Cooley’s First Year Produces Few Highs or Lows

As he completes his first year as Los Angeles County’s district attorney, Steve Cooley may be finding some truth in the old political saw that running for an office is often easier than running an office.

Last year, a confluence of events and historical factors helped Cooley, 54, skate to a landslide.

He had the advantage of going against a wounded incumbent--Gil Garcetti--who, five years after the fact, was still tainted as the prosecutor whose office lost the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

As if that weren’t enough, the LAPD’s Rampart Division scandal gave Cooley a chance to blast Garcetti for not keeping a watchful eye on corrupt police officers. The Belmont Learning Complex imbroglio and even Garcetti’s prized crime prevention programs also became campaign fodder.

Since sweeping into office last Dec. 4, Cooley has done little to distinguish himself clearly from Garcetti on those key issues, observers say. But in spending much time reorganizing units within the nation’s largest local prosecutorial agency, Cooley has remained free of serious trouble.

“My general feeling is that he’s been able to fly somewhat under the radar screen,” said Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson. “There have been no major mistakes or catastrophes; but on the other hand, I cannot think of any major accomplishments either.”

So far, the plain-spoken but commanding prosecutor is as enthusiastic about his own performance as he was pejorative about his predecessor’s.

“I think we’re doing a hell of a good job,” said Cooley, who joined the district attorney’s office 28 years ago as a trial deputy. “That’s what I get from the public.”

Though he has been slow to produce results in some areas, Cooley is putting his personal stamp on the office. He has done that with well-publicized probes into government corruption and by being open to such natural opponents as defense lawyers.

He says “the thing I’m most proud of” is a new team that targets crime in government.

Known as the Public Integrity Division, the unit is already investigating conflict-of-interest allegations against officials in Cudahy and looking broadly into city finances in Compton.

Last month, former South Gate City Council candidate Richard Mayer was convicted of lying about his address on his election forms. He faces up to seven years in prison.

By assigning nine attorneys to the team, Cooley has put an emphasis--seldom seen in Los Angeles--on rooting out official corruption.

“I get constant feedback on [the division],” he said.

Cooley also has set his administration apart with a new policy on three-strikes prosecutions, winning high marks from defense lawyers.

Under Garcetti, the office often sought to put repeat defendants behind bars for 25 years to life for petty thefts and minor drug possessions. Now prosecutors don’t seek such sentences for minor, nonviolent third offenses.

“He’s restored a sense of proportionality,” said Harland Braun, a defense lawyer and one of the district attorney’s campaign contributors.

‘Closing the Book’ on Rampart Criticized

Cooley also has created a forensic science section that, though aimed primarily at cracking unsolved sex and homicide cases through DNA evidence, streamlined testing requests from inmates who claim they are innocent.

Such openness to a prosecutor’s natural adversaries may have spared Cooley some criticism for shortcomings in fulfilling campaign pledges. Indeed, his first year had been free of major controversy until Rampart ensnared him early last month.

The scandal, which erupted in September 1999, involves LAPD officers accused of planting evidence on suspects, lying in police reports and court testimony, and other serious misconduct. Nine officers have been criminally charged, others have resigned or been fired, and more than 100 criminal convictions have been overturned.

While running for election, Cooley called Rampart “the issue of this campaign.” He lambasted Garcetti for what he described as a “critical failure . . . to exercise an independent prosecutorial role over the Los Angeles Police Department.” And he promised that under his reign, the office would be “more proactive in our roles as independent prosecutors.”

Four months into office, Cooley seemed poised to move aggressively. He filed charges against three Rampart officers, reaching plea deals with two that included agreements to cooperate with investigators.

But there were no further arrests. Then, in a stunning announcement Nov. 7, Cooley said he would soon be “closing the book” on his investigation into Rampart, with no more charges against officers expected.

Critics latched onto the metaphor in denouncing what they considered a premature conclusion to the corruption scandal.

Mixed Reviews on New Unit Targeting Bad Cops

One wag, recalled Cooley, said he must have read the “Cliffs Notes” version of the Rampart book.

“When I stuck with that [book] metaphor, it was one of the great mistakes of my administration,” he said with a laugh.

Last week, Cooley was forced to reopen the book when the LAPD said it would soon be sending his office 60 additional Rampart cases to review.

Although his Rampart probe hasn’t produced many criminal charges, he says he is fulfilling his campaign promise in other ways.

He has created a special unit to prosecute corrupt law enforcement officers and civilian personnel. He has crafted guidelines for prosecutors to follow when they suspect police misconduct. And he has coaxed law enforcement agencies into agreeing to a protocol requiring them to notify his police-corruption unit in the early stages of a probe into wrongdoing.

