Policy on Referring Officers to D.A. Revised

Under scrutiny for allowing potential criminal cases against Los Angeles police officers to slip through the cracks, LAPD officials said Tuesday that they are revamping the way in which such cases are handled.

LAPD officials also acknowledged in a report to the Police Commission that shoddy record keeping over the last five years has made it impossible for them to determine how many potential criminal cases against officers have been referred to prosecutors for review.

The Police Commission ordered the department to prepare a report on its referral practices after articles in The Times last October revealed that the number of cases sent to prosecutors for review dropped significantly after 1998, when Chief Bernard C. Parks changed the LAPD’s criteria for such submissions.

Commissioner Dean Hansell said Tuesday that Parks’ referral policy “was so vague, you could drive a truck through it, in terms of loopholes.”

Parks’ policy, which was enacted without the approval of the Police Commission, dictated that cases should be sent to prosecutors only when an LAPD “investigation [has] established a criminal act occurred and the department determines a criminal filing is warranted.” The policy added that “under no circumstances” should a case involving an LAPD officer 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.

Under the new interim policy, the LAPD said it will send over all criminal cases against officers in which the alleged offense was either proved by a department investigation or not resolved. LAPD Cmdr. Thomas W. Lorenzen, the newly appointed head of the internal affairs group, said the department plans to work with district attorney’s office to establish a referral policy that satisfies both agencies.

Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash said the department’s interim policy was a “step in the right direction,” but added that he believes cases should be submitted to prosecutors even before they have been officially adjudicated within the LAPD.

Lorenzen, however, said prosecutors did not want to get involved until the LAPD had completed its investigation.

“The majority of our cases they [prosecutors] don’t want to see, they don’t want to hear about, they don’t want to discuss with us until we’re done with them,” Lorenzen said.

A key member of the district attorney’s staff disputed that characterization.

“We want to see them as early as possible,” Deputy Dist. Atty. James Cosper said after the commission’s meeting. Cosper has served for years as assistant head deputy in the district attorney’s unit charged with prosecuting police.

Unlike Parks’ previous policy, the commissioners said they want the new policy to be brought before them for a vote. Although the chief’s 1998 policy was not voted on, Parks said he submitted it to the commission for its review and that it was not opposed.

That prompted a quick response from Joe Gunn, the Police Commission’s executive director. Gunn said the policy had already been released departmentwide before it was shown to commissioners.

“It was in effect prior to coming to the commission,” Gunn said.

The commission is under close scrutiny after Mayor Richard Riordan’s decision to oust its president, Gerald Chaleff, on Feb. 5. On Tuesday, several commissioners took pains to critique the LAPD’s report on the referral question.

“Obviously [this report] falls short in many aspects,” said Commission President Raquelle de la Rocha. “This is not the last day we will discuss this matter.”

Commissioner Hansell said he was troubled that the LAPD was unable to say how many cases had been referred to the district attorney’s office for each of the last five years. According to the LAPD report, 192 cases were submitted over that period. Department officials, however, said they could not break the information down by year.

Hansell said the data in the LAPD’s report were not useful.

In October, The Times reported that about 350 cases involving LAPD officers had been referred to the district attorney over the last five years. The Times investigation, based on hundreds of LAPD disciplinary documents and district attorney’s records, found that of the hundreds of officers accused of crimes over that time, only a tiny fraction had been charged. Prosecutors rejected many cases despite compelling evidence that officers committed crimes. In some cases, the evidence included videotapes and admissions of guilt by officers.

The Times also found that some potentially criminal cases either never made it to the district attorney’s office or were referred after the time limit for a prosecution had passed. According to district attorney’s and LAPD records, the number of criminal referrals against officers dropped dramatically after Parks’ policy change in 1998, from about 80 a year to 17 in 1999 and nine as of August 2000, not including Rampart-related cases.

Lorenzen said he could not determine whether there had been a decline in referrals after Parks changed the policy. He also could not explain why statutory deadlines had been allowed to pass before a case was sent over.

At one point during Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, De La Rocha asked Lorenzen if he could account for the large discrepancy between the number of cases the LAPD claims to have referred to the district attorney’s office and the much higher number the district attorney’s office claims to have received.

Although Lorenzen acknowledged that the department’s numbers were incomplete, he said prosecutors did not dispute his tally.

The district attorney’s office “accepted our count,” Lorenzen told the commission president. “They can’t support their numbers either.”

Cosper again disagreed.

“I would stick by our numbers,” he said. “I think we have a better tracking system.”

The district attorney’s office has a computerized database that is updated every time the LAPD submits a case to the unit responsible for prosecuting most serious offenses by police and public officials. The records include the date a case is presented, the name of the officer involved and the date when the case is closed. Additionally, the district attorney’s office has a complete file containing its findings on every case.

Lorenzen said the LAPD has started tracking cases in a similar fashion, as of January.

In other action, the commission, according to Hansell, voted in closed session to give Chief Parks a 1% merit increase for last year, less than Mayor Riordan had sought before the mayor’s office admitted that it had improperly granted the raise.