Prepares for Fallout From Police Probe

Rodney G. King. The name is muttered repeatedly on the 18th floor of City Hall these days, as the deputy city attorneys scramble desperately to protect themselves and their boss from a repetition of the lowest point in their careers.

The King beating, captured on videotape and which was the beginning of the city’s slide into the 1992 rioting, left prosecutors a legacy of skeptical, hostile jurors, rising civil claims and settlements and plummeting conviction rates.

The political fallout was even more significant: a mayor’s reputation severely damaged, a police chief forced out, and the resignation of a Police Commission president.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s current crisis could in turn mean a crisis for the city attorney’s office as it did after the King beating and the riots, some city officials and political observers say.

None of this is lost on the city attorneys or their boss, James K. Hahn, a man who has won five citywide elections despite a relatively low-profile career. Although Hahn is worried about the effects of the corruption investigation, he believes it won’t leave a black mark on his record or his office.

Hahn, the first to announce formally that he is running for mayor in 2001, says he sees no political implications in the crisis that focuses primarily on the anti-gang unit in the LAPD’s Rampart Division. Others, including political consultant Rick Taylor, aren’t so sure, saying it is premature to say that it won’t.

Hahn says he still plans to use his tough stance against street gangs as a pillar of his campaign.

He still will tout his attorneys’ high conviction rates. He still will stand by his decision to create a special police division, and he will unflinchingly continue to ensure the civilian oversight of the Police Department.

“Obviously,” Hahn said, “elected officials run on their records.” But he maintained that the current crisis is far too serious to politicize it.

“I think we’re in a stronger position now because we have added staff to our police division this year,” Hahn said. “We are very well equipped to deal with the kinds of issues that are going to come up here.”

Probe Is Creating Extra Work

Whatever the political ramifications, the expanding Rampart investigation means a huge amount of work for the city attorney’s office.

When all is said and done, the corruption crisis likely will affect more than half of the 400 attorneys who work for Hahn. The Rampart investigation touches almost every segment of Hahn’s office, ranging from litigation to the “police advice” section.

Attorneys already are working overtime, desperately struggling to salvage two highly touted gang injunctions and to protect new and old cases.

They are hunkering down for an onslaught of work that includes combing through case files involving officers named in the corruption investigation. Already, attorneys have identified five cases that could be affected, and they’ve only just begun.

“There’s no question that this is a huge challenge,” said Maureen Siegel, chief of the criminal operations section. “It’s a massive undertaking.”

As they proceed, the attorneys readily acknowledge that they can’t stop thinking about King.

The city prosecutors who make decisions on settling cases or going to trial believe they will have a trickier time making those choices now, based on their experiences after the riots.

“The problem with this situation is that it changes the calculus,” said Cecil W. Marr, the senior assistant city attorney who heads the newly created police division. “A solid case may now have some risk to it, as we found after Rodney King.”

The attorneys in the police general counsel section are bracing for a slew of so-called 1043 motions in which defense attorneys will ask judges to open the personnel files of police officers. (Under state law, those files are considered confidential unless a judge approves a motion to release them.)

Attorneys are anxious, too, about declines in their high conviction rate in the section of the city that includes the Rampart Division. Last month, the city attorneys had a 100% conviction rate there. After the King beating and the riots, the attorneys had a 28% rate in that area.

To be sure, the vast majority of the city attorneys’ criminal cases result in pleas and fewer than 2% go to trial.

Still, attorneys, politicians, even the city’s administrative officer, worry about the impact of potentially huge settlements. Officials have decided that it will be a factor in their spring budget deliberations.

Further, it is not only the cases involving the dozen officers under investigation that have attorneys worried. They are concerned that hostile jurors and aggressive defense attorneys could question the credibility of any officer called to testify.

“If you have jurors going in with the mind-set that police officers plant evidence and beat up suspects, we have to take prophylactic measures to make sure attorneys are prepared,” Siegel said.

Siegel and others said the office also needs to be especially careful to train the younger trial attorneys who work in “the pit” at the Criminal Courts Building and who weren’t around after the riots.

“The newer deputies didn’t go through the Rodney King experience,” Hahn said. “We need to make sure we have solid cases. We depend on the police officers to convince a jury, and there’s going to be more skepticism than there was last week.”

