POLICE CORRUPTION INQUIRY EXPANDS IN LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 10 - A long-simmering corruption scandal has widened to
encompass a broad swath of the Los Angeles Police Department, with the
district attorney saying today that his office has now found more than 40
people who were wrongly prosecuted, and in several cases shot, through
police misconduct.

The district attorney, Gil Garcetti, also said in a news conference that
the investigation had now spread beyond the inner-city station where it began.

Mr. Garcetti said prosecutors would soon go to court to ask that another 6
to 10 convictions be thrown out and that the victims be released.
Thirty-two cases have already been overturned.

Mr. Garcetti said in an interview late today that he expected more cases to
be overturned and more prosecutors to be assigned to the investigation. The
police have disclosed that perhaps 100 cases might have been tainted by
planted evidence, false testimony or other police abuses.

More important, Mr. Garcetti said, the investigation has gone beyond the
Rampart Division, a station west of downtown in a gang-infested
neighborhood where the misconduct was first uncovered.

"It definitely can and will go beyond Rampart," he said. "It would be wrong
to think this is just a Rampart investigation. We are going where the case
goes."

He disclosed that there had been a "breakdown" in the cooperation between
the police and prosecutors. The police, he said, have started to resist
prosecutors' efforts to gather information, a sign of the rising tensions
as some in the police department seek to limit the damage.

Prosecutors met with police officials this morning, and Mr. Garcetti said
they were assured that they would get the cooperation they needed.

"We feel, rightly or wrongly, that we weren't getting all the information
we needed," Mr. Garcetti said. "The air was cleared."

Lt. Sharyn Buck, a police spokeswoman, said the department would have no
comment on Mr. Garcetti's remarks or any aspect of the inquiry.

So far, it has been disclosed that officers shot an unarmed man in
handcuffs, planted guns, drugs and other evidence on suspects, lied in
court testimony to frame innocent people and stole drugs and money.

Even before today, the scandal was the most serious instance of corruption
in the history of the troubled Los Angeles Police Department, but its
growing breadth and the systematic nature of the corruption, which
apparently went unchecked for years, has raised questions about the ability
of the department to monitor its officers.

"The structure was in place there that allowed this" to go on for so long,
Mr. Garcetti said.

"There hasn't been a structural change" in the department to correct the
problems.

His remarks underscored the political tensions underlying the
investigation, which has pitted Mr. Garcetti's office and its supporters
against the police department and its backers.

Bernard C. Parks, the chief of police, has publicly hinted that Mr.
Garcetti was moving too slowly on the investigation. Chief Parks has tried
to pre-empt critics by suggesting plans to improve internal monitoring in
the department.

Several weeks ago he urged Mr. Garcetti to overturn 99 tainted cases
quickly and to file charges against three officers.

Mr. Garcetti has suggested that the police, though they uncovered the
corruption, had allowed it go on for years and that the cases have to be
reviewed carefully and individually.

"I understand the Los Angeles Police Department would like to move more
quickly and get this behind them," Mr. Garcetti said. "It's just going to
take longer than some people want it to take."

Mr. Garcetti, who is up for re-election this year, has also been criticized
by his campaign opponents as not moving aggressively enough. He said he was
in no hurry to end the investigation.

The tensions escalated this morning when The Los Angeles Times carried two
articles that quoted from the secret interviews with investigators of
Rafael Perez, a former officer who has admitted to years of abuses and who
revealed the incidents after being arrested on charges that he had stolen
cocaine.

The articles quoted Mr. Perez, who is cooperating with the police in order
to reduce his sentence, as saying that nearly the entire antigang unit at
the Rampart Division, including supervisors were involved. He is also
quoted as saying that officers at other police stations were involved.

The newspaper provided details of a case in which the police were reported
to have shot an unarmed gang member, then planted a gun near him as he bled
to death.

Mr. Garcetti would not go into detail, but said, "I didn't read anything in
the articles that was inaccurate."

Dozens of civil suits have already been filed by those wrongly imprisoned,
and more suits are expected.

The Los Angeles city attorney, who handles the civil litigation, said that
settling the civil complaints could cost $120 million, with some outside
experts saying the figure could top $200 million.