Rampart Scandal

Abstract This paper looks at the history of the Los Angeles Police Department as it relates to police culture and several major incidents leading up to the Rampart Scandal. The police culture of a young LAPD ultimately seemed to linger and affect the LAPD of today. The lack of supervision and positive community interaction seemed to solidify the primitive police culture. The History of Police Culture Leading to the Rampart Scandal The Los Angeles Police Department is one of the biggest and most innovative police departments in the world that has been in existence since 1853.

The LAPD encompasses nearly 468 square miles in over 19 divisions and employing nearly 10,000 sworn police officers to police a population of roughly 4 million people (Los Angeles Police Department, 2012). When many people think of police, they often have visions of old television re-runs of Adam 12 or Dragnet, both of which were police shows with officers and detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department. The television programs depicted officers and detectives conducting their investigations, where the officers maintained absolute professionalism when making arrests or dealing with the public.

These television programs never told the true story of crime and life out on the street or the real people that police it every day. The Los Angeles Police Department has had a very colorful history as it has led to modern times. The Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, the Watts Riots of 1965, the Rodney King Riots of 1992 and the Rampart Scandal all have had an impact on the LAPD and law enforcement in general, as well as how the public perceives police and their mission.

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In 1926, when Chief James Davis ran the LAPD, he gave a directive to his officers to rid the city of the “gun toting element and rum smugglers…”, and if his officers showed mercy to these people that he would reprimand them for that behavior (The LAPD:1926-1950, 2012). The mentality of Chief James Davis is where the LAPD essentially started, in a time when there was no true equality of citizens. The police officers were threatened with the possibility of losing their jobs if they showed mercy to people that they dealt with on the streets.

With that type of attitude, the police and citizens did not have any type of a working relationship to solve problems or create an atmosphere of trust with the general public; only fear. There have been many Police Chiefs since that time and many have attempted to change the atmosphere in which the officers operate and treat each other and the citizens. Chief Willliam Parker ran the LAPD from 1950 until his death in 1966. Chief Parker was able to desegregate the LAPD and he allowed minority officers to work areas where they traditionally weren’t allowed to work before due to their minority status.

Chief Parker also created a “professional” model of policing so as to cope with the rising population with a small amount of police officers (Martin, 2009). Despite the fact that change in how the LAPD dealt with the population was coming, the underlying attitude amongst most officers was that they were the law and they could do most anything that they felt needed to be done. To feed to this totalitarian attitude, the LAPD has had to deal with many civil unrest situations like the Watts Riots of 1965.

The Watts Riots stemmed from an arrest of an African American subject named Marquette Frye that took place in the Watts neighborhood on Los Angeles. An altercation started possibly out of frustration with the lack of employment, housing and quality schools in the Watts area and turned into six days of riotous behavior in that poverty stricken area of Los Angeles. The LAPD as well as members of the National Guard were deployed to quell the violence on the streets (Unknown, 2012).

The riot cost the lives of thirty-four people and created an even bigger rift with the LAPD and the community in which it serves. The police culture that had been passed on to generations of LAPD officers was one that was truly inconsistent with what law enforcement should be about. This came from an era where racial segregation was common in various parts of the country but civil rights began to become a hot topic in the world. The way in which officers of the LAPD dealt with people while interacting and doing their jobs was such an ineffective way of enforcing the laws as they were meant to be enforced.

Many times the personal rights of individuals guaranteed under the United States Constitution were trampled on just because the attitudes of those in charge of both the police and the courts were primitive. Chief Daryl Gates took the helm of the LAPD in 1976 and he was creative in his ideas on how to modernize the LAPD. Chief Gates was there during the 80’s when gang-related violence was at an all-time high and something had to be done to effectively combat the problem. Community Policing philosophy was not a new idea at this point, but it had not been effectively implemented to cause any change. Chief Gates had the LAPD begin is form of “proactive” or iron fist policing tactics by implementing Operation Hammer in the streets in 1987. Operation Hammer was a police officer overload by the C. R. A. S. H. officers (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) in a certain area that has been experiencing numerous acts of gang-violence and officers enforce laws with ferocity using a zero-tolerance attitude with everybody in the neighborhood. This type of policing countered with other community policing programs that were in place to ensure that residents of these impoverished neighborhoods were being provided resources to help their situations (Sahagan, 1990).

