Shifting the Blame in Rampart Scandal

For those of you who weren’t clear on who the bad guys were in the Rampart police scandal, this just in:

Sure, there might have been a couple of rogue cops out there. But the true villains in this mess weren’t cops, or the D.A., or the former city attorney who now sits in the mayor’s office.

It was the L.A. Times.

Wea culpa.

More specifically, according to Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, it was a couple of reporters named Scott Glover and Matt Lait.

Parks kindly laid it all out for Larry Elder on KABC radio. Asked why Rampart had ended with such a deafening silence when Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley announced that he was closing the book, Parks explained:

“Well, I think what you have to realize is where that claim about being the biggest scandal in history came from--the two reporters who started this story in the L.A. Times.”

He was referring to the evildoing duo of Glover and Lait.

“They tried for two years to play this up and determine that this was a scandal that was being swept under the carpet,” Parks went on. “They also made allegations that it was worldwide, and spread throughout the city, and none of that came through. They clearly ginned this thing up.” For the record, Glover and Lait do not recall reporting that Rampart was a worldwide scandal. But even if Parks flubbed that part, it was quite nice of him to let us know that Rampart was blown out of proportion.

Problem is, when 70 cops are implicated, and 100 to 150 convictions are overturned because police officers planted evidence and busted heads, it strains credulity to suggest it was just a tempest in a teapot.

And even at that, nobody with a steady pulse and two active brain cells can possibly believe the entire Rampart story has been told.

The police investigated their own, which is like sending Bowser to find out who took the T-bones, and then told us everything’s under control.

They sent the results of their “investigation” to D.A. Cooley, who talked a good game of hardball, but came up to the plate with the bases loaded and couldn’t get the bat off his shoulder.

And Mayor Hahn, who watched the Rampart lawsuits pass under his nose during his long siesta as city attorney, sits off in the corner like a monk.

See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.

Would Parks even be in blue if not for the fact that Hahn, who won the African American vote on his Daddy’s name, lacks the gumption to ruffle feathers?

Here we are, post-Sept. 11, with a chance to remake the Los Angeles Police Department. There’s more interest than ever in the job of being a cop. Applications are up all over the country, including Los Angeles, which has 1,100 badges to hand out.

It’s a terrific time to send a clear signal that it’s a new day for the LAPD, which has always had an extra bushel or two of bad apples mixed in with all the good. But it can’t happen if Parks, Cooley and Hahn are more interested in covering their careers than doing their jobs.

This week’s report from a police monitor, federally appointed to oversee LAPD reform, suggests the petri dish from which scandal grows is still fertile. Although most officers are committed to change, some still seem to think the Rodney King beating was a training video.

Given that, it’s not surprising the federal monitor found a pile of unanswered misconduct complaints. “Low morale and administrative burden of backlogs undermine the LAPD’s ability to pursue reforms,” he said in his report.

Then there was his observation that some officers continue to see police work as an us-versus-them job, and regard patrol areas as enemy territory.

Now let’s be fair. My guess is that if you or I were out there risking our lives night after night, with dealers, skanks and gangsters all around, we might feel the same way.

But having said that, every reform-minded police commander I’ve ever met (and I used to cover that beat), has told me the same thing about being a cop: If you think of the job as war, you’ll have war.

In this regard, Parks has actually been an improvement over his predecessors. One reason for the rock-bottom LAPD morale is that he’s been comparatively tough on bad cops, despite conveniently downplaying a Rampart scandal that reflects badly on him.

But being comparatively tough when it’s politically convenient is not what we’re looking for.

Police officers who do their jobs with dignity deserve better leadership than that, and so do the rest of us.

*

Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.