LAPSES OCCURRED IN OVERSEEING DEPARTMENT, LAPD OFFICIAL SAYS

LOS ANGELES - Top police officials here offered a scathing public
indictment of the command and supervision within their troubled department
Wednesday, 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
crack cocaine dealers, 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, D.C.,
where politicians responded to the crack epidemic in the late 1980s and the
early 1990s 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.

The issue has moved to the center of the increasingly politicized debate
over who was responsible for the abuses that took place in Los Angeles -
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.