Police Misconduct

Two U.S. Border Patrol agents were watching the Mexican boundary last year when they stopped a van carrying 743 pounds of marijuana. The driver fled back across the Rio Grande -- with a gunshot wound in his buttocks. Federal prosecutors convinced a jury in March that the agents had shot a defenseless man and schemed to cover it up. Much of the evidence against them came from the drug runner, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, who reported the shooting to a friend at the Border Patrol in Arizona.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck is under fire from his civilian bosses, who increasingly are troubled by his reluctance to punish officers they found had killed or wounded people unjustifiably. "If this pattern continues, it could undermine the entire discipline system and undermine the authority of the commission," said Robert Saltzman, a member of the Police Commission and associate dean at USC's law school. "It runs the risk of sending the message to officers that there will be no consequences.

Armed with videotapes of law enforcement officers methodically swabbing liquid pepper spray into the eyes of nonviolent protesters, attorneys sued the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department and the Eureka Police Department on Thursday for violating the civil rights of environmental demonstrators.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. Punctuating what New Orleans' mayor called a "dark chapter" in his city's history, five former local police officers were sentenced Wednesday for their role in the Danziger Bridge shooting incident, which left two innocent people dead and four others seriously wounded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. U.S. District Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt handed down long sentences for four of the officers, ranging from 38 to 65 years in prison.

The Justice Department's civil rights division said Thursday it had found insufficient evidence to prosecute four white Riverside police officers involved in the 1998 shooting death of a 19-year-old black woman who passed out in her car with a gun in her lap. "Tyisha Miller's death was a terrible tragedy," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Gerald Boyd.

A detective who has been testifying in the Dalton Avenue police vandalism case for three days has refused to answer any more questions because he is now under investigation for possible perjury. By exercising his 5th Amendment right not to incriminate himself, Detective Robert Clark opens himself up to possible discipline and firing by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, according to the city attorney's office.

The City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $3.57 million to settle six lawsuits alleging that Los Angeles police officers violated the civil rights of residents, including a man who was wrongly arrested and convicted for the murder of three women.

"An Old Rap Sheet" (editorial, May 6), criticizing the timing of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission report concerning police abuse in L.A. County, is unwarranted. Yes, the commission took a long time in issuing a report that recommends the same changes many of us have been seeking for years. If The Times questions the need for a "special prosecutor," perhaps it should use its own resources to investigate why so few police officers and deputies are prosecuted in L.A. County, compared to the number of civil rights police misconduct cases won each year.

Citing their own statistics, several civil liberties groups charged Wednesday that police misconduct in the city and county of Los Angeles has reached "epidemic proportions" and called for formation of citizen review boards, appointment of special prosecutors and legislative hearings. Members of a coalition of civil and human rights organizations, including police activist Don Jackson, made the charges at a press conference in front of Parker Center. The Los Angeles Police Department quickly responded by saying there has been a decrease in complaints of excessive force filed with the department.

Los Angeles police officers who allegedly caused extensive damage to four Southwest Los Angeles apartments during a drug raid two weeks ago appear to be guilty of "some police misconduct," a police department spokesman said Friday. "The officers are trying to do something about gangs and drugs and I think in this case they got carried away," said Deputy Chief Bill Rathburn.

James Q. Wilson, a social scientist who helped launch a revolution in law enforcement as the co-inventor of the "broken windows" theory — the idea that eradicating graffiti, public drunkenness and other signposts of community decay was crucial to making neighborhoods safer — died Friday in Boston. He was 80. The cause was complications of leukemia, according to his son, Matthew Wilson. Often called the "father of community policing," Wilson, who taught for many years at UCLA and Pepperdine University, was a widely admired public intellectual who wrote more than two dozen books on American government, criminal justice and moral issues.

Friends of a police officer killed during his arrest for alleged sex crimes were racked with disbelief Monday -- at the charges as much as the fatal outcome. They gathered at a street-corner shrine, remembering Albert Covarrubias Jr., 29, as a man far different from the one portrayed by his bosses after he was fatally shot by a fellow officer while police tried to arrest him a few blocks from department headquarters. Police suspected Covarrubias, who reportedly was wed for a second time just a few weeks ago, of having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old high school girl.

Two UC Davis campus police officers have been placed on paid administrative leave over their controversial use of pepper spray on student protesters, university officials announced Sunday as the UC system president said he was "appalled" by the incident and promised a review of police procedures at all campuses. Mark G. Yudof, the UC system president, said he would be talking to the 10 campus chancellors, as well as experts and other campus groups, "to conduct a thorough, far-reaching and urgent assessment of campus police procedures involving use of force, including post-incident review processes.

A man who spent nearly 25 years behind bars for a murder he insists he did not commit lost a civil rights lawsuit this week that accused a former detective of misconduct in his criminal case. A federal jury on Monday unanimously rejected Willie Earl Green's claim that an LAPD detective violated his civil rights during an investigation that led to Green's conviction for the 1983 slaying of a woman at a crack house in South Los Angeles. "I feel like the system let me down again," Green said in response to the verdict.

Former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach received preferential treatment when he was stopped in February after crashing his city-owned car following a night of drinking, according to an internal review of the incident. Normally, Riverside police would have conducted a field sobriety test, collected physical evidence and made an arrest, the report said. Instead, they drove the chief home. "It is clear that the former chief was given preferential treatment," said City Manager Bradley Hudson in a statement released late Tuesday.

When a civil rights group sued three of Southern California's wealthiest coastal cities last year, alleging police harassment of the homeless, the howls of indignation were swift and loud. Santa Monica city officials pointed to a long record of helping the destitute along its world-famous shoreline, including extensive social programs and a new and innovative homeless community court. Santa Barbara has a year-round homeless shelter and allows those down on their luck to sleep in city-designated parking lots, a program being replicated by other municipalities.

Hugh R. Manes, a veteran civil rights lawyer who for 40 years fought for victims of police misconduct, died Saturday at his Los Angeles home after a long battle with emphysema, according to his law partner, Carol Watson. He was 84. Manes began representing victims of police misconduct in the 1960s, nearly three decades before the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers threw a harsh spotlight on the issue of police brutality.

Jurors deliberating in the misconduct trial of three former Oakland police officers were ordered to resume their discussions Thursday after telling a judge they were deadlocked on many charges. The jury, which has been deliberating since May 29, filed out of the courtroom grim-faced after Judge Leo Dorado's order. At least one juror was crying.

Civil rights activists Sunday called for a federal investigation into allegations of harassment and racial profiling by the Torrance Police Department, following the traffic stop of an African American pastor in early March. "What we want is a full federal Justice Department probe of Torrance and its treatment of African Americans and Latinos," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, during a small but sometimes tense protest in the neighborhood where Pastor Robert Taylor was pulled over while driving with his 15-year-old daughter, and subsequently searched.

A Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary panel Wednesday decided that a detective should be fired for leaking confidential information about the investigation into a relative's murder. The final say on Det. Michael Slider's career rests with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who can affirm the firing or impose a lesser punishment on the 22-year veteran. Slider's case stems from a night in September 2006 when his teenage niece, Khristina Henry, was robbed at gunpoint outside a bowling alley near Los Angeles International Airport.