Rampart Revelations Upset City Residents, Undercut Confidence
The ongoing LAPD scandal is sowing doubts about L.A.'s direction despite a strong economy. A majority backs creating an independent panel to investigate.
The Rampart police corruption scandal is contributing to a malaise
in Los Angeles, helping to raise questions about the city's health and
image, devastating public impressions of the Los Angeles Police
Department and fueling strong sentiment for the appointment of an
independent commission to investigate the crisis.
And yet, despite many residents' unhappiness with the scandal and its
ramifications, Mayor Richard Riordan continues to enjoy strong public
support. By contrast, many residents registered mixed feelings about the
job performance of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.
Those findings, culled from a new Times poll, suggest that the scandal
has had a deep effect on Los Angeles' sense of itself, sowing doubts
despite a strong economy and continuing reductions in crime.
Three out of four Los Angeles residents described themselves as "very
upset" or "somewhat upset" by the stream of revelations emerging from the
LAPD in recent months, including charges that officers shot, beat and
framed suspects and committed other crimes.
Moreover, a majority of city residents rejects the
contention--advanced by Parks, Riordan and others--that the misdeeds are
the work of a few bad officers. Fifty-one percent of city residents
disagree with that notion; instead, they believe the problems are
"symptomatic of a larger problem within the Police Department." Another
39% believe they are "isolated incidents and are not representative of
the Los Angeles Police Department as a whole."
According to the poll, 75% of those surveyed think an independent
commission should be convened to investigate the scandal. Just 12% say
the city's civilian Police Commission, whose members are appointed by
Riordan and which sets policy for the LAPD, should handle that inquiry.
One respondent who agreed to a follow-up interview, David Hanna, put
into words the frustration felt by many residents confronted with one
disturbing revelation after another emanating from the LAPD.
"If you can't trust the police and depend on them, you're in trouble,"
he said. "I just don't know how this could happen."
The Times poll interviewed 1,219 city residents from March 29 through
Wednesday. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage
points.
Nowhere are the results of the poll more striking than in the public's
impression of the LAPD itself. Residents like and respect the individual
officers in their communities, and 55% of respondents say they believe
most police are honest and hard-working. But just 36% have a favorable
impression of the way the LAPD as a whole does its job. That split in
some ways resembles public sentiments about Congress, where people often
express appreciation for their own representative but distaste for the
institution collectively.
In the case of the LAPD, however, Los Angeles residents have turned
against their Police Department with a force and breadth not seen since
the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Rodney King beating.
At its nadir, the LAPD's job-approval rating plummeted to 34% in March
1991, the month that officers were caught on videotape beating King into
submission in Lake View Terrace. At that point, 59% of Los Angeles
residents registered disapproval of their Police Department. Respondents
to that survey also registered extreme dismay at the videotape: 76% said
they were very upset by what they saw, a far more visceral reaction than
responses so far to the more slowly unfolding Rampart allegations.
In the years since the King beating, the department's public image
generally has improved, though it took another hit after the LAPD's
confused--and, in some minds, cowardly--response to the 1992 riots, which
broke out after the officers were acquitted in the King beating. The
department then steadily began to win back the public's faith to the
point that nearly two-thirds of city residents said in a survey last year
that they approved of the department's performance. Just 13 months later,
that number has dropped by nearly half.
What's more, the public's misgivings extend beyond the LAPD.
In sharp contrast to just one year ago, city residents who say that
Los Angeles is on the wrong track now outnumber those who believe it's
going in the right direction. A year ago, 53% of those interviewed said
they thought Los Angeles was headed in the right direction, while 29%
said it was not. The latest survey finds just 35% approve of the current
direction, contrasted with 45% who say it's headed the wrong way.
Exactly how much the police scandal is influencing those perceptions
is hard to say. Residents listed crime and education as major causes of
concern, and the continuing controversy over the Los Angeles Unified
School District's mired effort to build the Belmont Learning Complex
downtown weighs heavily on many residents' minds.
