U.S. PREPARED TO SUE TO FORCE LAPD REFORMS

*Police: Sources say Justice Department will brief local officials on
whether violations fall into a pattern of abuse.

Meanwhile, officers' homes are searched.

As search warrants were served on the homes of more than a dozen Los
Angeles police officers linked to an ongoing criminal corruption probe,
sources said Friday that federal authorities are prepared to bring a civil
rights lawsuit against the LAPD unless the city and the department agree to
a host of reforms.

U.S. Department of Justice officials have concluded after a four-year
investigation that they have enough evidence of alleged civil rights
violations at the hands of Los Angeles Police Department officers to file a
so-called pattern and practice lawsuit against the entire department.

According to sources familiar with the federal government's approach to the
case, Civil Rights Division Chief Bill Lann Lee will come to Los Angeles on
Monday to meet with city officials and brief them on the Justice
Department's intentions. Federal authorities are offering the city an
opportunity to enter into a consent decree rather than face a lawsuit.

Since 1996, Justice Department officials have been monitoring the LAPD to
determine whether incidents involving excessive force fall into any
recognizable pattern.

The purpose of such reviews, authorized by federal law in 1994, is to
ensure proper management and oversight of local police departments.

More recently, the Justice Department has concerned itself with the
allegations that officers from the LAPD's Rampart Division were involved in
beatings, unjustified shootings, false arrests, evidence plantings and
perjury, matters that go well beyond the issues the federal government
previously had been examining.

City Atty. James K. Hahn, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, Police Commission
President Gerald L. Chaleff and representatives of the mayor's office all
have been summoned to the meeting Monday afternoon.

Inspector General Jeff Eglash and council members Cindy Miscikowski and
Mike Feuer also are expected to attend.

Several local officials said they were not told what would be discussed at
the 4 p.m. session.

The threat of litigation would vastly raise the stakes for local officials,
and it would represent a clear vote of no confidence in Los Angeles'
political leadership, particularly its civilian Police Commission.

Based on the government's actions in previous pattern and practice consent
decrees, the proposal in Los Angeles could have broad ramifications. If
enacted, a consent decree could, in effect, strip final authority over many
matters relating to the Police Department from the mayor, the Police
Commission and the City Council. In other cities and states,
responsibilities such as internal investigations and even some budget
matters have been placed under the jurisdiction of a federal judge.

Los Angeles could, of course, choose to fight it out in court with the
Justice Department, but that would be a risky course, both politically and
legally.

Civilian Overseer

Although sources would not detail what reforms the Justice Department
expects to seek at the LAPD, federal authorities in all previous cases have
insisted on the appointment of an outside auditor or monitor.

When the federal government took action against the city of Pittsburgh in
1997 and its police bureau, for instance, an auditor was appointed and
given authority to review all incidents in which the police use force,
searches and traffic stops, among other things.

Any time the auditor concludes that there is something amiss with an
investigation in Pittsburgh, he can order the case reopened and issue
written instructions as to how the matter should be investigated. Local
officials are obligated to comply under the terms of the decree.

What that means in Pittsburgh, the first and largest such city to be placed
under such an order so far, is that a civilian overseer essentially is the
last word on internal police bureau investigations.

In Pittsburgh, federal authorities also required the city's police bureau
to collect a range of data and to install an officer-tracking system that
would alert officials to employees with potential problems.

Officer tracking has been a particularly sore spot in Los Angeles. Several
years ago, the city pledged to upgrade its rudimentary tracking system, and
based on that promise, the Justice Department not only backed off but went
so far as to make money available to the city to build a system.

Los Angeles officials failed to carry out that promise, however, bogging
down in bureaucratic details and letting the system languish.

When Justice Department officials recently discovered that the money they
had allocated for the project still was not used, they were furious.

