3 OFFICERS FACE HEARING TODAY

The city's biggest corruption scandal in decades proceeds today in a
hearing with three defendants; the FBI hasn't found the alleged ringleader,
who may have fled to Mexico.

At 23, Keith Batt had realized his childhood dream of becoming a police
officer. Fresh from Oakland's police academy, he was assigned last summer
to the graveyard shift, patrolling some of the toughest streets in the
city's west end.

In his first night on that shift under the tutelage of his field training
officer, his real schooling was to begin, in the alleged lawless style of
the Riders -- a group of cops at the center of the biggest corruption
scandal in Oakland in decades. Already prosecutors have thrown out more
than 50 criminal cases in which the officers played a key role. Hundreds
more may be reviewed.

This morning, three of the Riders -- a fourth is still a fugitive -- face a
preliminary hearing on 34 felony and misdemeanor counts, including charges
of planting evidence and beating suspects bloody. Prosecutors paint a tale
of corruption that rivals the Rampart police scandal in Los Angeles, in
which a hundred convictions were overturned and numerous police officers
arrested.

Shortly after Batt started work, he met Francisco Vazquez, thought to be
the Riders' ringleader. Forget everything you learned in the academy,
Vazquez told Batt, according to an Internal Affairs report. Forget the
rules about probable cause. If you want to question someone, just grab him.

After a mere three weeks on the job -- allegedly after being ordered to
falsify reports, and get into a fight to prove he was a "soldier" -- Batt
quit, saying nothing of what he saw. Perhaps he recalled Vazquez's
warning: "You're not a snitch, are you? You know that snitches lie in ditches."

But after puzzled administrators questioned him about why he was quitting
so quickly, Batt, now a Pleasanton police officer, began to unfurl a tale
of corruption that has shaken Oakland's faith in its 747 police officers.

"This has validated what a lot of blacks and Latinos have alleged for a
long time," said Paul Cobb, a member of the city's Board of Education and a
resident of West Oakland, composed largely of minorities. "That there has
been selective treatment by the police in the minority community, both
planting drugs and unnecessary roughness."

The nickname Riders came from an unknown West Oakland man, according to a
source close to the investigation who asked not to be named. The man had
been stopped for a traffic violation by a day shift officer, and after
getting his ticket, the driver told the cop: "Thanks for being so nice to
me. At night, we don't get this treatment. The Riders come out at night."
The story got passed on to the crew working the district's dog watch, or
graveyard shift. And it adopted the name.

The Riders allegedly consist of Vazquez (the FBI is searching for him; he
may have fled to his native Mexico); Clarence Mabanag, Batt's field
training officer; Jude Siapno and Matthew Hornung.

So far, the district attorney's office has thrown out 60 to 70 criminal
cases in which a member of the Riders played a key role, said David
Hollister, who is prosecuting the officers. All told, he said, his office
has been asked to review 300 to 400 cases. The four officers have been
fired. If convicted, Hollister said, the officers could face prison terms
ranging from nearly six years for Hornung to 17 years for Vazquez. Their
supervisor, Sgt. Jerry Hayter, was demoted but does not face charges.

Batt's revelations have spawned federal lawsuits against the department on
behalf of at least 50 people who say they were wrongly accused.

"I have done litigation against the Oakland Police Department since 1979,
including two wrongful deaths," said Jim Chanin, a Berkeley attorney who
has filed seven lawsuits arising from the Riders scandal. "And I have never
seen anything like this before. This is the worst I've ever seen."

The scandal erupts at a time when crime in general has been down across the
country, and crime in Oakland had dropped 16 percent from 1999 to 2000, and
3 percent more for this year compared with the same date last year, said
Dave Walsh, chief of staff for Police Chief Richard Word.

Patrolling in the after-midnight darkness of West Oakland -- amid shadowy
boarded-up buildings, barred windows and furtive but open curbside drug
markets -- is different from cruising the prosperous Oakland hills or Lake
Merritt districts on the day shift.

The Riders patrolled a rough area and resorted, investigators say, to rough
tactics to control it.

Batt and another rookie cop, Steve Hewison, were both pressured to sign
reports saying they saw criminal wrongdoing they never witnessed, the
report says.

They got schooling that is in no rookie training class. "F--- probable
cause" and "everything you learned in the academy," Vazquez told Batt,
according to the report. "If you're a coward, I'll terminate you. If you're
a snitch, I'll beat you myself, and if you're a criminal, I'll put you in
handcuffs and put you in the back of the car and put you in jail myself."

One time, a suspect received a gash on his forehead deep enough to call for
paramedics. Mabanag, Batt's training officer, wrote in the incident report
that the man had struck Batt -- Batt said he hadn't -- in an attempt to
justify the use of force, investigators said.

Batt protested and was upbraided for it. Then Mabanag said to Batt, "Let me
show you a trick with these statements." Mabanag had the suspect sign the
very bottom of the sheet, leaving a third of the page blank, the report
said. Later Mabanag filled it in, falsely quoting the man as apologizing
for giving the police trouble and saying "they were not the ones who beat me."

Mabanag is also quoted in the report telling a new recruit: "I'm tired and
old, so I'm going to be tired before you, so you beat him until I tell you
to stop."

For school board member Cobb, the rehabilitation of the Oakland Police
Department lies in intensifying community policing, in which beat cops get
to know the people of the districts they patrol. He himself has been
dismayed by the behavior of some West Oakland cops. "I got a seat belt
violation, one block from my house," he said. "And six cops showed up.
Unbelievable."