Despite extensive reform in the seven years since the Rampart Division police corruption scandal, Los Angeles is at risk of similar crises unless the LAPD is significantly expanded and trades its "warrior policing" model for a more community- friendly problem-solving style, a city task force warned today.
The Blue Ribbon Rampart Review Panel set out to provide a final accounting of what city officials characterize as one of the most serious police corruption scandals in American history.
Nine officers were criminally charged and 23 were fired or suspended, 156 felony convictions were invalidated due to suspected police misconduct and the city paid $70 million to settle civil rights lawsuits brought by victims.
Yet even now, the panel found, police supervisors fail to provide adequate oversight and control of officers -- a key problem in the Rampart scandal. And the panel faulted the criminal justice system in Los Angeles for lacking sufficient checks to prevent officers from lying or fabricating evidence.
The panel was appointed in 2003 by the city's Police Commission at the request of Chief William J. Bratton to examine the LAPD's response to allegations of widespread abuse by officers from the Rampart Division's Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit, which was formed to crack down on street gangs.
The report represents a major challenge for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is already struggling to increase the police force by 1,000 officers over the next five years -- but would have to hire three times that number to meet the goal set by Bratton's Plan of Action, which is endorsed by the report.
The findings -- a three-part document including 117 pages of narrative and recommendations, plus a half-inch thick appendix -- will be discussed in a special Police Commission meeting Thursday.
The panel of legal experts interviewed 270 witnesses, including current and former police officers, civil rights leaders, defense attorneys, prosecutors and police experts, according to Chairwoman Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney.
Perhaps the group's most surprising discovery, the report said, is that the Rampart Division has performed a dramatic transformation. Supervisors dismantled the gang unit, imposed strict standards and pioneered "a promising, community-backed crime-fighting model."