When the Justice Department started its civil rights probe, former Chief
Willie L. Williams was in office and the Police Commission was headed by
lawyer Raymond Fisher, a well-regarded police reformer, who later went on
to work for the Justice Department. In that period, federal investigators
promptly received documents relating to excessive force complaints and
other matters.

Additional requests in 1998--by which time Parks had been named chief and
attorney Edith Perez was the acting commission president--were not
responded to in such a timely manner, federal officials said.

"We got a quicker response to our first request," one official familiar
with the federal civil rights investigation said shortly before Justice
officials met with Los Angeles leaders in March. "Whether that was because
of the people who were in charge, I can't say."

As federal authorities prepared to address systemic problems within the
department on Friday, local prosecutors and LAPD detectives were pressing
ahead with their own criminal probe.

Authorities served search warrants on 17 current and former LAPD officers,
most of whom once worked in the same anti-gang CRASH unit as Rafael Perez,
the man at the center of what has become known as the Rampart corruption
scandal.

Law enforcement sources said investigators were looking for further
evidence that would bolster a criminal conspiracy prosecution.

Among the items investigators sought were plaques awarded to anti-gang
officers involved in shootings who injured or killed suspects, according to
attorneys for suspended officers.

The plaques were distributed to officers at boozy celebrations,
occasionally held at the Los Angeles Police Academy, several former Rampart
officers have told The Times.

Investigators also were looking for additional artifacts of the quasi-gang
culture that allegedly existed within the division's CRASH unit. Such items
included shirts that bore a grinning skull wearing a cowboy hat in front of
the so-called dead man's poker hand.

At some residences investigators looked for photographs, financial records
and officers' notebooks pertaining to certain dates that investigators
would not disclose.

The early morning searches, which took officers and their families by
surprise, created yet another rift between the LAPD and the district
attorney's office, sources said.

Some officers whose homes were searched and their lawyers said the LAPD
investigators were apologetic, insisting that the operation was not their
idea and that they were not in favor of it.

A police union official said a deputy chief even placed an early morning
call, warning him of the impending searches.

Department officials confirmed privately that they saw little reason for
the searches eight months after the scandal broke and presumably after any
incriminating evidence would have been discarded.

Ted Hunt, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, charged
that the searches were a campaign stunt by Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who
faces a runoff election in November.

"This was the result of a desperate politician who is trying to breathe
life into his nearly extinct campaign," Hunt said. "He's using our police
officers--these good decent human beings--as political cannon fodder."

Raids Staged at Officers' Homes

In one instance, Hunt said, an officer responded to a knock on his door
about 7:30 a.m. to find several plainclothes district attorney's
investigators crouched at the entrance to his home, their guns drawn.

He said the officer's child watched in horror as the investigators, along
with LAPD detectives, barged into the house.

"The kid was in tears. . . . What need is there to point a gun [in the
direction of] a 5-year-old kid?" Hunt said.

"This shouldn't happen in America."

Aruna Patel, the wife of Kulin Patel, an officer under investigation whose
house was searched, broke into tears as she recalled the incident in an
interview Friday afternoon. "I am so humiliated," she said between sobs.
"He is a police officer not for the money, not for the fame. He is there to
help people.

And this is how they repay him."

Lawyers for several other officers who had their homes searched said
district attorney's investigators and LAPD detectives were professional,
even courteous.

District attorney's officials defended the searches as a necessary part of
what Garcetti has vowed would be a thorough investigation of the alleged
corruption centered on the LAPD's Rampart Division.

One district attorney's source said the LAPD investigators' recalcitrance
offered more evidence of what prosecutors increasingly see as the LAPD's
unwillingness and inability to police itself.

"They just don't have the stomach for it," the district attorney's source said.

To date, at least 31 officers, including three sergeants, have been
suspended or fired or have quit in the wake of the scandal.

More than 70 officers officers are under investigation for committing
crimes or misconduct or for knowing about such activities and helping to
cover them up.

In addition, at least 73 criminal cases have been thrown out of court amid
allegations of officer misconduct.