L.A. POLICE SCANDAL WIDENS

LOS ANGELES - For months, this city seemed prepared to let the LAPD police
its own ranks and root out officers accused of robbing, framing and
shooting suspects in one of Los Angeles' 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 expected lawsuits.

This week, the state attorney general's office said it would take a larger
role in the investigation, which is looking at corruption between 1995 and
1998.

The FBI also has contacted the Los Angeles Police Department about taking
part, and civil rights activists want an independent investigator.

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

"The ... scandal may well be the worst man-made 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. 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 obtain
$100 million upfront.

"There's a great consequence for the public," said Hubert Williams,
president of the Police Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit 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. Then came the 1991 Rodney King beating and the accusations of
incompetence in the 1994-95 O.J. Simpson case.

The latest scandal may tarnish the LAPD's image for years. 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.
Rampart handles a drug- and gang-infested area near downtown that Police
Chief Bernard C. Parks said is considered the "most violent 10 square miles
in the city."