Panel Approves Rampart Inquiry

Six months after it was created, a special commission to look into how the Los Angeles Police Department reacted to the Rampart corruption scandal was approved Monday by a City Council committee.

The commission was created by the Los Angeles Police Commission, at the request of Police Chief William J. Bratton, and will consider whether the LAPD adequately investigated itself after allegations by former Officer Rafael Perez about widespread illegality and criminal conduct by police officers.

The unanimous vote -- by Cindy Miscikowski, Bernard C. Parks, Jack Weiss and Dennis Zine -- clears the way for full council action that could come this week. The members of the Public Safety Committee approved provisions to indemnify the city from liability and to grant witnesses limited administrative immunity.

“This day has been an awfully long time coming,” said Weiss, who had been lobbying for months to put the blue-ribbon commission to a fast-track vote.

“There had been an awful lot of wagon circling for the past several months. I’m pleased that the panel is finally moving forward.”

Perez confessed to LAPD detectives that he and colleagues in the Rampart Division routinely beat and framed suspects in addition to lying, in a bid to cover up unjustified shootings.

Rampart has already been investigated by the Rampart Board of Inquiry, a police union study by USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, an earlier Police Commission independent review panel, the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. task force and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Constance Rice, civil rights attorney and chairwoman of the blue-ribbon commission, said the group would “drill down” to investigate the systemic failures that led to Rampart and fix them, rather than focus on individual culpability.

The Times found in October 2002 that Los Angeles Police Department detectives did not thoroughly investigate three shooting cases that, according to a top police official, Perez said had been unjustified and were covered up.

In all three cases, department investigators did not interview some witnesses or review other material that might have been relevant.

The commission has a budget of $350,000, which was donated.

“If, after the board of inquiry and the independent panel and the grand jury and the Los Angeles County Bar and the consent decree, we hope that this will be the last report, and we should not be putting ourselves in the position that creates more questions than answers,” said Parks.

While LAPD chief, Parks promised to produce an “after-action report” detailing the exact “nature and disposition” of each allegation that surfaced in the Rampart probe.

But the report was still in the works when the chief was forced out of office in 2002. Bratton deemed the report “totally inadequate” and together with the commission, called for an independent review.

In a memo last month, Chief Legislative Analyst Ronald Deaton raised concerns about Rice and commission member Carol Sobel, because they have represented or currently represent clients suing the LAPD in brutality and civil rights cases.