Police Misconduct

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.

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 Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to reconsider the reach of the "exclusionary rule," a doctrine that has been controversial since the 1960s because it requires judges to throw out evidence if it was obtained improperly by the police. Several of the court's conservatives, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia, have signaled they would like to rein in this rule.

Orange County supervisors Tuesday gave final approval to a plan to create a civilian oversight agency that will review misconduct complaints against county law enforcement officers, capping months of planning to establish it. The plan, put forward in May by board Chairman John Moorlach, creates a review board modeled on one used in Los Angeles County to take citizen complaints, investigate deaths and serious injuries involving Sheriff's Department personnel, and examine all deaths in custody.

A nine-month grand jury investigation into the beating death of an Orange County jail inmate found that no crimes were committed by sheriff's deputies accused of instigating the assault and ignoring the victim's cries for help, Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said Friday. But Rackauckas said the 2006 slaying of John Chamberlain could have been avoided and admonished the Sheriff's Department for not following its own procedures to ensure inmate safety, although he wouldn't elaborate.

A special grand jury that reviewed the fatal beating of a Theo Lacy Jail inmate scolded the Orange County Sheriff's Department for investigating the death itself rather than turning the case over to the district attorney, violating a 20-year-old policy "through conscious choice or negligent action." In a letter made public Wednesday, the panel pointed out that the policy adopted in 1985 had been honored in 129 out of 130 custodial death investigations.

An Orange County sheriff's deputy found dead shortly after being charged with molesting a 12-year-old boy had learned of his impending arrest by accessing an internal computer system, authorities said Friday. Gerald Stenger, 41, who was found about 2 p.m.

They lied, they changed their stories and they compared notes even after being ordered not to by a special Orange County grand jury investigating a deadly beating at Theo Lacy Jail, the testimony shows. During 45 days of grand jury prodding, members of the Sheriff's Department repeatedly hindered the probe, according to thousands of pages of transcripts made public last week. Then-Sheriff Michael S.

Two members of a Bell Gardens family who said police beat them at a Halloween costume party in 2005 have been awarded a $4.5-million civil rights judgment, their attorneys said Monday.

. -- The three police officers on trial for killing a 23-year-old man on his wedding day behaved appropriately, a defense lawyer said in closing arguments Monday, casting blame for the incident on one of the young man's friends. But prosecutors asked the judge to consider the officers' actions more closely. "Before we pin medals on the defendants for their heroism, let's look at what they did," said prosecutor Charles Testagrossa.