ValleyVote Update for 6-28-01 |
We are sending you this E-mail as you have requested to be notified concerning ValleyVote
Here is a group of stories about LAPD's downtown management.
THE jurors who heard Theresa Schell's case against the Los Angeles Police Department, Chief Bernard C. Parks and Cmdr. Daniel Watson needed a mere four hours to make up their minds. That's all the time it took for the panel to conclude that Parks, Watson and the department itself had maliciously retaliated against Schell for the crime of contradicting the official version of events.
This horrendous and expensive case of public corruption began in 1992, when the LAPD failed to pay $1 million in overtime for the hours officers manned the barricades during the riots that followed acquittal of the cops who beat Rodney King.
It's true that for many critical hours, officers -- under orders from Chief Daryl F. Gates -- stood around doing nothing as hoodlums looted and set fire to the city. But that isn't why they weren't paid in the legally required time frame.
City officials, hard-pressed for cash in the recession, claimed the payroll system was inadequate so timely checks couldn't be issued. Later, when the Police Protective League offered to settle for $800,000, the city still wouldn't pay. By 1995, the police union's offer to settle had reached $5 million -- and the city still wouldn't pay. The union finally won a settlement last year for $40 million -- 40 times what officers were due eight years earlier.
Of course, for Mayor Richard Riordan, City Attorney James Hahn and the City Council, the bill was nothing since the money belonged to you, the taxpayer, yearning for an improvement in basic services and the quality of life in your neighborhood -- goals for which there is never much money.
Along the way, Schell, a 29-year veteran of the department's fiscal services, blew the whistle on the city's basic defense. She testified under oath that the city's accounting system could, in fact, have issued the checks properly for overtime earned in the riots.Schell had broken City Hall's code of silence and officials should have put a statue of her in the rotunda of the newly-refurbished City Hall for which $300 million of taxpayers' money was miraculously found.
Instead, Schell was bullied and intimidated by her bosses and even the city's lawyer. She was demoted, threatened her with criminal prosecution, read her Miranda rights and last December, fired.
But in just four hours, a federal court jury sorted through the facts and ordered the city to pay Schell $3.6 million. Then, it went the next step ordering Parks to pay her $500,000 and Watson to per her $250,000 -- personally.
If the City Council follows its own precedent of protecting everyone who remains under the code of silence, it will vote to pay all the judgments -- or more precisely have taxpayers pay them.
That's how the $1 million bill owed to the men and women in blue who put their lives on the line during the riots became $50 million, including legal costs, to taxpayers. So what's going to be done about this scandal?
Will the city's clergy convene an inquisition into the ethical cesspool of City Hall like they have regarding the notion of secession? Will the Justice Department demand a federal court consent decree to clean up the corruption at City Hall? Will the lame-duck mayor and council hold hearings and reveal to the public what happened in their dirty little back rooms where the real business of government is conducted?
Will the mayor-elect give a speech on the steps of City Hall confessing to his own role?
Will the new City Council that takes office next week make getting to the bottom of this scandal its first order of business?
Don't hold your breath. Nothing is going to happen until the millions of good and decent residents of Los Angeles get so fed up that they refuse to take it anymore.
And when that day comes, maybe someone will put up a plaque on the seat of government proclaiming it: "Theresa Schell City Hall."
By Rick Orlov Staff Writer
A federal court jury found Thursday that LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks maliciously retaliated against a civilian employee who refused to alter her testimony in a lawsuit that already has cost the city $40 million.
The jury ordered the city to pay $3.6 million to former fiscal systems specialist Theresa Schell, a 29-year Los Angeles Police Department member. It also assessed $500,000 in damages -- for inflicting emotional distress -- against Parks personally and $250,000 against Cmdr. Daniel B. Watson, who mediates employee claims.
The jury reached its verdicts after just four hours of deliberation. Schell sobbed when the verdicts were read. "This is very much a sense of vindication," she said afterward. "There was just so much pressure on me. I had to withdraw all my retirement savings to live. This is just such a relief."
The verdict was the latest chapter in one of the city's worst fiscal fiascoes that dates back to the 1992 riots when the city failed to pay the $1 million in overtime it owed LAPD officers.
City officials claimed they didn't pay overtime to cops in the legally required time frame because of inadequacies in the payroll system.
They could have resolved claims by the Police Protective League for $800,000 at the time but refused. They could have settled for $5 million in 1995 but refused again and ended up settling in 2000 for $40 million -- the largest legal settlement in the city's history.
It was in a deposition in that case in late 1998 that Schell contradicted two other civilian employees and testified that the city's payroll system was in fact capable of giving timely payment of overtime to police officers.
