A federal judge has cleared the way for the Los Angeles Police Department to impose strict financial disclosure requirements on hundreds of specialized officers, sternly criticizing the police union and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley for opposing the measure.
In a 26-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess said his years of experience on the bench and as a former prosecutor have led him to conclude that "having a financial baseline is an essential starting point in an investigation into officers who appear to be living beyond their means or are otherwise engaged in corrupt conduct."
He chided the Los Angeles Police Protective League for threatening that the hundreds of affected anti-gang and narcotics officers would seek transfers from their units if they were forced to submit to the disclosure requirements.
"It would be difficult . . . to commend the LAPPL for its commitment to the public interest," Feess wrote. He said it "would be inequitable to reward them for their conduct" by granting their request for a temporary restraining order.
Feess also went out of his way to criticize Cooley, who testified at City Council hearings on behalf of the union earlier this year. The judge said that he was "unimpressed" with the district attorney's "counterintuitive view."
Cooley, in a statement released Friday, said he had read Feess' ruling and considered the "matter of great import and worthy of an appeal."
The judge's ruling was signed Thursday but obtained by union and city officials Friday.
At issue is the final piece of a broad reform campaign that began after the Rampart corruption scandal and has kept the department under federal oversight since 2000.
The financial disclosure requirement for officers who frequently confiscate cash, drugs and other contraband has been one of the most contentious sticking points of a wide-ranging federal consent decree. It was meant to be a tool for supervisors trying to identify rogue officers, and union and city officials tried for years to strike a compromise between officers' privacy rights and the need to satisfy the decree.
Late last year, as political and internal LAPD pressure mounted to get out from under the decree, the civilian Police Commission, which oversees the department, moved ahead, approving a stringent disclosure plan. The Police Protective League promptly filed a lawsuit against the plan and asked Feess, who oversees the consent decree, to issue an injunction against the department until the suit was settled.