But, when asked, nearly eight in 10 respondents said Rampart was
contributing to the city's mood--and most of those said its impact was
negative. Sixty-eight percent said the scandal was damaging the city's
mood; 10% said it was having a positive effect and 16% that it was having
no effect. The remaining 6% said they did not know enough to venture an
opinion.
"All of Los Angeles County is going to suffer because the police
didn't do their job," said Darlene Zaun, a respondent who has lived in
Los Angeles for 50 years. "We just started to get our roads fixed out
here in the Valley. Now we're going to have to wait again." She was
referring to the cost of settling litigation linked to the scandal.
Amid the poll numbers on Rampart are telling signs of the way
different residents perceive the continuing disclosures of police
corruption. In general, the results suggest that African Americans and
Latinos are far less surprised than whites by the allegations of police
misconduct, and are far more inclined to see racism and brutality as
common facts of LAPD life.
According to the poll, 81% of blacks and 73% of Latinos believe it is
common for LAPD officers to express racist sentiments. Among whites, 58%
said they thought such feelings were common among Los Angeles police.
Similarly, 83% of blacks and 72% of Latinos believe officers commonly
commit acts of brutality. That view was shared by 43% of white
respondents.
Races See Things Differently
In response to the question of whether the Rampart allegations are
symptomatic of a larger LAPD problem or are isolated instances, 55% of
whites saw them as isolated, contrasted with 42% who believed they were
emblematic of the LAPD generally.
By contrast, 79% of blacks saw the particular allegations as part of a
larger problem, and just 14% believed they were aberrations. Latinos
split the difference, with 52% seeing the problems as endemic and 24%
viewing them as specific to the particular officers.
Those divergent senses of the Police Department are reflected in
economic and educational terms as well. Richer, better-educated
respondents generally see the LAPD as a more benign institution. Poorer,
less educated residents view the department with far more skepticism.
That divergence is particularly apparent in the judgment of who is to
blame for the corruption within the LAPD.
White respondents hold the now-departed captain of the Rampart
Division largely responsible for the problems in that division, with 24%
pointing the finger at him. Twenty-eight percent of whites say the fault
lies with the individual officers accused in the scandal.
Latinos, whose neighborhoods have felt the brunt of the misconduct,
are similarly inclined to hold those individuals responsible. Fully 42%
of those who identified themselves as Latinos in the poll blamed
individual officers.
Blacks, by contrast, overwhelmingly pointed to the LAPD's culture and
climate as the underlying cause of the scandal. Thirty-four percent of
African Americans who responded to the survey blamed that culture, far
and away the dominant cause those respondents cited.
That no doubt reflects the deep and uneasy relationship between many
African Americans and the LAPD. For years, African Americans were
discriminated against within the department, and many complained of
mistreatment by its officers. When the King video came to light in 1991,
many African Americans saw it as vindication of their long-standing
grievances, which they felt had been ignored or minimized by the city's
largely white political leadership.
One sign of African Americans' continued antipathy toward the LAPD:
Although their opinions about the department's racism and brutality
suggest that they are far more skeptical than others about it, they also
expressed far less surprise at the Rampart revelations. Sixty-one percent
of whites and 53% of Latinos described themselves as "very upset" by the
scandal; just 26% of blacks described themselves that way.
Despite the widespread discomfort reflected throughout the survey,
Mayor Riordan continues to command strong personal approval. Fifty-seven
percent of those polled have a favorable impression of his job
performance--nearly the highest poll numbers he has ever received--and
that warm feeling extends to many of those who disagree with his
policies.
More than half of those polled say the next mayor should change
Riordan's policies, and three out of four reject his contention that the
Police Commission, not an independent panel, should investigate the
scandal. Still, they overwhelmingly like Riordan.
"He's trying his best for the city," said a respondent named David,
who asked that only his first name be used. "He works to make things
better, and we don't have to pay him."
Riordan's Popularity Remains Strong
Riordan, a multimillionaire lawyer and venture capitalist, accepts
just $1 a year in salary for serving as mayor.
Even some who criticize Riordan's handling of one issue or another
seem to like him. In follow-up interviews, several respondents
volunteered that they felt safer in their communities than they did when
Riordan was elected in 1993.
