POLICE CREATED OWN CULTURE TO OPERATE AS LAW TO ITSELF

20 LAPD Officers Relieved Of Duty

LOS ANGELES - Officers in an anti-gang unit at the center of the LAPD
corruption scandal believed they were waging a life-or-death struggle with
the drug pushers and street hoodlums they encountered daily, according to
an internal report released Wednesday.

The unit "routinely made up its own rules and, for all intents and
purposes, was left to function with little or no oversight."

The rogue actions and rule-bending attitude of its officers became known as
the "Rampart Way," referring to a district near downtown considered the
toughest in the city.Operated as an entity

The Board of Inquiry, which investigated for six months, concluded the unit
"developed its own culture and operated as an entity unto itself."

The police department's 362-page report recommended 108 changes in
department policies and procedures. But the board also largely endorsed
current policies and procedures, saying the scandal was a result of
officers and supervisors failing to carry them out.

The scandal has led to 40 convictions being overturned and 20 officers
being relieved of duty, with city officials estimating liability could cost
taxpayers more than $100 million. More than 15 civil damage suits have been
filed.

Over the weekend, about two dozen attorneys met in the Los Angeles office
of attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. to discuss whether the scandal can be
used as a springboard for widespread police reform.

The scandal also has generated backbiting between officials. Disagreements
are being raised over the need for an independent review and the speed with
which the District Attorney's office is pursuing criminal charges against
bad cops.

The scandal might have been avoided if supervisors had noticed a troubling
series of red flags first raised in the mid-1980s, the report said.

"Pursuits, injuries resulting from uses of force, officer-involved shooting
and personnel complaints had a clearly identifiable pattern. ... Yet no one
seems to have noticed and, more importantly, dealt with the patterns," the
report said.'Anything goes' approach

Symbolic of the anti-gang unit's anything-goes approach was its logo - a
grinning skull in a cowboy hat with the so-called dead man's poker hand
arrayed behind it. Officers worked with little contact or control from
supervisors and sometimes signed a sergeant's name to arrest reports, the
report said.

In one incident at the end of the 1992 riots, a supervisor found the unit's
members playing cards and working out when they should have been on patrol.
Two days after complaining to a superior, the supervisor found the tires on
his personal vehicle slashed, the report said.

"We think this is a very exhaustive investigation of our systems, our
management style, our issues that we think may have caused the opportunity
for this issue of corruption in Rampart," Police Chief Bernard C. Parks
said during a news conference Wednesday. "We think it is a very thorough
report, one that we can probably say has never been done in a public forum
such as this."

The report targeted poor paperwork, lax supervision and poor understanding
of police rules and policies. Mostly, it was a case of "people failing to
do their jobs."

Parks earlier said a shortage of supervisors was partly to blame for the
scandal and recommended a $9 million reform package. It includes expanding
the use of lie detectors and strengthening other procedures to weed out bad
recruits.

Parks reiterated several times that it revolved around a small group of
people and that the "other 13,000 members of this department should not be
broadbrushed."

Those employees, he said, would work "as hard as we can to bring back the
luster to the Los Angeles Police Department badge."

In a news conference after Parks spoke, Mayor Richard Riordan said the city
police commission was well-equipped to investigate the scandal and said
independent review was unnecessary.

"The Board of Inquiry report is a great step forward toward achieving
accountability throughout the LAPD," he said.FBI joins investigation

The FBI and U.S. attorney's office announced last week that, at Parks'
request, they were joining the police investigation.

The scandal has centered on allegations by former officer Rafael Perez that
officers in the Rampart anti-gang CRASH unit - for Community Resources
Against Street Hoodlums - beat, framed and shot suspects.

On Tuesday, a federal judge refused to bar Rampart area police from contact
with suspected Hispanic gang members who may be in the country illegally.

The proposal involving "young male Hispanics" was "vague" and "overbroad,"
U.S. District Court Judge Margaret M. Morrow said in turning down a request
for a temporary restraining order in a civil rights lawsuit.

The suit, filed Monday, contends that officers would identify suspected
gang members and witnesses to police misconduct and target them for
deportation.