PARKS SEEKS $9 MILLION TO FIX LAPD CORRUPTION

Police: In scathing report on scandal, chief blames lax oversight and says
'deplorable circumstances' will recur unless sweeping measures are taken.

In a stinging indictment of his own department, Los Angeles Police Chief
Bernard C. Parks has told the Police Commission that lax oversight and poor
adherence to departmental policies helped "corruption to flourish" in the LAPD.

Parks' critical evaluation is contained in a report that the commission
will take up Tuesday. In it, the chief says he needs at least $9 million
and hundreds of new positions next year alone to fix the problems brought
to light by the ongoing Rampart Division corruption scandal.

"These terrible events have forever changed the department and the city,"
Parks wrote in the report to his five civilian bosses.

If appropriate steps are not taken, Parks warned, "it is not a question of
'if' but 'when' these deplorable circumstances would recur."

Parks' budget request offers an extensive preview of the massive internal
investigation that the LAPD launched after ex-officer-turned-informant
Rafael Perez implicated himself and other officers in a host of crimes and
acts of misconduct, ranging from unjustified shootings and false arrests to
witness tampering, evidence planting and perjury.

Perhaps the most disturbing finding in Parks' 17-page report is the
disclosure that "a few" officer-involved shootings "have come under serious
question." He said the LAPD's internal investigation of such shootings must
improve. At least seven "questionable" shootings are under review by the
LAPD's corruption task force, which is focusing on criminal wrongdoing by
officers.

Among his recommendations, in addition to new positions in other divisions,
Parks advocates adding 200 officers and civilian employees over the next
five years to the Internal Affairs Division; improving the screening
process for new recruits; promoting more and better supervisors; conducting
secret "integrity" stings to ensure that officers are honest; and assigning
the department's Robbery/Homicide Division to take over all aspects of
officer-involved shooting incidents.

Police Commission President Gerald L. Chaleff said that although the
chief's report "contains many constructive recommendations," he believes
the commission should wait to review the complete findings of the
department's internal probe, known as the board of inquiry, before deciding
on a course of action.

"This is an extraordinary and extraordinarily complex situation. We all
need to do whatever is required to ensure that it never happens again,"
Chaleff said. "We need to proceed aggressively, but deliberately."

Ted Hunt, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said the
chief's summary made him suspicious of where the department was headed with
its internal investigation.

"Management is looking for a scapegoat. They're going to want to say it's
those bad street cops," Hunt said. "But street cops follow orders. Orders
come from the top."

The LAPD's internal probe, which the chief said "was convened to determine
how this corrupt and illegal activity was allowed to occur," was initially
slated to be completed in October. However, the probe has taken longer than
expected, officials said, and is now scheduled to be released publicly
later this month. Investigators have examined tens of thousands of
documents and conducted hundreds of interviews.

Aiming to Prevent Any Recurrence

The recommendations in the pending board of inquiry report are aimed at
"ensuring [that] such extensive corrupt behavior is never allowed to
recur," Parks told commissioners. "These failures and their causes cannot
be viewed as one-time or episodic events for which the department and the
city can 'close the books' any more than they can 'close the books' on the
civil liability which will continue to flow from these failures," he said.

Last week, the chief and a representative of the city attorney's office
told City Council members during a closed briefing that the city's civil
liability for the corruption scandal could reach $125 million. To date,
Parks has said, 99 people have been wrongly convicted of crimes because
LAPD officers planted evidence or perjured themselves.

In his report to the commission, Parks referred back to the LAPD's last
major corruption case, which involved vice officers in the 1950s and 1960s,
and noted that safeguards implemented in vice operations after that scandal
have proved very successful over the years. Similar precautions, he said,
need to be adopted departmentwide.

"Systematic problems, such as those we encountered in other places, are
virtually unheard of in our vice operations," Parks wrote. "Therefore, we
believe it is necessary to emulate those systems . . . where integrity
breaches can be far more serious and liability massive."

As part of the LAPD's internal probe, investigators developed profiles of
several officers caught up in the corruption scandal. According to Parks'
report, investigators found that pre-employment information on several of
the officers they reviewed "raises serious issues" regarding their initial
employment.

The report said that although criminal records, inability to manage
personal finances, violent behavior or involvement with drugs should all
preclude employment with the LAPD, "the reality is that these factors did
not disqualify several of these officers, two of whom have now been fired
or resigned following felony convictions and a third after beating a
handcuffed arrestee."

To help address the problem, Parks said, polygraph examinations, with a
particular emphasis on drug use and integrity, should be administered
routinely to all police officer candidates.

The internal probe, Parks said, found that another major contributing
factor in the Rampart scandal was the "relative youth and inexperience" of
the officers who migrated through the division's anti-gang CRASH unit.

Unit Staffed With Inexperienced Officers

Such units perform "among the most sensitive and risky of department
operations. Yet we staff these units with the basic ranks and all too often
fill many of these positions with officers barely off probation."

In the future, only tenured supervisors and officers should be selected for
such assignments, Parks wrote. He added that the board of inquiry
investigators found that the "lack of effective field supervision in
Rampart was, frankly, glaring."

Detectives working the criminal aspect of the corruption investigation
suspect that at least one supervisor was an active participant in helping
officers cover up questionable shootings.

Because of the youth and inexperience in the CRASH units, Parks said, many
LAPD employees are unaware of the department's "less-than-routine"
procedures. For example, he said, there was "near-universal ignorance" of
the LAPD's rules for using informants and "even less comprehension of the
dangers inherent in the use of informants."

Officers Accused of Abusing Informants

In the Rampart scandal, informants were allegedly mishandled and abused by
anti-gang officers. Several officers used confidential informants without
properly registering them with the department. One informant allegedly was
beaten in the interview room at Rampart station. And sources close to the
criminal probe allege that Perez illegally used informants to pinpoint
people with drugs and money for his own personal gain.

When complaints were lodged against officers, too often they were
investigated within the division where they occurred as opposed to being
referred to the department's Internal Affairs Division.

"Many of those complaints involved serious community complaints that should
have been handled by [Internal Affairs] to ensure the most independent and
thorough investigation possible," the report stated.

The proposed addition of sworn and civilian staff members to Internal
Affairs is intended to accommodate such a shift. Parks also wants to beef
up the department's risk management division, which he said failed to
recognize "alarming trends."

But the chief said that responding to complaints is not enough, and that
the department must ferret out corruption on its own. To that end, he
proposed the formation of an Ethics Enforcement Section within the Internal
Affairs Division that would "continually conduct sting operations to find
and root out corruption."

Times staff writer Tina Daunt contributed to this story.