Police Department.”

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Delayed Action Against Officer

Despite the LAPD’s own finding that Sgt. James Clark’s misconduct was potentially criminal, the department failed to bring a case to prosecutors until after The Times filed a public records request seeking information about the case. By that time, the statute of limitations had expired on some of the possible charges. Below are excerpts from Clark’s Board of Rights hearing, which is the LAPD’s version of a trial.