RACKETEERING LAW AIMED AT LAPD

Ruling Could Boost Liability In Scandal

LOS ANGELES -- A federal judge has ruled that the government's
anti-racketeering statute, created to deal with drug bosses and organized
crime figures, can be used in lawsuits against the troubled Los Angeles
Police Department.

Besides allowing one of the largest police departments in the United States
to be dealt with like a criminal enterprise, the decision Monday by Judge
William J. Rea of federal District Court drastically increases the city's
potential liability in its worst police scandal in decades. The law permits
a longer statute of limitations and could triple the damages the city could
otherwise face.

The case involves claims by one of the many people who say they were
victims of violent and corrupt officers at the department's Rampart
Division, whose actions are at the heart of the scandal. The city had tried
to have this case thrown out, and in making his ruling on Monday the judge
rejected that motion.

Legal experts said Tuesday that it appeared the department would be the
first police agency in the country to face trial under the statute, which
over the years has come to be used in a wide variety of litigation.

Edwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern
California, said he spent Monday evening researching the matter and could
find no other case in which a police department had been brought to trial
using the statute, known as RICO -- the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations law.

Rea did not deal with the credibility of the plaintiff's claim that the
department condoned and authorized the actions by corrupt officers, but
said that if those accusation are true, they would constitute racketeering
activity and so would come under the RICO law.

Under RICO, the statue of limitations is 10 years, rather than one year as
in other civil rights litigation, so the ruling could open the courtroom to
many more cases.

For instance, the lead plaintiff in the case, Louie Guerrero, says that
police beat and falsely arrested him on drug charges in November 1997 and
that he was released from prison before details of the Rampart scandal
became known last year. Under other civil rights laws, his lawsuit against
the department would have to be dismissed. RICO would allow it.

Nearly 100 criminal cases have been overturned as a result of the scandal,
in which officers are said to have planted evidence and beaten people in a
struggling Latino neighborhood for sport and profit.

City officials have previously estimated the city's liability at between
$125 million to $200 million.

"If the plaintiffs prevail," Chemerinsky said Tuesday, "there is staggering
potential liability for the city, just staggering."

But Chemerinsky cautioned that the judge had simply ruled that the case
could go forward. "Whether the plaintiffs can ultimately prove it," he
said, "we'll just have to wait and see."

Stephen Yagman, a lawyer for Guerrero, said, "We have in effect converted a
civil rights lawsuit into a racketeering lawsuit -- and it's about time."
Yagman said he had no doubt that "a reasonable jury will look at the
evidence and agree with what I've been claiming for years: that the LAPD is
essentially a criminal enterprise."

Yagman said his four-lawyer firm has 19 Rampart-related cases and an
additional 50 on file. He said they were analyzing 100 more potential cases
and have brought in a firm with 26 lawyers to help.

"And we're thinking about hiring even more lawyers," he said. "This is just
the tip of the iceberg."

Both the police department and the mayor's office declined to comment and
referred all calls to the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. Mike Qualls,
a spokesman for the city attorney, said, "Obviously, we're disappointed in
the ruling and we're reviewing our options."

Rea also refused the city's request to throw out the plaintiff's request
for an injunction that would forbid police officers from engaging in the
planting of evidence or committing perjury, two pillars of the Rampart
charges of official abuse.

The Rampart scandal has embarrassed the Los Angeles Police Department for
months as story after story about corrupt and brutal officers has chipped
away at a reputation already tarnished by the O.J. Simpson case, the Rodney
King beating and the riots of 1992. The image long polished by Hollywood
and sent across the world by reruns of "Dragnet" seems long gone.