Afterward, she was reassigned, apparently at Parks' direction, demoted and fired last December.
City officials said they would review the verdict to determine whether to appeal. Neither Parks nor Watson was available to comment.
City Attorney's Office spokesman Mike Qualls said there have been other cases in the past attempting to hold city officials personally liable for damages.
"It's a decision the City Council would make, but they have always decided the city should cover any liability of city officials," Qualls said.
Schell's attorney, Dan Stormer, who has been involved in other high profile cases involving the LAPD, said internal department documents showed Parks and others retaliated against Schell after she refused to change her testimony even under pressure from a private attorney hired by the city.
In particular, he cited a memo in which Parks wrote: "Move her as quickly as you can out of this critical assignment."
"This really is no surprise to me," Stormer said. "We had specific documents that showed the retaliation and it was a clear trail. They were trying to show they were forced to transfer her and, in fact, it showed the opposite -- that she was specifically retaliated against because she refused to change her testimony."
Deputy City Attorney Gerald Sato, who handled the case, insisted the evidence did not support the verdict.
"I'm particularly disappointed at the jury's finding of punitive damages against Chief Parks and Cmdr. Watson," Sato told City News Service. "I think the evidence was that they ... did the best to protect Ms. Schell from a hostile environment."
In a prepared statement, the department left open the possibility of an appeal.
"It is the department's position the employee was not retaliated against and that she was terminated for cause," said Sgt. John Pasquariello.
"Chief Parks has not met with the City Attorney's Office, but one of the options we will do is explore the possibility of appeal. It is important to note that these cases often get a lot of notoriety when judgments are awarded. But, on appeal, the department and the city often win and these victories go unnoticed."
Schell, who began working for the city in 1971 at the age of 19 and worked her way through college and the civilian ranks of the LAPD, was one of the key witnesses in the lawsuit brought by officers against the city for the slow payment of overtime.
"She was one of the people in accounting and was asked if she could provide documentation on why payments were delayed," Stormer said. "She said she could."
Schell's testimony that officials were falsely claiming the city's payroll system was incapable of giving timely payment of overtime so badly damaged the city's case that she faced pressure to change her testimony in March 1999 but refused to do so, Stormer said.
Days later, she was demoted to clerk-typist and later threatened with the possibility that criminal charges would be filed against her alleging she based her testimony on confidential information stored on computer.
"But it was on a public (computer) drive that anyone in the department had access to," Schell said. "If it was confidential, why was it on a public drive? "When they fired me, I was hysterical. My first thoughts were I was afraid for my family ... that I had gone too far," Schell said.
Although LAPD officials told Schell her actions could constitute a felony and said she might be prosecuted -- going so far as to read her her Miranda Rights -- testimony at the trial showed LAPD officials concluded the charges wouldn't stick because she had lacked criminal intent, said Anne Richardson, another attorney working on behalf of Schell.
Outside the courtroom, the jury forewoman told City News Service that she felt outraged after Parks mispronounced Schell's name when he was on the witness stand.
"I thought that was telling and pretty arrogant, especially since she was a 29-year employee," Judith Sandoval said.
Mitzi Grasso, president of the Police Protective League, which represents sworn officers, said Thursday that she had no comment on Schell's case. Grasso said she did not have a deep familiarity with the case and noted that Schell was a civilian employee, not a police officer.
What started out as a bad idea -- surrendering control of the LAPD to the federal government -- has turned into a muddled idea.
Last year, when the City Council signed off on a consent decree for the Los Angeles Police Department, its members promised that they weren't abdicating responsibility for local leadership. Angelenos, they insisted, would maintain control over their Police Department.
All that would happen is that a federal monitor would look over their shoulders and make sure that the political leadership of this city did its job to reform the LAPD. This was necessary, they argued without a shamed face among them, because the city's leaders for the past 50 years failed to make sure the police respected the constitutional rights of the citizenry and couldn't be trusted to do so now.
The deal has yet to be finalized but a lot has changed. Bill Lann Lee, the attorney who made his career out of attacking the LAPD, is out at the Justice Department and the Bush administration has made it clear the president believes in local solutions to local problems.
The change in police at the Justice Department has sent the American Civil Liberties Union's paranoid quotient skyrocketing, so it's now demanding a direct role in supervising the LAPD.
And U.S. District Judge Gary Feess, who is overseeing the consent decree dealings, has said he has no intention of being a passive bystander. He insists he'll pick the monitor with input from the city and Justice Department, setting himself up to be the real chief of police.
Never mind that under the terms of the agreement, that decision rightly belongs to L.A. and the Justice Department. Agreements, it seems, are meant to be broken.