Operation Hammer was not just a way for the LAPD to take violent criminals off the streets, but some have said that it was LAPD’s way of sending a message to the violent offenders to stop the violence. Officers during these various “operations” were not only searching and seizing items of evidence, but destroying property and disrespecting family of the gang members they sought to arrest. These tactics were not effective and did nothing to combat the crime but seemed to enrage the citizens of those neighborhoods to cause further community relations problems for the LAPD.

The distrust with the public and the LAPD continued to get worse until March 1991, when officers from the LAPD began chasing a speeding vehicle in their jurisdiction from the freeway. Rodney King was the driver of that speeding vehicle and he led officers on a chase that ultimately ended in a neighborhood area, where residents were woken up and videotaped recorders began recording. The videotape showed Rodney King being beaten numerous times with police batons at the hands of officers of the LAPD. The result was that the videotaped beating was given to the news media, which aired the footage to the world.

The public outcry wanted the officers charged for using excessive force upon Rodney King, which resulted in four officers being charged for using excessive force and ultimately acquitted of all charges. The response to the verdicts sparked complete civil unrest in the South Central area of Los Angeles, where the original beating took place. Initial rioters became enraged at the fact that an incident that was videotaped for the world to see could not convict police officers of excessive force. The riots lasted a total of six days and damage was estimated at one billion dollars.

At this point, there was no relationship with the LAPD and the impoverished areas of Los Angeles and crime seemed to run rampant. The attitude of the LAPD had not evolved with the world’s views on civil rights and it had been proven based on the various riots and scandals of this era of the LAPD. I feel that in some ways, attempts had been made at this point to try and connect with the community but the weak attempts failed. LAPD continued to use their iron fist approach to handling problems, which history has showed that it was not effective enough to cause change.

This attitude caused the LAPD to stand still while the world around was continuing to evolve and grow, which ultimately caused many issues for the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles. During the LA Riots, a young officer named Rafael Perez had been learning the skills of the job to move to the most sought after specialty positions such as narcotics and C. R. A. S. H. positions. When Rafael Perez, a native of Puerto Rico, was a child growing up he had ironically envisioned himself as being a Los Angeles Police Officer like the ones that he watched on the television program “Adam-12”.

Rafael Perez ended up landing a police officer job with the LAPD in 1989, a time when tension amongst police officers and the communities it served was at a boiling point (Cannon, 2000). Many officers, ultimately found to be involved in some type of scandal or wrongdoing within the LAPD had been hired within the same time period and had grown up with the LAPD police culture. Rafael Perez and many other officers involved in the Rampart Scandal, including Kevin Gaines, David Mack, and Nino Durden were hired in a time period between 1988 and 1990.

Some critics say that these officers and many other officers that have partaken in misconduct of a criminal nature were hired at a time when there were federal rules of affirmative action hiring practices. These federal rules forced agencies, such as the LAPD to hire minority candidates and lower standards based on race and sex. When hiring standards for candidates of any job, much less a law enforcement job are lowered then the candidates are less desireable, regardless of race or sex. A statistical analysis of data from the U. S.

Department of Justice from economist John Lott found that “aggressive” affirmative action hiring practices requiring a quota for hiring minority officers increased crime rates. The report reads “When affirmative action rules take over… the result is a reduced quality of officers” (Golab, 2005) With the federal regulations requiring affirmative action hiring practices, police departments, including the LAPD got away from the traditional hiring practices. Normally police officers are chosen as good candidates when they are hired on value-based hiring practices.

The practices are to look thoroughly into the candidate’s background, mental background and learn about the candidate and his/her morals and values. When affirmative action regulations take over, value-based hiring practices are not used due to the fact that a minority quota is put in place instead of hiring the best quality candidate regardless of race or sex. In the case of the LAPD, this type of hiring practice allowed people like Rafael Perez, David Mack and the rest to take the law into their own hands and victimize citizens of Los Angeles.

