LAPD PROBES

If we thought it might lead to serious efforts to root out all the
dirty cops in the department and change the culture of the Los Angeles
Police Department, we might be inclined to offer a cheer or two at the
news. But a deftly publicized threat from acting chief Bill Lann Lee
of the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department to slap a
lawsuit on Los Angeles if the LAPD doesn't clean up its act looks more
like grandstanding and face saving than a serious reform effort.

Joseph McNamara, former police chief of San Jose and now a fellow at
the Hoover Institution, takes a cop's-eye view of the corruption
uncovered so far.

"The way to get at gangster cops is to do some sting operations and
send them to the joint for a long time," he told us from Washington,
D.C., where he is speaking at a conference this week. "We won't get
that from Bill Lann Lee or Janet Reno, any more than we've gotten it
from the current leadership of the department, who acted only when the
Perez case fell into their laps.'

Former Rampart Division officer Rafael Perez started accusing others
and admitting to some of his own misdeeds late last summer after his
girlfriend turned him in when she was arrested.

The ensuing charges of brutality and corruption have led to the
dismissal and suspension of about 30 officers and the overturning of
more than 80 convictions.

Mr. McNamara, a recognized authority on policing, believes these cases
only scratch the surface, and he's afraid the impulse in Los Angeles
is still to contain the damage rather than to uncover the full extent
of corruption.

The U.S. Justice Department has been investigating the LAPD since
1996, under a law passed in 1994 in the wake of the Rodney King
beating and subsequent riots that allows federal officials to seek
changes in local police operations.

But Justice Department sleuths missed the Perez case and the entire
Rampart Division scandal. It's not difficult to suspect that the
threat to file a lawsuit to force reforms is a case of playing catch-up.

The problem at the LAPD won't be solved by putting in a new monitoring
system, the remedy the Justice Dept. is likely to enforce.

Phony criminal cases based on planted evidence and perjured testimony
wouldn't slide their way through the justice system to easy
convictions without serious deficiencies throughout the system.

Defense attorneys, prosecutors with integrity and judges more
concerned with justice than with speed should have smelled something
fishy somewhere along the way - and started asking questions.

The fact that they didn't suggests that the problem doesn't begin and
end with the Rampart Division.

That means it will take more than a Justice Department lawsuit or
beefing up the powers of Police Commission Inspector General Jeffrey
Eglash - though not a bad idea - to clean up the mess in Los Angeles.
Whether the political will can be mustered to keep digging without
fear or favor through the entire justice system is the question.

It is difficult to be wildly optimistic, but that's what citizens are
due.