The City Council should consider Judge Feess' obstinacy a gift. His refusal to sign off on the consent decree gives L.A. a chance to reconsider its participation in a bad deal that's only going to get worse.
Council members Rudy Svorinich Jr. and Hal Bernson have recommended that the city abandon the agreement while it still can. That's a good idea.
Even without Feess' interference, the decree was unclear and unjust, imposing unrealistic costs and burdens on a Police Department that is already struggling to contain resurgent crime. The decree will drive up costs spectacularly, reduce the number of cops on the street drastically and give criminals and gangsters the run of the town.
Once the LAPD is placed in the hands of anti-police ideologues, the damage could be much worse than anyone imagined. Feess has tentatively rejected the ACLU's request, but he has granted the organization friend-of-the-court status, and promises to revisit the issue later.
If the ACLU has any standing at all, so should Neighborhood Watch, and community groups of all stripes that have an interest in whether the LAPD does a good job.
The problems in the LAPD are real and serious but if the department was systematically violating innocent people's rights -- and not just in a rogue anti-gang unit -- there is no proof because there has been no investigation of the prosecutors, judges or political leadership of the city.
Perhaps City Hall rolled over and agreed to the decree because it knows something about what it's done that we don't.
If so, the Justice Department ought to send a battery of lawyers to L.A. and grill our guilt-ridden leaders about what they knew about the problems in the LAPD, when they knew about them -- and what they did besides abdicate their responsibility to a federal judge, federal monitor and the ACLU.
Lawsuit: Current and former employees contend they were punished when they tried to report misconduct.
By CAITLIN LIU, Times Staff Writer
Nearly 200 current and former officers are now plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department, alleging that they were retaliated against when they tried to report misconduct, an attorney said Thursday. "Once you become an LAPD pickle, you can never become a cucumber again," said Bradley Gage, who represents the officers suing the Police Department, at a news conference in his Woodland Hills law office. "All of these officers have been pickled."
The number of plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which
also names selected LAPD supervisors as defendants, has tripled in the last
three months. Originally filed in August in Los Angeles County Superior Court,
it has been refiled in U.S. District Court downtown because it involves federal
civil rights claims.
Appearing with Gage were two plaintiffs, twin
sisters Theresa and Lisa Golt, who claimed they were jailed on false charges.
Last November, each of the sisters was charged in Los Angeles County with
issuing bail without a license and illegally accessing confidential information
from law enforcement computers. They were arrested again in December in Orange
County on suspicion of running a bail bond business without a license.
Lisa Golt, a former LAPD officer, held up a driver
license-sized card Thursday that she said was her valid state bail agent
license. But at the time she was arrested, she alleged, someone had tampered
with her license status in the state's database.
Lisa Golt, who was fired by the LAPD for using
pepper spray while off-duty, said she believed she was retaliated against
because the company she worked for provided bail for former Rampart officers who
were on trial on corruption charges, and for being an outspoken critic of LAPD
Chief Bernard C. Parks. In 1999, she led a campaign to encourage other officers
to sign written instructions to bar Parks from attending their funerals if they
were killed in the line of duty.
She also claimed she had refused to lie during an
unfair internal investigation of a sergeant and raised the ire of LAPD's top
brass as a result.
Theresa Golt, a current officer, is on administrative leave while charges against her are pending. Officer Jason Lee, an LAPD spokesman, declined comment, saying department policy bars comment on pending lawsuits. Defense lawyers from the city attorney's office could not be reached Thursday
By Alexa Haussler Staff Writer
Settling the case that has come to symbolize the Rampart police corruption scandal, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved paying $15 million to Javier Francisco Ovando, who was shot, paralyzed and imprisoned.
The corruption scandal surfaced after former Los Angeles Police Department Officer Rafael Perez said he and former partner Nino Durden shot Ovando in the head and chest in October 1996, then planted a .22-caliber rifle on him.
"The healing that Javier needs emotionally -- and hopefully he'll be able to get more physical treatment -- will start," said Ovando's attorney, Gregory Moreno. "He wanted to get this behind him," Moreno said.
After meeting briefly behind closed doors, the City Council voted 13-0 to pay out the largest settlement for police misconduct in Los Angeles history. "It's something I think the council recognized that we had to do in terms of the devastating impact on this particular individual," said Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowsi, chairwoman of the council's Public Safety Committee.
The money will come from a multimillion-dollar liability account that city officials established to pay for cases such as Ovando's. [The money is funded by "judgment bonds' sold by LA City which do not need taxpayer approval as they are paid out of future revenue and not assessed as taxes]
His case has been held up as the most shocking of those in which officers in the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division anti-gang unit were later charged with assaulting and planting evidence on suspected gang members, then fabricating police reports and telling lies under oath to gain convictions. Perez's former partner, Durden, has pleaded not guilty to attempted-murder charges and awaits trial.
