MONITOR CITES REFORM, THOUGH INCOMPLETE, BY LOS ANGELES POLICE

LOS ANGELES -- The Police Department here has taken significant steps
to root out corruption and reduce brutality and racially biased
arrests, but it must still do more to eliminate racial disparities in
police searches and the use of force, a court-appointed monitor
testified on Monday.

The department agreed to sweeping reforms in 2001 after the Justice
Department found a pattern of police misconduct over a decade that
included the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King in 1991 and the
Rampart corruption scandal, which involved police officers' stealing
illegal drugs, framing gang members and committing extortion.

Federal authorities also determined that the department had engaged
in a pattern of excessive force, false arrests and unreasonable
searches, especially of members of minorities, because of poor
training and insufficient protocols.

Supervision of the court-mandated reforms was set to expire Tuesday.
At a hearing in federal court, Michael Cherkasky, who has been the
monitor of the Police Department for eight years, said more time was
needed. Mr. Cherkasky and lawyers for the civil rights division of
the Justice Department told Judge Gary A. Feess that oversight should
continue for three years, but with the Police Department dealing
directly with the court instead of a federal monitor.

Nonetheless, Mr. Cherkasky told the court that the department had
progressed enough to warrant shifting more authority from federal
oversight to the department's internal monitors.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics of the
department disputed the idea that the police were ready to institute
reforms without the impetus of federal monitoring and urged Judge
Feess to extend the consent decree.

The judge acknowledged the department's success in reducing crime and
abuses, and he extended the consent decree for two weeks to review
arguments on ending federal monitoring.

Mr. Cherkasky urged the court to put in place a three-year
transitional agreement that would end federal monitoring if the
department reduced racial bias in searches and arrests, instituted a
financial disclosure policy for certain kinds of investigators and
created a better system to gauge problem officers by tracking
complaints against them and use of force.

"We're saying these things need to be resolved before we can say that
there has been substantial compliance," he said. "If they do these
things, we don't have a problem with a transitional agreement."

Under the transitional agreement, Mr. Cherkasky said, he would end
his monitoring and the court would directly oversee final reforms by
the department.

Mr. Cherkasky said that although the Police Department had more work
to do, it was "psychologically" important for the court to
acknowledge the progress it had made. He said a decision to phase out
federal monitoring in Los Angeles could be an encouraging sign to
other departments that compliance with court-mandated reforms would
eventually end well for agencies that cooperated.

Chief William J. Bratton has complained that the consent decree is
expensive and unnecessary since the Police Commission and the office
of inspector general can fulfill the watchdog function.

But Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U., said Judge Feess
should extend federal monitoring until the department ended racially
biased policing practices. Mr. Rosenbaum cited recent department
statistics that showed officers had used force against
African-Americans and Latinos more frequently than against whites. He
also said statistics showed that African-Americans were searched by
the Los Angeles police more frequently than whites, even though
officers were less likely to find evidence of a crime when they
searched blacks.

"This is still a police force where, unfortunately, race still
matters when deciding to frisk or arrest, even when there is no
evidence of criminal conduct," Mr. Rosenbaum said in an interview.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of California,
Irvine, and an expert on policing, agreed that the department had
made strides since the inception of the consent decree. But Mr.
Chemerinsky said it was premature to end the federal court's role.
"If L.A.P.D. has the capacity to make the necessary reforms, the
consent decree is at worst unnecessary and redundant," he said. "At
best, it is essential. Why take the chance?"