Internal Affairs

An independent examination of how the Los Angeles Police Department investigates officers accused of profiling people based on race, gender or sexual orientation found serious problems with a third of the sampled investigations, the inspector general for the L.A. Police Commission reported Tuesday. In six of 20 LAPD investigations into allegations of "biased policing" -- the department's new name for what has traditionally been termed racial profiling -- police failed to interview witnesses, did not ask important questions or made similar mistakes, concluded Andre Birotte, the inspector general, in the 41-page report.

After Anthony Goodrow complained that he had been brutalized by Hawthorne police officers during an arrest nearly three years ago, department officials said they "conducted an in-depth and thorough internal investigation." Their conclusion: Officers acted appropriately and did not use excessive force. That finding, however, appears at odds with the city's payment of $1 million in late January to settle Goodrow's lawsuit alleging excessive force.

A decorated Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant once assigned to the internal affairs division testified in federal court this week that he was retaliated against by his superiors after he unearthed evidence undermining a decades-old murder conviction. Jim Gavin is suing his department for allegedly waging a campaign of harassment against him and his police officer wife in the wake of his work on the case of convicted killer Bruce Lisker. Lisker was convicted of killing his mother in 1985 and sentenced to 16 years to life in prison.

The federal judge hearing the criminal case against Los Angeles private detective Anthony Pellicano denied a request Tuesday for a mistrial from one of his co-defendants, former Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Mark Arneson. But before she ruled, U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer stopped the trial for the day and sent the jury home so she could hold a hearing on Arneson's motion.

Los Angeles Police Department investigators routinely fail to fully investigate citizens' complaints against allegedly abusive officers, often omitting or altering crucial information in ways that help exonerate the officers, according to a report to be released today. The 34-page report by the Police Commission's inspector general raises questions about the department's ability to police itself, adding to still-unresolved problems highlighted in previous reports.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department failed to thoroughly investigate half of its recent use-of-force cases, according to a monitor's report released Wednesday. Special Counsel Merrick Bobb, who monitors the Sheriff's Department under a contract with the county, said he was concerned that internal affairs investigators didn't interview several deputies who fired weapons at suspects. Instead, the investigators relied on previous interviews of the deputies by homicide detectives.

A former Los Angeles deputy police chief who admitted to a sexual relationship with a subordinate while he oversaw internal affairs has been sued by the police union. The suit alleges that Michael Berkow ordered an improper search of the work spaces of homicide detectives, including those investigating the killing of rapper Biggie Smalls.

Re "Reopening the case for containment," Current, Feb. 25 Ian Shapiro made many good points. Who gave the United States the legal or moral right to interfere in the internal affairs of any other sovereign country? Our foreign policy hawks just invented that right. At the same time, they don't want any other country to meddle in the affairs of a third country. We must develop a new containment policy with regional alliances and stop invading other countries. Besides being wrong, it just doesn't work.

In the three years after former LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Berkow took over the department's internal affairs unit, the percentage of misconduct complaints that were upheld against police for engaging in gender bias dropped sharply, from about one in four to one in 10, according to internal reports. Those declines were part of a broader but more modest drop in Los Angeles Police Department findings against police officers in response to complaints under Berkow's watch.

The former head of the Los Angeles Police Department's internal affairs unit acknowledged in a sworn deposition that he had a three-year affair with a female sergeant under his supervision, raising new questions about how the watchdog unit operated. The LAPD handbook notes that relationships between supervisors and subordinates are problematic. It says that if such a liaison develops, "it is the duty of the involved employees to immediately notify their commanding officer."