RAMPART REVELATIONS UPSET CITY RESIDENTS, UNDERCUT CONFIDENCE

LAPD: The ongoing police scandal is sowing doubts about L.A.'s direction
despite a strong economy. A majority backs creating an independent panel to
investigate.

The Rampart police corruption scandal is contributing to a malaise in Los
Angeles, helping to raise questions about the city's health and image,
devastating public impressions of the Los Angeles Police Department and
fueling strong sentiment for the appointment of an independent commission to
investigate the crisis.

And yet, despite many residents' unhappiness with the scandal and its
ramifications, Mayor Richard Riordan continues to enjoy strong public
support. By contrast, many residents registered mixed feelings about the job
performance of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.

Those findings, culled from a new Times poll, suggest that the scandal has
had a deep effect on Los Angeles' sense of itself, sowing doubts despite a
strong economy and continuing reductions in crime.

Three out of four Los Angeles residents described themselves as "very upset"
or "somewhat upset" by the stream of revelations emerging from the LAPD in
recent months, including charges that officers shot, beat and framed
suspects and committed other crimes.

Moreover, a majority of city residents rejects the contention--advanced by
Parks, Riordan and others--that the misdeeds are the work of a few bad
officers. Fifty-one percent of city residents disagree with that notion;
instead, they believe the problems are "symptomatic of a larger problem
within the Police Department." Another 39% believe they are "isolated
incidents and are not representative of the Los Angeles Police Department as
a whole."

According to the poll, 75% of those surveyed think an independent commission
should be convened to investigate the scandal. Just 12% say the city's
civilian Police Commission, whose members are appointed by Riordan and which
sets policy for the LAPD, should handle that inquiry.

One respondent who agreed to a follow-up interview, David Hanna, put into
words the frustration felt by many residents confronted with one disturbing
revelation after another emanating from the LAPD.

"If you can't trust the police and depend on them, you're in trouble," he
said. "I just don't know how this could happen."

The Times poll interviewed 1,219 city residents from March 29 through
Wednesday. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage
points.

Nowhere are the results of the poll more striking than in the public's
impression of the LAPD itself. Residents like and respect the individual
officers in their communities, and 55% of respondents say they believe most
police are honest and hard-working. But just 36% have a favorable impression
of the way the LAPD as a whole does its job. That split in some ways
resembles public sentiments about Congress, where people often express
appreciation for their own representative but distaste for the institution
collectively.

In the case of the LAPD, however, Los Angeles residents have turned against
their Police Department with a force and breadth not seen since the
immediate aftermath of the 1991 Rodney King beating.

At its nadir, the LAPD's job-approval rating plummeted to 34% in March 1991,
the month that officers were caught on videotape beating King into
submission in Lake View Terrace. At that point, 59% of Los Angeles residents
registered disapproval of their Police Department. Respondents to that
survey also registered extreme dismay at the videotape: 76% said they were
very upset by what they saw, a far more visceral reaction than responses so
far to the more slowly unfolding Rampart allegations.

In the years since the King beating, the department's public image generally
has improved, though it took another hit after the LAPD's confused--and, in
some minds, cowardly--response to the 1992 riots, which broke out after the
officers were acquitted in the King beating. The department then steadily
began to win back the public's faith to the point that nearly two-thirds of
city residents said in a survey last year that they approved of the
department's performance. Just 13 months later, that number has dropped by
nearly half.

What's more, the public's misgivings extend beyond the LAPD.

In sharp contrast to just one year ago, city residents who say that Los
Angeles is on the wrong track now outnumber those who believe it's going in
the right direction. A year ago, 53% of those interviewed said they thought
Los Angeles was headed in the right direction, while 29% said it was not.
The latest survey finds just 35% approve of the current direction,
contrasted with 45% who say it's headed the wrong way.

Exactly how much the police scandal is influencing those perceptions is hard
to say. Residents listed crime and education as major causes of concern, and
the continuing controversy over the Los Angeles Unified School District's
mired effort to build the Belmont Learning Complex downtown weighs heavily
on many residents' minds. But, when asked, nearly eight in 10 respondents
said Rampart was contributing to the city's mood--and most of those said its
impact was negative. Sixty-eight percent said the scandal was damaging the
city's mood; 10% said it was having a positive effect and 16% that it was
having no effect. The remaining 6% said they did not know enough to venture
an opinion.

