To that end, O'Brien said he was arranging for lawyers from the Justice Department in Washington to come to Los Angles and conduct training sessions on how to handle such specialized prosecutions. He said he also planned to appoint "coordinators" to oversee lawyers working on those types of prosecutions.
"The point is I think we can do better," O'Brien said.
During the meeting, held in a conference room on the 12th floor of the U.S. attorney's office, O'Brien displayed statistics showing that the section had produced only one public corruption case since the beginning of the fiscal year, which started Oct. 1.
He said that capped a trend that showed the number of cases declining for several years.
One of the lawyers in the disbanded unit acknowledged that its numbers were not impressive. The lawyer noted, however, that there were several cases in the pipeline and that statistics can be misleading because of the complexity and time-consuming nature of such prosecutions.
"It's not all about numbers," the lawyer said.
The lawyer predicted that the changes implemented by O'Brien might increase filings against postal employees stealing mail and other relatively minor cases, but "don't look for any long, drawn-out City Hall corruption cases."
The lawyers who spoke about the meeting said they and their colleagues had no idea what was in store when O'Brien began speaking and that they were left shell-shocked at the meeting's end.
"We were all scared," one said.
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office, drew a distinction between O'Brien's decision to eliminate the unit and the way he allegedly went about doing so.
"There may be merit in his decision -- I don't know," Levenson said. "But if there's a legitimate reason to disband the unit, then why do you need to issue the silence order?"
"People in that office are not used to being intimidated," she added. "He may not have a performance problem on his hands anymore, but he'll have a morale problem."
Robert McGahan, a respected fraud prosecutor who left the U.S. attorney's office this year, said he had no knowledge of what was said at the meeting or about whether the public corruption statistics were up to snuff.
But he applauded O'Brien's decision to break up the section because he didn't think there were enough public corruption cases to warrant having a specially designated unit in the first place.
"I would call it a sensible and long overdue step toward efficiency," he said.
Mrozek, the office spokesman, said he was not aware of any other U.S. attorney's office in the country that had an entire section of lawyers specializing in public corruption cases.
"Our office structure is now in line with other offices from around the country," he said.
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scott.glover@latimes.com
