State’s Law Officers Gather to Discuss Ethics

Their profession tarnished by recent scandals, hundreds of high-ranking law enforcement officers from around the state convened in Long Beach on Tuesday for the region’s first police ethics symposium.

The two-day conference at the Queen Mary ocean liner is delving into such sensitive issues as corruption, abuses of power, civil rights violations, and changing police culture to improve the way officers do their jobs.

Task force members say they want to strengthen integrity and avoid repeating such controversies as the Branch Davidian deaths in Waco, Texas, the recent case of an FBI agent arrested as a Russian spy and the Rampart scandal now engulfing the Los Angeles Police Department.

“There has been a loss of law enforcement credibility,” said James V. DeSarno Jr., assistant director of the FBI office in Los Angeles. “Not even the FBI has been saved from criticism. We need to regain our position of trust. This is the beginning of the discussion.”

The conference, which attracted about 300 participants, stems from a regional task force on law enforcement ethics established six months ago by federal, state and local police agencies.

They include the FBI, the state attorney general’s office, the U.S. attorney’s office, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, and a variety of professional associations.

“We have played a game in our profession over the last 20 years. We talk about free coffee and meals, but not about fudging police reports and how we treat people,” said Pasadena Police Chief Bernard K. Melekian, who heads the Los Angeles County Chiefs of Police, an association of law enforcement leaders.

Also appearing at Tuesday’s symposium were Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who have been facing questions about the integrity of some of their recent actions. They briefly attended a news conference, but stepped away before the question-and-answer period.

A recent report by the inspector general for the Los Angeles Police Commission concluded that Parks made misleading statements about the Rampart scandal to the news media and to the inspector general’s office during its investigation. The report, obtained by The Times this week, was written in December.

Later in the day, Parks strongly contested the conclusions of Inspector General Jeffrey Eglash.

Baca and Mayorkas have been linked to the furor over one of former president Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardons and clemency cases. In conversations with White House aides, they talked about Carlos Vignali, a convicted cocaine trafficker whose 15-year sentence was commuted by Clinton on his last day in office. The Vignali case involved 800 pounds of cocaine.

Mayorkas has repeatedly declined to discuss the matter.

In a statement last week, Baca said he returned telephone calls to White House officials, but denied that he supported or requested clemency for Vignali during the discussions. The sheriff maintains that he only vouched for the truthfulness of Vignali’s father, Horacio, who was seeking clemency for his son.

Parks, Mayorkas and Baca told the audience during opening remarks Tuesday that they strongly supported the ethics conference and the effort to restore an unwavering respect for the law within the profession.

“A locker room mentality pervades what happens on the street and that is different from a department’s core values,” Baca said. “These are critical times in shaping the future of law enforcement. The biggest challenge is to lift our people up and get the best out of them.”

Baca said the Sheriff’s Department recently created an independent review panel of six civil rights attorneys to oversee and evaluate charges of wrongdoing by deputies. Disciplinary cases used to be handled almost exclusively by the department’s Internal Affairs Division.

Other departments, including the LAPD and Long Beach police, have set up police commissions or civilian review boards.

“The civil rights community is not our enemy. That is a wrong way of thinking,” Baca said. “We should join in and embrace every aspect of civil rights in American life.”

Officials hosting the conference said they hope the event will provide police managers with new ideas and raise the level of discussion about ethics within the region’s law enforcement agencies.

New York City police official Charles V. Campisi, who oversees one of the largest internal affairs units in the world, said in an interview that ethics conferences have been valuable in New York state, where at least seven have been held since 1994.

Although the ranks of the New York Police Department grew by 40% in the last six years, Campisi said, the number of corruption cases against officers has declined 41%. He attributed the drop partly to ethics conferences.

“Everyone learns from each other at these things,” said Campisi, a conference panelist. “You come away with practical solutions. You can see measurable results.”