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Ex-Chief Refuses to Discuss Rampart
Councilman Bernard C. Parks hasn't cooperated with a city panel
trying to assess the LAPD's handling of the corruption scandal.
By Scott Glover and Matt Lait
Times Staff Writers
August 23, 2003
As members of a special blue-ribbon panel begin to assess the Los Angeles
Police Department's handling of the Rampart corruption scandal, they'll be
forced to do so without the cooperation of one particularly important
figure: former Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.
Parks, now a Los
Angeles city councilman, has refused to meet with members of the Blue
Ribbon Rampart Review Panel, which is headed by civil rights attorney
Connie Rice and includes other lawyers and academics.
Bernard
Parks Jr., the councilman's son and director of communications, would not
discuss his father's reasons for not cooperating with the probe.
"It is what it is," he said.
Rice and other members of the panel
were openly critical of the department's handling of the Rampart
investigation when Parks was chief. In a recent interview, Rice said Parks
is one of "several critical LAPD officials" whom the panel wants to
interview. She said she would be disappointed if Parks doesn't cooperate,
but vowed that the probe would go forward with or without his
input.
"Anyone who doesn't want to talk doesn't have to talk," she
said.
While still chief of the LAPD, Parks promised to produce a
report detailing "the exact nature and disposition of each allegation"
that surfaced during the Rampart probe. He initially said that the
"after-action report" would be presented to the public by early 2001. But
the document was still in the works when the chief was forced out of
office more than a year later.
When a draft version was submitted
to Chief William J. Bratton earlier this year, Bratton deemed the report
"totally inadequate" and, with members of the civilian Police Commission,
called for an independent panel to do the job.
Among the issues
the Rice panel is expected to probe is the extent to which detectives
investigated the allegations of corrupt ex-Officer Rafael Perez, who
— in exchange for a lighter sentence on cocaine theft charges
— agreed to identify fellow officers who engaged in criminal
conduct.
During his debriefings with detectives, Perez implicated
scores of officers from the Rampart Division's anti-gang unit, saying they
routinely beat gang members, planted evidence on suspects, falsified
reports and covered up unjustified shootings.
Though the
investigation led to the prosecution of nine officers and forced the
firing or resignation of more than a dozen others, both police and
prosecutors now concede that they never got to the bottom of Perez's
allegations and that officers who they believed committed crimes remain on
the job.
A Times investigation of the scandal found that feuding
among top officials, cursory investigations by some detectives and a
pervasive police "code of silence" all helped to undermine the Rampart
probe.
Parks' own silence on the matter, at least with regard to
the blue-ribbon panel's inquiry, was criticized by some community and city
leaders.
"It's disappointing that Parks has never shown a great
interest in getting to the bottom of the scandal, and it appears that his
lackadaisical attitude from the past is continuing today," said Police
Commissioner Rick Caruso.
"I question what he may be hiding that
he does not want to meet with the panel," he added.
Mayor James K.
Hahn, while refusing to directly criticize Parks, said that "anybody who
had any role at all in the criminal justice system during that time should
cooperate" with the panel.
Police Commission President David
Cunningham, who was the only member of the board to vote in favor of
giving Parks a second five-year term as chief, declined to
comment.
The blue-ribbon panel's investigation is the latest in a
series of inquiries into corruption in the Rampart Division or the LAPD's
handling of the ensuing scandal. Shortly after the scandal broke in
September 1999, the LAPD produced a report documenting managerial
shortcomings that one police official said "allowed corruption to
flourish." Following that were reports done by the LAPD's inspector
general and another at the request of the police union.
Rice said
in a recent interview that she realizes the opportunity to prosecute
Rampart-scandal crimes has long since passed under the statute of
limitations, and that it's highly unlikely there will be any new
misconduct charges against officers.
Her goal, she said, is to
piece together how the probe was conducted and to learn from any mistakes
that may have occurred along the way.
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