Critics say the changes are little more than shuffling people and paper. They also contend that the changes will not address the unanswered questions about Rampart.

Moreover, Cooley’s insistence that police departments continue to investigate criminal misconduct charges against their own personnel is misguided, they say.

“In officer-involved shootings the district attorney will get involved immediately, so why shouldn’t he get involved immediately in other cases?” Deputy Alternate Public Defender Victor Martinez asked.

Law professor Levenson says major questions remain about whether Cooley’s new police corruption unit will prove effective.

“Will this really mean they will do significant investigations and cases?” she asked. “Or are they going to take the easy cases without doing the hard work to see how deep the problem goes in a department?”

Cooley’s campaign criticism of Garcetti’s record on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Belmont Learning Complex controversy also has come back to bedevil him.

While running for office, he said his opponent “failed in his job” at investigating this “toxic Taj Mahal.”

The $175-million project was abandoned when it was nearly completed after officials learned that it was being built on ground saturated with explosive methane gas. Garcetti investigated the case and did not file any criminal charges.

So far, neither has Cooley.

His investigative task force was created in late January. At the time, he said he expected a report by April or May. Then he postponed it until November, and now, Cooley says, the panel won’t report until early next year. He attributes the delay to the fact that the group has had to review more than 1 million documents.

After a year in office, Cooley has not completed his review of Garcetti’s crime prevention programs either--but he has done an about-face on at least one of them.

During the campaign, he said some of the programs were merely publicity stunts to burnish Garcetti’s image, and he specifically cited the office’s Juvenile Offenders Learning Tolerance effort as ineffective. Now Cooley says he will not just keep that program but will expand it.

In the courtroom, the Cooley administration has won some big victories and has suffered no overwhelming embarrassments.

The major high-profile prosecution during his tenure began before it: the 1975 bombing case against accused Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson. Cooley’s deputies waged hard-nosed negotiations that resulted in Olson pleading guilty for her role in the attempted bombing of two LAPD cars. Prosecutors argue that Olson, who has asked to withdraw her plea, should be sentenced to a term that could conceivably result in life in prison.

Since winning office with almost two-thirds of the vote, Cooley has moved ahead on several other prosecutions that had languished during his predecessor’s tenure.

The most notable is the multiple murder case of Efren Saldivar, the self-professed “Angel of Death.” Saldivar, 32, a former respiratory therapist, told authorities in 1998 that he had poisoned as many as 50 patients at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. After he recanted, the investigation stalled until Cooley took office and filed charges in six of the cases, stemming from the deaths of patients in 1996 and 1997. A trial is pending.

By rewriting office policy, Cooley has been able to begin criminal proceedings in cases in which foreign nationals flee to homelands that refuse extradition to states that impose capital punishment.

In one such case, Mexico agreed to send Josif Jurcoane, 51, of Tijuana, a former Antelope Valley farmhand, back to Los Angeles to stand trial on 17-year-old charges that he murdered a cherry ranch owner and the man’s girlfriend. The case is pending.

Cooley also moved forward with an investigation of the controversial 1999 LAPD shooting death of a homeless woman, Margaret Mitchell. Soon after he took office, his prosecutors launched a grand jury investigation of the incident, in which an officer said the frail, mentally ill woman attacked him with a screwdriver.

No charges were filed, however, after investigators decided that witness testimony was too compromised to justify prosecution.

Sentencing of 2 Gang Members Called Major

Among the Cooley administration’s major courtroom victories have been trials in which two gang members were sentenced to prison for life without parole for killing LAPD officers in separate incidents three years ago. In another major case, a Pacoima man was convicted of torturing and murdering two of his children and burying them in the Angeles National Forest.

On the downside, the district attorney’s office lost a two-month trial in the case of a wealthy computer firm owner who had been accused of picking up women in Hollywood nightclubs and taking them to his home, where he allegedly drugged and raped them. In another case, alleged misconduct by a prosecutor caused a retrial of a man convicted of murdering two West Hills witnesses scheduled to testify in a burglary trial.

Over the next three years, Cooley’s win-loss record in the courtroom probably will not affect the public’s assessment of his tenure, unless he loses a series of major cases, some political experts say.

Rick Taylor, a political consultant, said Cooley did the right things during his campaign, such as hitting the “hot button” issues and spending a lot of time in various ethnic communities.

“People didn’t reelect Gil Garcetti for many reasons,” Taylor said. “But in the back of everybody’s mind, people know Steve Cooley won because of O.J. Simpson.”