"All of Los Angeles County is going to suffer because the police didn't do
their job," said Darlene Zaun, a respondent who has lived in Los Angeles for
50 years. "We just started to get our roads fixed out here in the Valley.
Now we're going to have to wait again." She was referring to the cost of
settling litigation linked to the scandal.

Amid the poll numbers on Rampart are telling signs of the way different
residents perceive the continuing disclosures of police corruption. In
general, the results suggest that African Americans and Latinos are far less
surprised than whites by the allegations of police misconduct, and are far
more inclined to see racism and brutality as common facts of LAPD life.

According to the poll, 81% of blacks and 73% of Latinos believe it is common
for LAPD officers to express racist sentiments. Among whites, 58% said they
thought such feelings were common among Los Angeles police.

Similarly, 83% of blacks and 72% of Latinos believe officers commonly commit
acts of brutality. That view was shared by 43% of white respondents.

Races See Things Differently

In response to the question of whether the Rampart allegations are
symptomatic of a larger LAPD problem or are isolated instances, 55% of
whites saw them as isolated, contrasted with 42% who believed they were
emblematic of the LAPD generally.

By contrast, 79% of blacks saw the particular allegations as part of a
larger problem, and just 14% believed they were aberrations. Latinos split
the difference, with 52% seeing the problems as endemic and 24% viewing them
as specific to the particular officers.

Those divergent senses of the Police Department are reflected in economic
and educational terms as well. Richer, better-educated respondents generally
see the LAPD as a more benign institution. Poorer, less educated residents
view the department with far more skepticism.

That divergence is particularly apparent in the judgment of who is to blame
for the corruption within the LAPD. White respondents hold the now-departed
captain of the Rampart Division largely responsible for the problems in that
division, with 24% pointing the finger at him. Twenty-eight percent of
whites say the fault lies with the individual officers accused in the
scandal.

Latinos, whose neighborhoods have felt the brunt of the misconduct, are
similarly inclined to hold those individuals responsible. Fully 42% of those
who identified themselves as Latinos in the poll blamed individual officers.

Blacks, by contrast, overwhelmingly pointed to the LAPD's culture and
climate as the underlying cause of the scandal. Thirty-four percent of
African Americans who responded to the survey blamed that culture, far and
away the dominant cause those respondents cited.

That no doubt reflects the deep and uneasy relationship between many African
Americans and the LAPD. For years, African Americans were discriminated
against within the department, and many complained of mistreatment by its
officers. When the King video came to light in 1991, many African Americans
saw it as vindication of their long-standing grievances, which they felt had
been ignored or minimized by the city's largely white political leadership.

One sign of African Americans' continued antipathy toward the LAPD: Although
their opinions about the department's racism and brutality suggest that they
are far more skeptical than others about it, they also expressed far less
surprise at the Rampart revelations. Sixty-one percent of whites and 53% of
Latinos described themselves as "very upset" by the scandal; just 26% of
blacks described themselves that way.

Despite the widespread discomfort reflected throughout the survey, Mayor
Riordan continues to command strong personal approval. Fifty-seven percent
of those polled have a favorable impression of his job performance--nearly
the highest poll numbers he has ever received--and that warm feeling extends
to many of those who disagree with his policies.

More than half of those polled say the next mayor should change Riordan's
policies, and three out of four reject his contention that the Police
Commission, not an independent panel, should investigate the scandal. Still,
they overwhelmingly like Riordan.

"He's trying his best for the city," said a respondent named David, who
asked that only his first name be used. "He works to make things better, and
we don't have to pay him."

Riordan's Popularity Remains Strong

Riordan, a multimillionaire lawyer and venture capitalist, accepts just $1 a
year in salary for serving as mayor. Even some who criticize Riordan's
handling of one issue or another seem to like him. In follow-up interviews,
several respondents volunteered that they felt safer in their communities
than they did when Riordan was elected in 1993.

"He's doing something right," said one of those residents, Walter Floyd.

But Floyd also took issue with Riordan's handling of the Rampart
scandal--both in the way he has reacted to the revelations and in the
decisions that allowed corruption to take root and flourish in Rampart and
perhaps other police divisions.