"He's doing something right," said one of those residents, Walter
Floyd.
But Floyd also took issue with Riordan's handling of the Rampart
scandal--both in the way he has reacted to the revelations and in the
decisions that allowed corruption to take root and flourish in Rampart
and perhaps other police divisions.
"He's the boss," Floyd said of the mayor. "He appoints everybody else.
If he can't appoint the people to do the job right, what good is he?"
One of those Riordan appointed--in fact, arguably the most important
appointment of his entire seven years in office--is Parks. Named to head
the LAPD in 1997, Parks has served just over half of his five-year term.
Within the city's political leadership, opinion about Parks is
profoundly split. Virtually no one disputes his command of the LAPD and
encyclopedic knowledge of it. But some find him aloof or arrogant,
resistant to criticism and advice.
Those conflicting sentiments seem to be playing out with the public as
well.
Parks has never commanded the affection that the public had for his
predecessor, Willie L. Williams, who struggled to take charge of the
department but whose charming public persona made him enormously popular.
In his five years in office, Williams typically won job approval ratings
of 60% or higher, very strong for anyone in public life.
A year ago, 47% of city residents said they approved of Parks'
performance, with just 10% disapproving. In that poll, 43% either did not
know enough about him to form an opinion or were undecided. Since then,
Parks' department has been embroiled in the worst corruption scandal in
its history, and many of those who once were undecided have started to
make up their minds.
The good news for Parks is that his approval rating has nudged up
during that period, to the point where 50% of those surveyed now say they
have a positive impression of his work. The bad news, however, is that
his disapproval rating is increasing far faster.
Compared to one year ago, nearly three times as many Los Angeles
residents, 29%, disapprove of Parks' handling of his job.
The Rampart Scandal
City residents are upset about allegations of misconduct in the Los
Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division and think they are
symptomatic of a larger problem.
NOW MARCH 1999
Favorable 71%
Unfavorable 23%
Don't know 6%
All Whites Blacks Latinos
Most 55% 69% 38% 45%
Just some 37% 27% 46% 45%
Not too many 4% 2% 9% 4%
Most are not 3% 1% 4% 5%
Don't know 1% 1% 3% 1%
Central South
All Westside Valley L.A. L.A.
Very upset 49% 43% 60% 59% 31%
Somewhat upset 25% 25% 31% 16% 36%
Not too upset 18% 9% 3% 24% 8%
Not at all upset 6% 20% 3% 1% 23%
Don't know 2% 3% 3% - 2%
All Whites Blacks Latinos
Symptom of larger problem 51% 42% 79% 52%
Isolated incidents 39% 55% 14% 24%
Don't know 10% 3% 7% 24%
All Whites Blacks Latinos
The Police Commission 12% 16% 8% 11%
An independent commission 75% 75% 88% 74%
Both (volunteered) 9% 3% 1% 14%
Don't know 4% 6% 3% 1%
-- indicates less than 0.5%.
Source: Los Angeles Times polls
How the Poll Was Conducted
The Times Poll contacted 1,219 residents of the city of Los Angeles by
telephone March 29-April 5. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of
all exchanges in the city of Los Angeles. Random-digit dialing techniques
were used so that listed and unlisted numbers could be contacted. The
entire sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for
sex, race, age, education and region. The margin of sampling error is
plus or minus 3 percentage points. For certain subgroups the error margin
may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by factors such
as question wording and the order in which questions are presented.
Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Asians were interviewed
as part of the sample, but there were not enough in the city sample to
show as a separate subgroup.
Rating the LAPD
* Job Approval
Note: Poll taken among city residents; no data available for 1989,
1990 or 1998
* Do you think the alleged misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart
Division is symptomatic of a larger problem in the Police Department, or
do you think these are isolated incidents that are not representative of
the LAPD as a whole?
Symptom
of larger Isolated Don't
problem incidents know
All 51% 39% 10%
Whites 42% 55% 3%
Blacks 79% 14% 7%
Latinos 52% 24% 24%
Source: Los Angeles Times polls