CROOKED COPS THREATEN LOS ANGELES WITH FINANCIAL RUIN

LOS ANGELES (AP) - For months, Los Angeles seemed prepared to let its police
department clean up its own ranks and root out officers accused of robbing,
framing and shooting suspects in one of the city's grittiest sections.

But a series of new allegations - that an anti-gang unit held parties to
celebrate shootings, spread ketchup to imitate blood at a crime scene and
handed out plaques for killings - have widened the scandal, threatening to
wreck the city budget with a barrage of lawsuits.

This week, the California attorney general's office said it will take a
larger role in the investigation, which is looking at corruption between
1995 and 1998. Also, the FBI has contacted the LAPD about taking part and
civil-rights activists want an independent investigator.

On Thursday, Mayor Richard Riordan recommended spending roughly $100 million
in tobacco-settlement money to cover the anticipated lawsuits from victims
of the police misconduct.

"The Rampart scandal may well be the worst manmade disaster this city has
ever faced," City Councilman Joel Wachs said.

At least 11 officers, and perhaps as many as 20, have been relieved of duty,
and 40 convictions have been overturned since the scandal broke last fall.
Dozens of other criminal cases are under investigation.

The tainted convictions will cost the city at least $125 million in lawsuit
awards, by one official estimate.

Under Riordan's proposal, the city would give up its 25-year share of
national tobacco-settlement money - as much as $300 million - to raise $100
million up front. The alternative would be to cut city services or raise
taxes, he said.

"There's a great consequence for the public," said Hubert Williams,
president of the Police Foundation, a Washington-based non-profit research
group.

"This is almost an invisible tax. The money that would ordinarily benefit
the citizens of Los Angeles now is being set aside."

Los Angeles was once held up as an example of how a big city should be
policed. Dragnet and Adam-12 television police dramas were set in Los
Angeles. Then came the Rodney King beating and the accusations of
incompetence in the O.J. Simpson case.

The latest scandal may tarnish the LAPD's image for years.

"It's cast a shadow on all police officers," City Councilman Hal Bernson
said.

At the heart of the scandal is the Rampart Division's Community Resources
Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH, an elite anti-gang unit that has its own
budget and works out of a separate building. Rampart handles a drug- and
gang-infested area near downtown that Police Chief Bernard Parks said is
considered the "most violent 10 square miles in the city." CRASH cops often
are considered the toughest of the tough.

How Tough?

In seeking leniency for stealing cocaine from an evidence locker, former
officer Rafael Perez has painted LAPD investigators a picture of a violent
clique of officers who sported skull tattoos, planted guns on people and
beat handcuffed suspects inside the police station.

Perez said he stole thousands of dollars from drug dealers, paid a
drug-addicted informant with cocaine and slept with another.

Perez said several "bad" shootings were covered up. In one case, he said, a
supervisor spread ketchup over a crime scene to make it appear a rookie cop
who shot an unarmed man hiding in a closet thought he saw blood and was
about to be shot.

Parks and civil libertarians blame problems within the entire LAPD - not
just the Rampart Division.

"There's generally a lack of oversight by command supervision going all the
way up through the department," Parks told the City Council on Wednesday.

The police chief wants a $9 million "integrity package" of reforms to
prevent scandals. The 100 or so proposals include reining in CRASH and other
special units, giving lie-detector tests to all officer candidates, beefing
up the Internal Affairs division and setting up sting operations to trap bad
cops.

The scandal has also strained relations among top officials. The mayor and
the police chief have criticized District Attorney Gil Garcetti for not
prosecuting any officers, nearly six months into the investigation.

Garcetti said he won't compromise a prosecution by submitting a weak case.

"Prosecutors always want a perfect case," the mayor countered.

"Perfection makes things stagnant."

The public, he said, "wants justice."