Once the officers in the Rampart Scandal were hired onto the LAPD, they learned how to do their jobs and in some instances came off as model police officers. Many of these officers received awards and commendations for the work that they had done while employed with the LAPD. Although I don’t know the entire career of these officers, it seems likely that their careers started with very minor “perks” being given to them as a result of their position of authority. Officers on this slippery-slope model of police corruption are brought into grafting subcultures that are already involved in this sort of corrupt and illegal activity.

Once the newer officers of the group begin their path on the slippery-slope of corruption, it is often difficult for them to ever come back. This is due to them being a part of previous corruption, where other members of the grafting subculture group were witness to, and there is now fear amongst the members of the corruption being discovered. In the case of the LAPD, it appeared that the officers found to be involved in the corruption, had been involved for quite some time.

The investigation into the Rampart Scandal began with the investigation into a shooting death of an off-duty LAPD officer by an on-duty LAPD narcotics detective. When investigators began looking into this case, they found that the off-duty officer that was killed, named Kevin Gaines had been involved with Death Row Records. Death Row Records was owned and run by a Piru-Blood gang member named Suge Knight. Kevin Gaines was also alleged to be involved with the Piru-Blood gang. As investigators looked deeper they found several LAPD officers working for Death Row Records and being involved in the Piru-Blood gang.

A incident occurred on November 6, 1997 when the Bank of America branch in South Central Los Angeles was robbed at gun point. Two men entered the bank and demanded money from the customer service manager and she gave them approximately $722,000. When robbery detectives began investigating the crime, they were able to question the customer service manager extensively and she revealed that the bank robbery was an “inside job”, with the main suspect being her boyfriend and LAPD officer David Mack.

Two days after the bank robbery, David Mack and Rafael Perez had gone to Las Vegas to celebrate. Investigators were learning that Rafael Perez had a relationship with each of these other officers and Rafael Perez was even thought to have been the second suspect in the bank robbery. When questioned about the bank robbery and his relationship with David Mack, Rafael Perez denied any involvement with the robbery but said that David Mack had saved his life when they worked in a narcotics unit together (Cannon, 2000).

While investigators were looking for clues in the Kevin Gaines shooting and the Mack bank robbery, the LAPD began investigating the theft of six pounds of cocaine from the evidence storage by one of their officers. The officer was Rafael Perez and he had already been suspected of being associated with Kevin Gaines and David Mack. Rafael Perez also had a connection to Death Row Records and had gang ties to the Piru-Blood gang. Rafael was a member of the C. R. A. S. H. anti-gang unit at the time, which was a unit that had quickly gained a reputation for playing hardball with gang members but also for being corrupt.

Investigators would soon learn that many other officers in the Rampart Division were a part of the noble cause corruption that seemed to run rampant in that division. David Mack was convicted of federal bank robbery charges and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, even though the money was never recovered and the other suspect has never been identified. Rafael Perez was able to negotiate a sentence of five years in prison in exchange for Rafael Perez’s cooperation in identifying additional corruption of other officers within the Rampart Division of the LAPD (Cannon, 2000).

The LAPD administration and the LA District Attorney’s Office felt that too many incidents of corruption were coming out of the Rampart Division and this was a fair way to make sure that they cleaned up the division and go after the corrupt officers. Rafael Perez talked with investigators about the socialization to C. R. A. S. H. and how officers new to the unit are treated and tested to see if they are trustworthy enough to be part of the corruption that was taking place. He also stated that the supervisors knew about the corruption and even encouraged officers to do whatever it took to make arrests and bring in uns, drugs and money from the streets (Caldero & Crank, 2004). Some citizens of the area seemed to think that what C. R. A. S. H. unit officers were doing to rid the streets of thugs and gang members was worth it to keep them safe. Others had differing feelings regarding the way officers acted, as many innocent people not affiliated with any gangs were caught up in the fray. Rafael Perez detailed to investigators about the patterns of corruption that were used by C. R. A. S. H. unit officers. This included using the INS to deport gang members or people that associated with gang members.

Often times “sweeps” were conducted and INS agents were used during these “sweeps” to get gang members off the streets. Using the INS for this purpose was strictly forbidden by the LAPD policies but seemed to be a common practice for members of the C. R. A. S. H. unit as a tactic. Other tactics that officers were using would be to plant guns and drugs on subjects, use violence against suspects, and to lie under oath during court proceedings all to ensure that gang members were prosecuted (Caldero & Crank, 2004).