Then, there is the new crop of legal issues expected to arise from the Police Department’s Board of Inquiry, created last week by Chief Bernard C. Parks. That panel, composed of up to 60 command officers, will examine all aspects of the department’s management structure and probably will recommend new policies and procedures. City attorneys say they expect to advise the board and review any new regulations.

Later, the police employment law section potentially will work with Internal Affairs to provide counsel on discipline. Even later, city attorneys say, they will likely deal with workers’ compensation and pension claims filed by officers involved in the corruption crisis.

Gang Injunctions Are Top Priority

For now, attorneys have made salvaging the gang injunctions their main priority. The injunctions restrict gang members’ activities, allowing police to arrest them for many reasons, including gathering on street corners and violating curfews. Although this anti-gang approach has come under fire from some civil libertarians, police, prosecutors and politicians say it is a valuable tool to combat street violence and drug sales.

Moreover, they say residents support the injunctions because they feel safer knowing that groups of gang members can’t openly congregate in their neighborhoods.

Hahn’s office last week asked judges to temporarily suspend the two gang injunctions in the Rampart area because they were based, in part, on the sworn declarations of police officers caught up in the corruption probe.

That investigation has so far focused on Rampart’s anti-gang unit, where allegations of illegal shootings, beatings, evidence planting and drug stealing have surfaced. As a result, 12 officers who work or have worked at Rampart have been relieved of duty and three others have been forced off the job.

While Hahn and his top aides are hopeful that the six other injunctions in the city won’t be affected by the corruption scandal, they cannot say for sure. Parks has said he believes the probe could widen, meaning more officers could be implicated.

Martin Vranicar, an assistant city attorney who supervises the gang unit, said his office has spent all week reviewing files, attempting to determine which officers made arrests under the injunctions, who wrote the reports and whether any of them testified in court.

“I think everybody’s concern is that it’s a moving target,” he said. “We did a hell of a lot of work on this. It was six months to a year of legal work.”

But some attorneys representing 18th Street gang members arrested under the injunctions are raising questions about the prosecutors’ involvement.

“The city attorney’s office needs to be investigated in terms of what its role was,” said civil rights attorney Sean Ward, who represented four alleged 18th Streeters named in the first injunction brought by Hahn’s office in May 1997.

Ward, whose clients are covered by an injunction still in effect outside Rampart, said he doubted that the officers prepared declarations without some guidance from prosecutors.

He also asked what steps city prosecutors took to verify information in the officers’ sworn statements. Ward had unsuccessfully submitted affidavits challenging the injunction and claiming that LAPD anti-gang officers had “unclean hands.”

Attorney Ira Salzman, who represented gang members named in a separate injunction in Rampart, said city and county prosecutors may have had “too cozy a relationship” with the anti-gang officers they relied on to win the injunctions. He noted that prosecutors worked out of the Rampart station for a time as they prepared the injunction case.

“They have to be independent,” Salzman said. “When you break down the barriers and have prosecutors based in a police station . . . they are not as likely to use independent judgment.”

Prosecutors said they worked closely with community leaders, as well as officers, in developing the legal basis for the injunctions. Working in the Rampart Division increased prosecutors’ understanding of the scope of the gang problem, Vranicar said. Various LAPD arrest and crime records also were reviewed and, he noted, the officers’ declarations were submitted under penalty of perjury.

“I don’t feel there was any kind of problem about too cozy a relationship,” Vranicar said.

Focus Is Crisis Now, Politics Later

No matter what happens, the gang injunctions remain a perfect campaign pitch, political consultants say. Who doesn’t want to claim credit for putting gang members behind bars?

“I think Jimmy has something to run on and I’d tout it proudly,” said one political insider who is supporting another mayoral hopeful. “Most voters love cops. If there’s one, two, three or four bad cops, folks will still love cops and they will love gang injunctions.”

For now, Hahn says he is focusing more on the impact of the unfolding crisis and less on his own political future. He says he will forge ahead on more gang injunctions before year’s end.

“I don’t think the concept of gang injunctions is in jeopardy,” he said. “I’m still very confident that they work. This whole issue is too important to have it trivialized by political considerations.”

Times staff writer Rich Connell contributed to this story.