LOS ANGELES, Feb. 16 - Top police officials here offered a scathing public
indictment of the command and supervision within their troubled department
today, saying that thousands of new officers had been hired with little
vetting and then allowed to run virtually out of control.

These lapses, the officials said, were especially bad at some of the
special divisions designed to use aggressive tactics against gangs and
dealers in crack cocaine, and had thus contributed to a scandal that has
shocked this city with reports of widespread and unchecked police corruption.

"We did not have ability to have command and control and to examine the
department," said Deputy Chief Michael Bostic, in a hearing before the Los
Angeles City Council.

The problems of a rapidly expanded and undersupervised force have cropped
up at police departments at other large cities, notably Washington, where
politicians responded to the crack epidemic in the late 1980's and the
early 1990's with calls for placing more uniformed officers on the streets.
In some of those cities there have been similar debates over whether the
police departments have brought on too many people too quickly, leading to
abuses that are now being uncovered.

"When there is a sudden intrusion of new rookies, they overwhelm the
organiztion," said Edward A. Flynn, the police chief of Arlington County,
Va. "They are able to impose their values on the organiztion. They can be
resistant to positive mentoring."

The issue has moved to the center of the debate over who was responsible
for the abuses that took place here - including the shooting of a
handcuffed gang member, fabricated evidence and lying by officers - and the
question of whether the police can reform themselves or whether an outside
body must do the job.

The top officials' statements today were a startling admission of the
depths of the problems at the police department, but they were also just
another step in the intense political battle being waged.

Until recently, most political leaders, including the mayor, have had
little to say about the scandal, in which most of the victims were gang
members or drug dealers. Many here interpreted the admissions by the police
officials as an effort to pass blame for the problems and to head off the
creation of an outside body to investigate the corruption.

The City Council has not called for an outside investigation, and after
today's hearing, several members said they were content to let the current
inquiries, at the police department and the district attorney's office,
take their course.

But the efforts to limit the damage were crumbling. The police chief,
Bernard C. Parks, acknowledged for the first time that the systematic
corruption might have existed beyond the inner-city Rampart Division, where
it was first uncovered.

Chief Parks said that, although there was no criminal investigation yet of
other police divisions, "the telltale signs" of supervisory lapses were
present across the department and would be investigated.

The police officials said today that all of the officers so far implicated
in the scandal had been hired in in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when
there was great pressure to add to the force quickly, and that four of them
should never have been hired because of problems that should have been
uncovered in the standard background checks. The problems found among
officers hired during that period included arrests and histories of
alcoholism, domestic violence or outstanding debts, Chief Parks said.

Mr. Bostic said that in many instances there were "very clear flags that
something was wrong, and either people did not find it, or when they did,
chose not to take action."

Chief Parks has offered a broad program of reforms, including lie detector
tests for all applicants, better background checks, sting operations of
police officers to ferret out corruption, and the hiring of 200 new people
for the internal affairs division, which investigates corruption. He has
also called for a special department to freeze sites after police shootings
to avoid the kind of tampering with evidence that has been uncovered at the
Rampart Division.

The scandal may also change the way the specialized police divisions
operate. They had been given great autonomy to pursue gang members and drug
dealers, which has led to many complaints about overly aggressive tactics.
The police officials said today that they planned to take away some of the
units' autonomy and force them back into mainstream procedures.

Still, there is growing concern among some politicians that damage control
is a prime objective at the police department. And some City Council
members and others have expressed concern that the efforts to deflect blame
may take priority over corrective action. That is why some people and
groups, including State Senator Tom Hayden and the American Civil Liberties
Union, have demanded an outside investigation and intervention by federal
authorities.

The City Council has not made such demands, but some members expressed
alarm today at some of Chief Parks's statement.

Councilwoman Laura Chick, a a former head of the Council's public safety
commission, said that at the time the police department was hiring the
thousands of new officers she and others demanded to know whether controls
were in place. She said she had been assured that they were.

"Where was the L.A.P.D. in standing up, as our law-enforcement experts, in
saying we're making a mistake in hiring so many police officers and not
putting in place the other pieces?" Ms. Chick asked. "It never happened."

Chief Parks rejected questions about whether a code of silence among police
officers had contributed to the scandal. "It is no more pervasive at the
L.A.P.D. than in the general population," he said.

So far, more than 40 criminal cases have been or will shortly be
overturned, and the district attorney has said that more are coming. The
city is also being sued by people who say they were the victims of the
police abuses. Some experts have estimated that the cases could cost the
city more than $200 million.