Before the Ovando settlement, the city already had paid $12 million in 32 Rampart cases, and 70 cases remain pending.
Officials from the City Attorney's Office have estimated that the city's liability in Rampart cases could cost up to $125 million. "We think it's a fair settlement in a case we don't think we can win," said City Attorney James Hahn. "When all those facts are put in front of a jury, we could end up with a much worse number than we did today.
"(Ovando) is going to need that money to take care of himself for the rest of his life." After the council approved the settlement, Ovando and his attorney spoke to reporters at Moreno's San Gabriel Valley law firm.
"I'm happy that it's over," Ovando quietly said in Spanish. Moreno added: "He's happy that it's going to be final, that he can put it behind him and go on with his life."
He said Ovando needs to pay medical bills and invest some of the funds for his future expenses, and he plans to use some of the money to try to help his sister and mother come to Los Angeles from Honduras. Moreno said the amount of the settlement is fair.
"(The city) looked at all the things that Javier went through from the day he was wrongfully detained . . . by those two ex-officers of L.A.," Moreno said. "I think what we have is a just and reasonable amount of money." He said he hopes the city will make similar offers in the remaining Rampart cases.
"The city made a good-faith effort here in resolving obviously the most horrendous and tragic case, and hopefully that will prevail in all," Moreno said.
Last week an independent panel created by the Police Commission issued a report on the scandal, accusing LAPD management of failing to react to warning signs of rogue officers and failing to provide adequate leadership and supervision throughout the department.
The report by the Rampart Independent Review Board was issued the day after three Rampart Division officers were convicted on obstruction of justice charges.
There seems to be some dispute these days as to the meaning of the word "takeover."
While Webster's defines it as "the act or an instance of assuming control or possession," we can only assume that the term carries a different meaning for Los Angeles city officials. How else can we make sense of their repeated, bewildering claims that a federal monitor's assuming control of the Los Angeles Police Department is assuredly not a takeover?
City Attorney James Hahn, for example, insists that the consent decree "doesn't turn the operation of the LAPD over to the federal government."
That's either fuzzy English or fuzzy thinking. Under the proposed consent decree, which the City Council could rubber-stamp as early as today, control of the LAPD will ultimately belong to a federal monitor and the Justice Department.
In rolling over in the face of the council majority rushing to surrender authority to the feds, Mayor Richard Riordan has at least won some concessions that hopefully will provide safeguards against federal excess.
The civil rights ideologues in the Justice Department wanted absolute authority over the LAPD, but Riordan's representative, Deputy Mayor Kelly Martin, got in language that would give future city officials fighting room in disputes about whether the terms of the decree are being met. But in the end, control is exactly what the feds get.
The decree's restraints on the monitor's authority rest largely on the monitor's willingness to abide by them and city leaders' willingness to go to court to enforce them -- but given their spinelessness, that's unlikely. The consent decree limits the monitor to a five-year budget of $10 million -- unless he or she feels more L.A. tax dollars are needed.
While the decree is called voluntary, the city can only get out after the five-year agreement expires if the monitor and Justice Department say so -- unless they can convince a federal judge they are in substantial compliance.
Yet for all the city leaders' blabbering about what the consent decree won't be, they seem utterly unable to provide answers as to what it will do -- like how much it will cost, or where they'll get the money to pay for it. But it's not hard to guess. They cut services to the public, or raise taxes as usual.
The decree offers myriad details about ending abuses by the LAPD, but does nothing to make sure the public will be protected when crime soars and its understaffed and demoralized police force is too handcuffed to fight back. Word games and double talk are all a skeptical public gets.
The Police Protective League, which represents the LAPD's officers, belatedly has figured out the consent decree is not in the best interests of honorable rank-and-file officers. Of course, it too has been left in the dark.
After decades of failure to reform the LAPD, city leaders are eager to shirk their responsibility once and for all.
In the City Council's rush to ram through a consent decree before next week's election -- which could bring a very different mentality to the Justice Department -- it's ignoring many important issues. You can be sure that the people responsible for this will take no responsibility for any of the numerous problems that come out of it.
See our Website and all the Updates are archived on our site.
Please note some of the links to source sties may go missing as the are some times removed by the original source - sorry!
** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C., section 107, some material is provided without permission from the copyright owner, only for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of federal copyright laws. These materials may not be distributed further, except for "fair use," without permission of the copyright owner. **If you friends want to be added to our E-mail list please send an E-mail with ValleyVote as the subject. We share our e-mail list with no one. Charles Brink Webmaster. If you want to have your name removed from the list just reply with remove as subject |