Council Looks to Preventing Corruption

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday called on the state attorney general to convene a task force to examine how the entire criminal justice system failed to detect corruption in the LAPD’s Rampart Division.

A unanimous council asked Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to bring together leaders of the county courts, the county district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office, police officials and other members of the legal system to ensure that measures are taken to prevent future corruption.

“There has to be a system of checks and balances,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who introduced the motion. “What we’re saying is, we have a problem here, folks. The police couldn’t have pulled this off alone. . . . It’s incumbent upon us to take a look at the entire system to make it harder for this to happen again.”

As a result of the Rampart scandal, more than 100 criminal convictions have been overturned and five LAPD officers have been charged with crimes ranging from planting weapons to attempted murder.

In May, the U.S. Justice Department formally told city officials of its intention to sue over what Washington alleges is a “pattern or practice” of civil rights abuses. The announcement prompted the council to open negotiations with federal attorneys and it is expected to finalize a consent decree with Justice Department officials next week.

“We should not let it rest, now that we have a consent decree,” Goldberg said. “Just because we don’t have jurisdiction over anything other than the Police Department, we shouldn’t be afraid to play a role in encouraging a very serious look at the entire criminal justice system.”

A spokeswoman for Lockyer said Tuesday that the attorney general was looking into the request.

“We agree there needs to be a thorough review,” Sandra Michioku said. “We want to . . . find out how the review might best proceed. We obviously want to avoid jeopardizing any ongoing criminal prosecutions, and we need to get more detail, since we have not seen the motion that was passed by the council.”

The lawmakers’ motion asks that the task force also include members of local minority bar associations, the county bar association, and civil rights attorneys and probation workers.

Goldberg said the group might determine whether legislation or more court personnel are necessary to handle the large volume of criminal cases, which she said often results in “shortcuts” and plea bargains that harm defendants who cannot afford the best lawyers. In a number of Rampart cases, defendants admitted to crimes they didn’t commit, rather than risking much longer prison terms.

As a former prosecutor, Councilman Nick Pacheco agreed that a look at the system would be helpful.

He said that when he was working for the district attorney’s office in 1998, he handled a drug case submitted by Rafael Perez, the Rampart scandal’s central figure--a police officer at the time who has since turned informer.

Pacheco said that neither he nor the defense attorney had any way of knowing that Perez had conducted an illegal search at the suspect’s house. When the suspect’s attorney approached him with a plea bargain proposal, Pacheco said, he agreed, especially because he was handling 40 other cases.

Perez later told investigators that he had lied about having permission to enter the house. The conviction was recently thrown out, Pacheco said.

“It was very difficult for myself or the defense attorney to figure out there was some illegal conduct on the part of the officer,” he said. “Any system that involves human beings is going to have some flaws and we have to have some type of review.”