LOS ANGELES POLICE REPORT CITES VAST COMMAND LAPSES

LOS ANGELES, March 1 -- In a long-awaited report on a burgeoning scandal,
the Los Angeles Police Department today offered a scathing indictment of
what was by its own admission a near collapse of its command and control
systems and the creation of a culture that permitted brutality and
corruption to flourish for years.

But the complex 362-page report left some civic leaders here troubled by
what it left unsaid.

The document was issued at a news conference where the police chief,
Bernard C. Parks, said he was proud of his department for having uncovered
the wrongdoing, an assertion critics have widely disputed. Those critics
also contended today that Mr. Parks was using the report largely as a
cudgel to fend off the growing demands for an outside investigation of the
department's management.

Mr. Parks did not propose taking any action against officials who failed in
their management responsibilities, although he said a separate report might
address them later. And he dismissed suggestions that he resign to take
responsibility for the departmentwide lapses.

The assessment issued today was undertaken nearly six months ago, after a
rogue officer, Rafael Perez, agreed to disclose widespread abuses in an
effort to reduce his sentence for stealing cocaine from a police evidence
room. He reportedly detailed vast wrongdoing at a single antigang unit, but
now the criminal investigation of wayward officers is extending to other
divisions.

The report included a list of 108 recommendations to the Police Commission,
a civilian oversight board, among them dozens of measures that would give
top police officials more power and financing.

It did not, however, recommend increased outside scrutiny, a step critics
had been hoping for.

"The report is vague or silent on the question of real concern, which is
the root problem of how this was allowed to go on throughout the
department," said Merrick Bobb, a lawyer who is an adviser to the Los
Angeles County Sheriff's Department and helped draft a police reform plan
eight years ago in response to the beating of Rodney G. King. "The L.A.P.D.
has got to show that it's as willing to let others look at it as it has
shown itself willing to look at itself. This is a first step, not an end
product."

Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha who is the author of a coming book on civilian oversight
of police departments, said the Los Angeles department had been fighting
effective civilian control for years and was trailing the police of other
major cities in that regard.

"This report begs the real question," Professor Walker said.

"It's a very damning indictment, but it doesn't answer the basic question
of why this was allowed to happen, why their own policies weren't followed."

"This," he added, "really does indicate that the L.A.P.D. is incapable of
ensuring accountability of itself."

The report says the criminal investigation of corrupt officers is not
complete, but it concludes that the corruption resulted from "a few
individuals" whose wrongdoing "had a contagion effect on some of those
around them."

Management shortcomings are addressed as well, however.

In some instances, the report says, officers were hired in spite of
knowledge that they had problems like narcotics use or a history of violent
behavior.

At the news conference, Michael Bostic, a member of the board of inquiry
that drew up the report, described the system for regularly evaluating
officers as "an atrocity." There were too few supervisors in station
houses, and when they had days off their officers sometimes went completely
unsupervised.

Civilians' complaints about police officers were not taken seriously or
investigated properly, the report says, and patterns of complaints were
ignored.

The report also cites a startling lack of internal audits. As a result, it
says, officers routinely ignored policies, in the knowledge that "the
likelihood of anyone discovering the use of shortcuts is practically nil."
It says there was "near universal ignorance" of the department's policies
regarding the use of informers.

The report attributes police wrongdoing in part to the mediocrity that it
contends was allowed to flourish. That notion was dismissed derisively by
several experts here, with one senior law-enforcement official commenting:
"Mediocrity is not corruption. It doesn't make an officer shoot an unarmed
man in the head."

In that previously disclosed instance, an officer confessed that he and his
partner had handcuffed an unarmed gang member, shot him in the head, then
planted a gun on him and lied in court when he was charged with attacking
them. His conviction, and 39 others, have already been overturned as a
result of the uncovered corruption, with many more likely. Further, experts
have warned that the city faces $200 million or more in civil liabilities.

The report's findings were especially troubling to some critics because
just eight years ago, after the King beating, the initial acquittal of the
officers involved and the ensuing riots, an independent panel headed by
Warren Christopher proposed sweeping reforms that were supposed to put a
stop to the sort of systemic abuses now being disclosed.

In August 1998, Mr. Parks told the Police Commission that 87 percent of the
reforms had been implemented. Yet some of the same shortcomings were
apparently allowed to continue under Mr. Parks, without any clear
indication that anyone within the department was being held accountable.

"That is the point: Why would I have confidence in the same entity that has
resisted the Christopher Commission reforms and that offered false
assurances about their implementation?" Laura Chick, a member of the City
Council and former head of its Public Safety Commission, said today.

"We need other perspectives," Ms. Chick added. "It cannot come from the
department or the Police Commission, which swallowed the chief's assurances."

Mayor Richard J. Riordan, who has consistently supported Mr. Parks
throughout the unfolding of the scandal, offered another endorsement of him
today.

"I have never been so proud of the Police Department," the mayor said in a
radio interview.

"To have self-criticized themselves like this, I have never seen in the
history of mankind any government agency do that. So we are going onward,
upward, and I think everybody will be proud of us."

Gerald Chaleff, a lawyer who is the president of the Police Commission,
said it intended to assemble a large staff of experts to analyze the report
and make their own recommendations to the commission.

"We will go beyond the scope of the report," Mr. Chaleff said, "to ensure
the department and the commission are held accountable, and to ensure that
this doesn't happen again."