Word: rampart
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...upshot has been the biggest police scandal in Los Angeles history. At the center is the Rampart division--a police station in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods--and its special antigang unit. In the six months since Perez started talking, lurid revelations about law enforcement Rampart-style have emerged almost daily: allegations that cops raped a woman while on duty; accusations that a cop interrogating a handcuffed man beat him until he vomited blood; a fast-growing list of prisoners who were allegedly railroaded with fabricated evidence and police lies...
...case have joined a crowd of other investigators--the civilian police commission, the Los Angeles district attorney's office, the police department's internal-affairs unit along with a special task force. Following in their wake: an army of private lawyers who have been flooded with calls from alleged Rampart victims. By the time all the civil rights lawsuits are resolved, Los Angeles could face hundreds of millions of dollars in liability. Mayor Richard Riordan has called for using the city's $300 million in tobacco-settlement money to resolve the litigation...
...While this ostensibly makes the department's top brass look bad, the report may be Parks' best hope at avoiding an FBI-induced department overhaul. Throughout the report, the board paints Rampart CRASH - the unit being investigated - as a rogue outfit separate from the LAPD's central powers. Further, it repeatedly suggests that the best way to battle corruption is to consolidate power in Parks' office and increase the budget of Internal Affairs, the department's internal policing unit. But in the wake of protests following the acquittal of four New York City police officers in the Amadou Diallo case...
...shot suspects and then delayed calling an ambulance, so they could fix the scene to make the shooting look justified; cops who stole drugs and sold them on the street; cops partying with--and sometimes raping--informants; and cops who shot at suspects for sport. One of the Rampart's least distinguished alumni: former officer David Mack, convicted of robbing a bank...
...perhaps nothing Perez has owned up to is as disturbing as the degree to which fabricating incriminating evidence seems to have been part of Rampart's routine. The L.A.P.D. has sent 50 investigators to every prison in the state--and as far as South America--to track down those framed. But so far L.A.P.D. Chief Bernard Parks has asked for charges to be filed against only three officers, insisting Perez's claim of 70 officers involved is too high. (Eleven officers are on leave.) A police board of inquiry is expected to urge reforms, including improved background checks and polygraphs...