Pubdate: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: James Sterngold POLICE CORRUPTION INQUIRY EXPANDS IN LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES, Feb. 10 - A long-simmering corruption scandal has widened to encompass a broad swath of the Los Angeles Police Department, with the district attorney saying today that his office has now found more than 40 people who were wrongly prosecuted, and in several cases shot, through police misconduct. The district attorney, Gil Garcetti, also said in a news conference that the investigation had now spread beyond the inner-city station where it began. Mr. Garcetti said prosecutors would soon go to court to ask that another 6 to 10 convictions be thrown out and that the victims be released. Thirty-two cases have already been overturned. Mr. Garcetti said in an interview late today that he expected more cases to be overturned and more prosecutors to be assigned to the investigation. The police have disclosed that perhaps 100 cases might have been tainted by planted evidence, false testimony or other police abuses. More important, Mr. Garcetti said, the investigation has gone beyond the Rampart Division, a station west of downtown in a gang-infested neighborhood where the misconduct was first uncovered. "It definitely can and will go beyond Rampart," he said. "It would be wrong to think this is just a Rampart investigation. We are going where the case goes." He disclosed that there had been a "breakdown" in the cooperation between the police and prosecutors. The police, he said, have started to resist prosecutors' efforts to gather information, a sign of the rising tensions as some in the police department seek to limit the damage. Prosecutors met with police officials this morning, and Mr. Garcetti said they were assured that they would get the cooperation they needed. "We feel, rightly or wrongly, that we weren't getting all the information we needed," Mr. Garcetti said. "The air was cleared." Lt. Sharyn Buck, a police spokeswoman, said the department would have no comment on Mr. Garcetti's remarks or any aspect of the inquiry. So far, it has been disclosed that officers shot an unarmed man in handcuffs, planted guns, drugs and other evidence on suspects, lied in court testimony to frame innocent people and stole drugs and money. Even before today, the scandal was the most serious instance of corruption in the history of the troubled Los Angeles Police Department, but its growing breadth and the systematic nature of the corruption, which apparently went unchecked for years, has raised questions about the ability of the department to monitor its officers. "The structure was in place there that allowed this" to go on for so long, Mr. Garcetti said. "There hasn't been a structural change" in the department to correct the problems. His remarks underscored the political tensions underlying the investigation, which has pitted Mr. Garcetti's office and its supporters against the police department and its backers. Bernard C. Parks, the chief of police, has publicly hinted that Mr. Garcetti was moving too slowly on the investigation. Chief Parks has tried to pre-empt critics by suggesting plans to improve internal monitoring in the department. Several weeks ago he urged Mr. Garcetti to overturn 99 tainted cases quickly and to file charges against three officers. Mr. Garcetti has suggested that the police, though they uncovered the corruption, had allowed it go on for years and that the cases have to be reviewed carefully and individually. "I understand the Los Angeles Police Department would like to move more quickly and get this behind them," Mr. Garcetti said. "It's just going to take longer than some people want it to take." Mr. Garcetti, who is up for re-election this year, has also been criticized by his campaign opponents as not moving aggressively enough. He said he was in no hurry to end the investigation. The tensions escalated this morning when The Los Angeles Times carried two articles that quoted from the secret interviews with investigators of Rafael Perez, a former officer who has admitted to years of abuses and who revealed the incidents after being arrested on charges that he had stolen cocaine. The articles quoted Mr. Perez, who is cooperating with the police in order to reduce his sentence, as saying that nearly the entire antigang unit at the Rampart Division, including supervisors were involved. He is also quoted as saying that officers at other police stations were involved. The newspaper provided details of a case in which the police were reported to have shot an unarmed gang member, then planted a gun near him as he bled to death. Mr. Garcetti would not go into detail, but said, "I didn't read anything in the articles that was inaccurate." Dozens of civil suits have already been filed by those wrongly imprisoned, and more suits are expected. The Los Angeles city attorney, who handles the civil litigation, said that settling the civil complaints could cost $120 million, with some outside experts saying the figure could top $200 million. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D