Reflections on the LAPD’s
Rampart Scandal
By
Johnie H. Scott
(WAVE Newspapers, Wednesday, March 22, 2000)
No city in the world is more sensitive to media, stereotyping, negative press and spin doctors than Los Angeles. The City of Angels is the media center of the world, no matter what New Yorkers might say or think. Los Angeles is a city with a history, and not all of it is as glittering as one might hope. The darker pages of the city’s past are reflected in the water scandals of the early 1900s popularized in Chinatown, the street gang culture exposed in Boyz N The Hood and Menace II Society, with the problems brought on by drugs and vice revealed in Pulp Fiction. No matter the threat of danger, however, Los Angeles could always turn with pride to its “thin blue line,” the men and women of its world-famous police force.
As a kid, I grew up in Los Angeles -- like many others – a regular fan of the original Dragnet that featured Jack “Just Give Me the Facts, Ma'am” Friday as the laconic Sgt. Joe Friday. For sure, Sgt. Friday stood for all that was good about police, and the Los Angeles Police Department in particular. It was, after all, the “thin blue line” that separated us from the organized crime of Chicago, New York, and New Jersey.
And no question but that the police in L.A. were tough. The ones who patrolled South Los Angeles out of the 77th Street Division were among the toughest and meanest. Not only were they hard cases, so to speak, but they – including the Black ones -- were racists. The department’s personality was the same as that of its then-Chief of Police, the late William H. Parker.
This was the 1950s, a time when law enforcement agencies were defined by the people in charge: Eugene “Bull” Connor clearly personified bigoted Southern cops, J. Edgar Hoover represented the homophobic Federal Bureau of Investigation while the white Stetson-wearing Peter J. Pitchess headed up the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department which was known for its infamous brutal beatings of African Americans and Latinos at the Firestone Stationhouse in Southcentral Los Angeles.
For many blacks living in Los Angeles during that time, we expected those wearing law enforcement badges to be brutal and racist. I have vivid recollections as a youth in Watts during those years concerning the reluctance that relatives, friends, and neighborhoods felt in calling the police for help. It didn’t matter if there was a domestic dispute, your home had been burglarized, your car stolen, or worse. The hesitation stemmed from the likelihood that Black policemen would come out in response to the call along with white cops.
This reluctance to “call the cops,” a justifiable one, rested in the observation that black officers were more ruthless responding to calls than their white counterparts. It was as if these African Americans officers – who comprised a very small percentage as members of the LAPD with even fewer in the Sheriff’s Department – had a real need to “prove themselves.” It didn’t escape our notice that you seldom, if ever, heard of a black cop arresting or stopping a white person no matter what the infraction. I don’t want to badmouth the police. I do recognize the need in any civilized society for people sworn “To protect and serve.” And in Los Angeles, it was a badge of honor that the LAPD wore proudly in saying that you never heard of cops being “on the pad” as they say in New York, or “on the take.”
No one even thought about trying to bribe a cop. That was a sure, certain way of going straight to the County Jail. You couldn’t “buy” a cop, not one in Los Angeles. Crooked cops, bad cops, to repeat, were a part of East Coast culture and that’s why Frank Serpico stood out. Not for being decent, but because he blew the whistle on dirty officers – the ones who gave the police a bad name.
It would be no understatement to describe the relationship between the law enforcement and ethnic minority communities in Los Angeles as one of love and hate, with far more of the latter. There have been any number of “official” reports done over the years by various blue ribbon panels and commissions documenting the excesses and failings of the criminal justice system in its relationships with the black and brown community: the McCone Report, the Warren Report, the Christopher Commission Report and now, the LAPD’s very own Board of Inquiry Report.
That’s why, for the moment, I am withholding judgment on giving any kudos to Chief Bernard Parks, the LAPD, or any of the other law enforcement agencies in our city. Ours, more and more, is becoming a “Show and Tell” Generation. The community is demanding, and rightfully so, more “Show” and less “Tell.” The disbanding, for example, of the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit as one response to the 108 recommendations made in that Board of Inquiry Report represents a step in the right direction towards police reform. Expanding the current investigation by the District Attorney and Federal Government to look at the 77th Street Division in the heart of Southcentral Los Angeles is a second, badly-needed step in the right direction. But there is much more to be done.
I, for one, want to see an end brought to “racial profiling.” That whole concept of “Driving While Black” can begin with an acknowledgment that racial profiling is a cornerstone for much of the quandary that now confronts the decent men and women of “the thin blue line.” Yes, there are good cops – far more than there are bad. But I would be lying if I didn’t mention my disappointment with Chief Parks and L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca in their refusal to address the practices of racial profiling by their agencies at a time when the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress have given unmistakable signals that this odious practice is polarizing the Black and Brown communities from any hope of reconciliation with law enforcement.
The 1965 Watts Revolt began with a confrontation between members of the Los Angeles Police Department and the African American community. A second, near-riot occurred just one year later with the police shooting on the Harbor Freeway of black motorist Leonard Deadwyler who was attempting to take his pregnant wife to the hospital (Keep in mind this was before the construction of the King-Drew Medical Center so that the closest County Hospital to Watts was County General in East Los Angeles). The police “justifiable” homicide of Eula Love, a black woman and mother, on her own front lawn. Rodney King’s videotaped “beating seen around the world” that sparked the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.
The murder of Tyisha Miller. Now, amid sordid revelations of people being paralyzed for life from gunfire by crooked cops who would not only frame the “bad shooting” victim but send him to jail, comes word that the LAPD’s Rampart Division is guilty of tainting as many as 3,000 other possible cases with hundreds of millions of dollars in pending lawsuits against the City. This demands more than disbanding of a CRASH unit!
Cleaning up Los Angeles will only start when, and if, we are willing to deal in hard truth. I spoke of growing up in a city of contrasting images and stereotypes. I remember Sgt. Friday’s “Just the facts, Ma’am.” These are images that shaped current community attitudes towards the police and their (lack of) credibility. It certainly did not help matters when the LAPD Board of Inquiry referred to and euphemistically titled its 362-page document of March 1, 2000 as the “Rampart Area Corruption Incident.” Much more is to be said for USC Prof Erwin Chemerinsky's independent analysis of that document.
Outgoing Mayor Richard Riordan has already set aside $100 million for expected lawsuits. We are dealing here with no “incident.” Bill Lann Lee, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C. and his chief aide, Steven Rosenbaum, came to Los Angeles to find out why the LAPD failed to implement long-anticipated changes from those aforementioned reports and plans for moving ahead on other needed reforms while probing alleged civil rights abuses by officers within the Police Department.
It is now August of 2001 and the area I grew up in so many years ago, the Jordan Downs Housing Projects of Southcentral Los Angeles, have been a hotbed of tension for the entire month with a reported eight shooting incidents involving the Black residents and the police Department. There have been several instances of near-riots breaking out in Watts when the police have stopped, or simply appeared. That mentality of “Us against Them” is as real today as it was more than 40 years ago. The need for substantive, in-depth discussion of the concerns and issues held by so large a part of the Black Community with regards to poor police practices that pre-date Ramparts -- only to be highlighted by this case -- has never come at a more critical time. When we look at the civil unrest that extends across the nation, erupting as it did in the city of Cincinnati with a near-total disintegration of that city's social fabric, it is clear that something needs to be done.
To change matters is going to call for truth-tellers on both sides. Let’s see this for what it is: The Rampart Area Corruption Scandal!!
(This article was edited and revised by the author from the original as it appeared in the WAVE publications, with websites embedded for more current data and reference – JS)