Truth and Consequences for the LAPD

Today, as Los Angeles again urges reform on its Police Department, Javier Francisco Ovando will be in his wheelchair. An aide hired by his lawyer will feed the young Honduran his anti-convulsive medicine. Ovando has seizures. Not to get graphic, but his eyes roll back periodically and his arms and legs shake. He cannot walk. This, of course, stems from the now infamous night that Rampart officers shot him. There’s a frightening scar where the cop bullet entered at his hairline, another where it exploded up through the crown of his head.

Today, as the Los Angeles City Council is called to order, Israel Cid Carrillo will be in a shack in a Cancun slum. That’s where he lives now. He was deported two years ago after his run-in with the LAPD. No matter that the gun for which he served 18 months turned out--much later--to have been planted. Firearm conviction, boom, there went the green card. He’s been fighting for four months to get back to this country, but the wheels of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service turn slowly. He is 25. Mexico feels foreign. He was 2 when his mother, a housekeeper, brought him here.

Today, as the gavel is rapped, Nestor Zetino will be fighting deportation. He, too, was arrested by Rampart officers. He, too, was sent up on a trumped-up firearms charge. He hopes the certificate of innocence he recently acquired will persuade la migra not to ship him back to El Salvador, but he’s been hoping for months now. He’s 20, with a wife and baby. He’s a warehouse worker. His legal fees are heaped into the middle five figures. He makes minimum wage.

Today, as ever, Juan Saldana’s family will mourn him. It has been four years since he died in an allegedly dirty shooting in a rundown apartment just west of downtown. Rafael Perez, the ex-cop at the center of Rampart, has said Saldana was unarmed when the gang detail shot him, that, while he bled to death, the police planted a gun and stood around concocting a cover story. Juan Saldana was 21.

*

There are several ways to look at this business of the LAPD now being pushed toward federal oversight. The LAPD view is that Chief Bernard C. Parks is being bullied by pious lefties, that he’s being victimized. Rampart is a rough division; the people bringing these beefs against the cops are not necessarily your best class of people. The accused cops may have succumbed to temptation and rage, but there are also good deeds on their records. Parks wanted to clean his own house, understandably.

But then, there are all these cases, in Rampart and out of Rampart--all these civilians who weren’t supposed to be getting bullied by cops anymore. What happened to all the reforms that were supposed to have come out of the Christopher Commission? Why didn’t the mayor and council and police commissioners see to it that they happened? How many Rodney Kings must one city endure?

Too many, as it turns out. A hundred bogus convictions have been overturned so far just in the Rampart scandal, with more coming. That’s not counting the abuses--and rogue cops--in other divisions of LAPD. And though the cases may all run together by now, each is a life. Each is a person--good, bad or middling--whose rights were violated, in some cases grotesquely. The government’s allegation that the LAPD has engaged in a “pattern and practice” of civil rights abuse isn’t some legal abstraction. Javier Francisco Ovando is crippled. Israel Cid Carillo is exiled. Nestor Zetino is indebted. Juan Saldana is in Resurrection Cemetery. He will not be coming to life again.

And there are so many others: Veronica Chavez, whose trumped-up run-in with the Rampart crew cost her her reputation, life savings and apartment. Ricardo Paz, for whom planted drugs meant a drug diversion program he didn’t deserve. Miguel Fuentes, an honor student picked up by the LAPD on his way home from his job at McDonald’s and conned into pleading guilty to a bogus cocaine charge. It cost him his green card. Now he’s in Ensenada, working as a janitor.

These people have a whole different take on who’s the victim and who’s the bully. “I was never guilty of nothing,” a bitter Octavio P. Davalos spat in court in January when his Rampart drug conviction was overturned. The judge apologized publicly to the 41-year-old upholstery worker. Somehow it left you wanting more.

And that is why this consent decree will happen. Not because the feds are so much more competent, but because sometimes “sorry” isn’t nearly enough. There are worse things than a police force with too many chiefs, and one is a police force with civic leaders who, left to themselves, simply can’t lead it out of temptation. The feds are coming in because the LAPD needs a higher power to keep it honest. They’re also coming in because for every bully, there is--sooner or later--punishment.

*

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.