POLICE CORRUPTION CASE DRAWS QUIET RESPONSE

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 14 -- Raul Rodriguez remembers his two and a half years
in jail on murder and drug charges as a journey through shades of
blackness. He refused to allow his youngest son to visit him. He lost a
promising job as a salesman at a software company. The gangs that he had
tried to escape by leaving central Los Angeles surrounded him.

Deepening his despair was the ridicule that he endured from fellow inmates
when he talked about being exonerated. "I told them, 'I think I'm gonna
beat this thing,' that I was framed by the police," recalled Mr. Rodriguez, 30.

"They laughed and said, 'Man, you don't understand. Nobody beats the cops
in this town. Nobody's gonna believe you!' "

Eventually, Mr. Rodriguez was indeed acquitted of the murder charge. He
subsequently served time for drug possession, but he is now free and is
suing the police because, he said, they fabricated evidence against him and
conducted an illegal search. The trumped up murder charge, he said, led to
his drug conviction.

More important, he has company. His is one of scores of lawsuits charging
the police with a range of abuses in what has already become the largest
scandal in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department.

With many of the most egregious examples of brutality disclosed, Mr.
Rodriguez's case underscores the complex course the scandal is now taking
and helps explain the surprisingly quiescent attitude of the public and
many politicians in response to repeated disclosures of unjustified
shootings, beatings, lying and fabricating of evidence by police officers.

Most of the people now filing lawsuits are, like Mr. Rodriguez, current or
former gang members with arrest records, precisely the kinds of people that
police officers had been trained to intimidate.

Not only is the public reluctant to express outrage over the mistreatment
of such people, but many of the civil suits now emerging are not as
clear-cut as some of the first cases that came to light.

Mr. Rodriguez admitted, for instance, that he had marijuana in his home
when he was arrested on the murder charge, but he has insisted the search
was illegal because it was based on evidence fabricated by the police.

In another case, Cynthia Diaz, who admitted that she was addicted to crack,
is suing the police for breaking into her apartment, stealing thousands of
dollars and various appliances, and forcing her to flee briefly to Arizona
in fear for her life.

In neither case have the police acknowledged wrongdoing, and if the cases
come to trial they may rely on testimony from people who are still in
prison, as is the case with Ms. Diaz's boyfriend, or people with criminal
records, raising the same troubling issues of credibility that Mr.
Rodriguez had once confronted in the darkness of his cell.

No one doubts the depth of the corruption. Some 70 police officers are
reportedly under investigation and more than 40 convictions have been or
are in the process of being overturned by the office of District Attorney
Gil Garcetti with the promise of more to come.

The city is preparing for what some estimate could be more than $200
million in settlements.

Yet there have been only a few calls for an independent investigation and
little in the way of public demonstrations.

"We're talking about people who belonged in prison, just not for those
reasons," a former police official said. "The police may have stepped over
the line, but they had to be tough with these people, let's be honest."

Added a prosecutor: "The broad majority of citizens in this city don't care
that a bunch of drug dealers have been put in jail on trumped up charges.
The guilty going free is more politically volatile than the innocent being
declared guilty."

Some reform advocates expressed anger over such attitudes. "That to me is
so utterly corrupt, so utterly corrosive," said Merrick J. Bobb, a special
counsel to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and a former counsel
to a police reform commission after the beating of Rodney G. King in the
early 1990's. "That's what's really frightening."

Mr. Bobb and others say they are not optimistic about the prospects for
changes because of the lack of public reaction.

"There was no video in this instance," he said. "There was no personality
for this to coalesce around. The victims are gang members. They don't
command public sympathy. That has stopped the community from coming
together on this."

Even so, many experts say the evidence shows that the abuses were
widespread and insist that reforms will be required.

"I don't think this was aberrational at all," said Paul Marks, a retired
police captain in Los Angeles, in response to assertions by some police
officials that the abuses were limited to the Rampart Division, a station
west of downtown. "I was disappointed when this came out, but not
surprised. I'm telling you, this goes on outside Rampart. It's not just
going on at the lower levels of the department. It couldn't be."

Mr. Rodriguez was raised in the Rampart neighborhood by his mother. She
worked two jobs, he said, and he was alone most of the time. He joined one
of the most notorious gangs in the city, the 18th Street gang, he said, in
1982. He was 12.

He admitted that he constantly tangled with police officers from the
antigang division..

But his problems began in 1996. He had moved in 1994 to West Covina, a city
about 15 miles east of Los Angeles, with his girlfriend and three children.
He got a job as a technical support officer and a salesman at a software
company. He was going to college at night.

But a phone call at 4 a.m. changed all that, he said. Police officers were
on the line, saying that his house was surrounded, that they had a warrant
for his arrest and that they wanted him to come out, unarmed, with his
hands up. .

He said his arrest was filled with police errors.

And the police kept referring to him, he said, as "Clever," when his old
street name had been "Oso."

Mr. Rodriguez said he came close to accepting a plea agreement and a
10-year jail term because of his doubts that the system could ever work for
him.

But he decided to fight and he was eventually acquitted on the murder charge.

But he was immediately jailed on charges that when he was arrested some
marijuana was found. He accepted a plea bargain, he said.

In all, he was in jail from Feb. 5, 1997, until last July.

Ms. Diaz moved here from Brooklyn when she was 6 years old.

"I was a Rampart Police Explorer," she said. "I was with this group that
used to spend time at the station. We'd ride along with the cops."

She said her life changed when, at 17, she got pregnant. When she had the
baby her mother told her to forget her dream of joining the police.

"I just sort of lost it after that," said Ms. Diaz, 35. "I just sort of
started hanging out."

She said she developed a drug habit and was convicted of drug possession,
for which she received probation.

Then one day she left her apartment in the Rampart neighborhood with $50,
to pay the weekly rent, and had an officer jam a gun in her face.

She said the officer handcuffed her and threw her against a wall. She was
eventually taken back to her apartment where, she said, the officers
insisted that she and her boyfriend hand over drugs and provide the names
of dealers.

Finally, she said, she told the officers where to find $2,700 in cash
hidden behind a heater. The policemen took the money and left. Ms. Diaz and
her boyfriend fled, only to discover later that the officers had returned,
she said, and walked off with their television, VCR, camcorder, a pager and
some jewelry.

Eventually, her boyfriend was jailed on drug charges.

Mr. Rodriguez said he wants a normal life, if one can be salvaged. He is
working at an aluminum plant by day, while going to college at night.

"I'm angry, but I'm trying not to be angry in a negative way," said Mr.
Rodriguez. "If you let yourself be like that you give that attitude to your
kids."

He added, "When I see those cops go to court, I'll know justice is being done."