Police Corruption

When the Los Angeles City Council does something particularly stupid, there's usually money or personal ambition involved. There's a bit of each in the lawmakers' unanimous decision to obstruct implementation of the federal consent decree under which the Los Angeles Police Department has been operating for the last seven years. That agreement, you may recall, was negotiated and ratified during the Rampart police scandal, when the U.S.

A Los Angeles City Council effort to overturn a Police Commission policy requiring officers to disclose personal financial information seemed destined for failure Tuesday, as civic and reform leaders warned that the council's intervention was undermining the commission's authority over the Police Department.

Two brothers who worked as police officers were convicted Wednesday of participating in home invasion-style robberies staged to look like legitimate law enforcement raids, prompting the judge to say that the case underscored the need for aggressive outside oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department. "I've never heard testimony like I've heard in this case," said U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess, who has practiced law since 1974 and was appointed to the federal bench 12 years ago.

The controversial selection Friday in Maywood of an interim police chief with a checkered past has dismayed some residents, infuriated rank-and-file officers, put his supporters on the defensive and launched a nasty bit of back-and-forth mudslinging. At a tense meeting that ran late into the night Friday, a divided City Council picked Al Hutchings to take over the department, which has a reputation as a haven for misfit cops.

Once a month, Ilana Rosenzweig faces an angry crowd at the public meeting of the Police Board and tries to convince them that the bad old days of corrupt Chicago cops are coming to an end. It's a tough sell for the Los Angeles lawyer, who became chief administrator of Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority in September.

While his defense lawyer watched, intent but helpless to stop it, former Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Mark Arneson underwent an eviscerating cross-examination on Wednesday at the federal trial of private detective Anthony Pellicano. Assistant U.S. Atty.

Former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona's request to file a secret motion to move his corruption trial out of Southern California violates the 1st Amendment's free-press protection, a media attorney argued Thursday. Carona's attorneys have asked U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford to keep their motion to move the trial sealed because releasing it would create additional inflammatory publicity about the case.

Seemingly defiant to the end, a former Los Angeles police officer convicted of participating in a home invasion-style robbery ring declined Monday to address a federal judge moments before sentencing, an opportunity many defendants use to plead for leniency. William Ferguson, a 35-year-old father of three, stood silently with his hands chained at his waist as U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess sentenced him to 102 years in federal prison.

Former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona talked to a former top assistant about "cleansing" the department's reserve-deputy files of information he did not want federal prosecutors to find, the government alleges in a court filing Thursday. The filing came in response to U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford's request that prosecutors provide more specific details about one of the witness-tampering charges in Carona's upcoming corruption trial.

A former gang member who won a $15 million judgment after he was shot and framed by corrupt Los Angeles police officers more than a decade ago was arrested Sunday night after leading Glendale police on a high-speed chase, his second arrest in a week, authorities said. Javier Francisco Ovando, 31, was arrested about 8:15 p.m. Sunday after leading police on an hour-long chase that reached speeds of up to 90 mph on local streets and freeways, said Sgt. Tom Lorenz of the Glendale Police Department.