RISING TIDE OF SUSPICION

With federal indictments outside Rampart, a question looms larger:
Why were doubts about Los Angeles police officers never pursued?

Here's why the federal indictment Wednesday of former Los Angeles
Police Officers Edward Patrick Ruiz and Jon Paul Taylor should ratchet
up concern about misconduct within the department.

This case does not involve the Rampart Division scandal, in which
investigators already have uncovered evidence of LAPD members planting
evidence, fabricating documents, perjuring themselves in court,
wrongly shooting suspects and more. Ruiz and Taylor were 77th Street
Division cops and not part of any elite LAPD unit, as was the case in
the Rampart Division.

Ruiz was a training officer and Taylor was under his wing when the two
allegedly tried to frame an innocent man, Victor Tyson, five years ago
by falsely claiming that Tyson had a concealed weapon and dropped it
during a pursuit. If the allegations prove true, the question is how
many other officers were similarly "groomed" by Ruiz. Tyson, who had
no criminal record, was not one of the gangbangers so easily framed by
former LAPD Officer Rafael Perez, the principal source of information
on alleged Rampart Division misconduct. Perez squealed to spare
himself some prison time for cocaine theft from a police evidence
room. Tyson's case should give pause to anyone who still thinks that
the LAPD was "only" trying to get bad eggs off the street by any means
necessary.

The charge against Tyson was thrown out in court because of the
suspicions of a deputy city attorney.

Again, a prosecutor, in this case not in the district attorney's
office but the city attorney's, doubted the honesty and credibility of
involved officers.

He rightly reported his suspicions to his supervisor, and those
suspicions were supported by the police sergeant who approved the arrest.

Even the judge in the case commended the then-deputy city attorney,
Evan Freed, for his diligence in sniffing out a bad case and dropping
the prosecution of Tyson. But in another stunning failure at both the
prosecutorial and police management levels, the suspicion that there
were cops committing crimes against the innocent was not followed up
in any systematic way.

Officer Taylor resigned when the LAPD finally began to look into the
case, but Ruiz, who had a higher responsibility as a training officer,
received only a 22-day suspension for misconduct. That adds fuel to
concerns about the LAPD too lightly policing its own. Under the
federal civil rights indictments announced by U.S. Atty. Alejandro
Mayorkas, Ruiz and Taylor could face more than 10 years in federal
prison.

As the cloud of police corruption grows, it threatens to envelop City
Atty. James K. Hahn, a candidate for mayor, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti,
who's facing a tough reelection campaign, and Police Chief Bernard C.
Parks, who is midway in a renewable five-year term.

More important than the political fallout, however, is the gut punch
waiting for taxpayers.

This week the City Council settled a lawsuit stemming from a Rampart
police misconduct case by agreeing to give $400,000 to two men
allegedly harassed and beaten by LAPD officers.

It was the first such payout.

It won't be the last.