During investigators debriefs with Rafael Perez, he blamed the LAPD and the aggressive police culture that it has bred as the reason that he became a corrupt officer. The C. R. A. S. H. unit motto, which was printed over the office door read “We intimidate those who intimidate others. ” Rafael Perez said that he developed that US vs. THEM attitude that many police officers develop over time of working with and around hardened criminals. He blamed the supervisors and management of the LAPD for expecting high numbers of arrests and seizures as a catalyst for the accepted corrupt police culture amongst the C.

R. A. S. H. officers (Cannon, 2000). Rafael Perez told investigators about a time when he and fellow C. R. A. S. H. unit officer Nino Durden shot an unarmed gang member, Javier Ovando. The shooting resulted out of a second contact with Ovando for trespassing, but the clear motive for the shooting is still not known. Durden and Perez planted a gun on Ovando after the shooting and Ovando was later charged and convicted for assault on a police officer with a firearm.

Investigators knew that Rafael Perez had lied about many of the details of the shooting of Ovando, and this called into question the other corruption cases that Rafael Perez had been telling investigators about (Cannon, 2000). The corruption cases that have been learned from the Rampart Division Scandal prompted the US Department of Justice to mandate LAPD to enter into a consent decree. The Assistant Attorney General accused the LAPD of “engaging in a pattern or practice of excessive force, false arrests, and unreasonable searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. (unknown, 2012) The consent decree was used as a tool to reform the police culture of the LAPD and to hold the LAPD accountable for violations of policy and procedure as well as criminal laws by officers of the LAPD. I feel that the history of the LAPD is the history of what we call modern day policing. LAPD has been so inventive and they have led the way in innovation in some regards. The attitudes of past leaders of the LAPD caused a police culture that was that of rough and tumble and not willing to “take shit” from anybody.

This type of attitude was prevalent for many years and spread to most police agencies, becoming the way to do police work. LAPD did not change with the times and continued with the attitude that they were above the law ultimately causing corruption to run rampant throughout the ranks. Understanding the history of the LAPD and the police culture that it has promoted, the consent decree was a necessary thing that has been used to reel in the aggressive tactics of officers that seemingly went unsupervised.

The federal consent decree caused the LAPD to revisit the policies and procedures that were supposed to have been used by officers and supervisors alike. All personnel received additional training to hold each individual accountable to what they were responsible for. The future of the LAPD is one that many outsiders will look on with baited breath to see if the consent decree helped with changing aggressive police culture and problems associated with it. Only time will tell to see if they (LAPD) learned their lesson and realize that they are there to uphold the laws and protect lives and property. References

Los Angeles Police Department. (2012). Retrieved from lapdonline. org The LAPD:1926-1950. (2012). Retrieved from The Official Site of the Los Angeles Police Department: lapdonline. org/history_of_the_lapd/content_basic_view/1109 Caldero, M. , & Crank, J. P. (2004). Police Ethics: The Corruption of Noble Cause,Second Edition. Matthew Bender & Company, Inc. Cannon, L. (2000, October 1). One Bad Cop. Retrieved from The New York Times Magazine: http://www. truthinjustice. org/20001001mag-lapd. html Golab, J. (2005, June). How Racial P. C. Corrupted the LAPD (and Possibly Your Local Force as Well). The American Enterprise, 16(4).

Retrieved from http://www. questia. com/library/1G1-132678217/how-racial-p-c-corrupted-the-lapd-and-possibly-your Martin, G. B. (2009, January 28). LAPD Chief Parker:a product of his time. Retrieved from LA Times: www. latimes. com/news/opinion Sahagan, L. (1990, December 25). Parents called Vital to 'Operation Hammer'. Retrieved from LA Times: http://articles. latimes. com/1990-12-25/local/me-7125_1_operation-hammer unknown. (2012). The Aftermath. Retrieved from Frontline: www. pbs. org Unknown. (2012, April 30). Watts Riots. Retrieved from Civil Rights Digital Library: http://crdl. usg. edu/events/watts_riots/

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