"He's the boss," Floyd said of the mayor. "He appoints everybody else. If he
can't appoint the people to do the job right, what good is he?"

One of those Riordan appointed--in fact, arguably the most important
appointment of his entire seven years in office--is Parks. Named to head the
LAPD in 1997, Parks has served just over half of his five-year term. Within
the city's political leadership, opinion about Parks is profoundly split.
Virtually no one disputes his command of the LAPD and encyclopedic knowledge
of it. But some find him aloof or arrogant, resistant to criticism and
advice.

Those conflicting sentiments seem to be playing out with the public as well.

Parks has never commanded the affection that the public had for his
predecessor, Willie L. Williams, who struggled to take charge of the
department but whose charming public persona made him enormously popular. In
his five years in office, Williams typically won job approval ratings of 60%
or higher, very strong for anyone in public life.

A year ago, 47% of city residents said they approved of Parks' performance,
with just 10% disapproving. In that poll, 43% either did not know enough
about him to form an opinion or were undecided. Since then, Parks'
department has been embroiled in the worst corruption scandal in its
history, and many of those who once were undecided have started to make up
their minds.

The good news for Parks is that his approval rating has nudged up during
that period, to the point where 50% of those surveyed now say they have a
positive impression of his work. The bad news, however, is that his
disapproval rating is increasing far faster.

Compared to one year ago, nearly three times as many Los Angeles residents,
29%, disapprove of Parks' handling of his job.

The Rampart Scandal

City residents are upset about allegations of misconduct in the Los Angeles
Police Department's Rampart Division and think they are symptomatic of a
larger problem.

* Chief Bernard C. Parks' job approval rating:

* What is your impression of your local police officers?

NOW MARCH 1999

Favorable 71%

Unfavorable 23%

Don't know 6%

* How many Los Angeles police officers are honest and hard-working?

All Whites Blacks Latinos

Most 55% 69% 38% 45%

Just some 37% 27% 46% 45%

Not too many 4% 2% 9% 4%

Most are not 3% 1% 4% 5%

Don't know 1% 1% 3% 1%

* Are you upset about the alleged misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart
Division?

Central
South

All Westside Valley L.A. L.A.

Very upset 49% 43% 60% 59% 31%

Somewhat upset 25% 25% 31% 16% 36%

Not too upset 18% 9% 3% 24% 8%

Not at all upset 6% 20% 3% 1% 23%

Don't know 2% 3% 3% - 2%

* Do you think the alleged misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart
Division is symptomatic of a larger problem in the Police Department, or do
you think these are isolated incidents that are not representative of the
LAPD as a whole?

All Whites Blacks Latinos

Symptom of larger problem 51% 42% 79% 52%

Isolated incidents 39% 55% 14% 24%

Don't know 10% 3% 7% 24%

* Who should investigate the allegations of police misconduct by LAPD
officers of the Rampart Division?

All Whites Blacks
Latinos

The Police Commission 12% 16% 8% 11%

An independent commission 75% 75% 88% 74%

Both (volunteered) 9% 3% 1% 14%

Don't know 4% 6% 3% 1%

Notes: All questions were asked of residents of the city of Los Angeles.

-- indicates less than 0.5%.

Source: Los Angeles Times polls

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Poll contacted 1,219 residents of the city of Los Angeles by
telephone March 29-April 5. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all
exchanges in the city of Los Angeles. Random-digit dialing techniques were
used so that listed and unlisted numbers could be contacted. The entire
sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race,
age, education and region. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3
percentage points. For certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat
higher. Poll results can also be affected by factors such as question
wording and the order in which questions are presented. Interviews were
conducted in English and Spanish. Asians were interviewed as part of the
sample, but there were not enough in the city sample to show as a separate
subgroup.

Times Poll results are also available at http://www.latimes.com/timespoll

Rating the LAPD

* Job Approval

Note: Poll taken among city residents; no data available for 1989, 1990 or
1998

* Do you think the alleged misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart
Division is symptomatic of a larger problem in the Police Department, or do
you think these are isolated incidents that are not representative of the
LAPD as a whole?

Symptom
of larger Isolated Don't
problem incidents know

All 51% 39% 10%

Whites 42% 55% 3%

Blacks 79% 14% 7%

Latinos 52% 24% 24%

Source: Los Angeles Times polls