The Outlook for Block’s Investigators

When an official appoints his own committee to investigate accusations against his department, it makes you wonder.

That’s what happened last month when Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block named a citizens group to look into accusations that his deputies were guilty of brutality in a number of fatal shootings.

At first glance, Block’s committee looks like it’s packed with people who would be sympathetic to the Sheriff’s Department. Two of the 21 members are retired FBI agents. One is a retired police chief. Several are former top educators of the Establishment mold. Two are business executives.

Then you come to Gloria Allred, the vice chairwoman of the committee. Allred is an attorney whose name has become synonymous--at least among insensitive, old-fashioned guys--for militant, don’t-give-an-inch defense of women’s rights.

She’s not anti-cop. Allred spoke at a rally for Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates after the Rodney G. King beating and opposed the chief’s firing. But she’s pro-civil liberties. Among her most famous victories was in a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department to end a long practice of manacling pregnant inmates to the bed during labor, presumably to make sure they didn’t escape from jail while giving birth.

Victories like that gave her credibility, which she is lending to Block by agreeing to serve on his committee.

Last week I talked to Allred about her appointment.

I’d never interviewed her. I just knew her as the fierce combatant of TV news conferences and the Phil, Oprah and Sally Jessy Raphael shows, with a style as nerve-racking as fingernails scraping down a blackboard.

A different Allred awaited me in her Mid-Wilshire office. The killer who seems to fill my TV screen turned out to be a small, slender woman with a well-modulated voice that retains the accent of her native Philadelphia.

She spoke in a quiet manner. Her sentences were long, her words thoughtful--perfect for me, a print reporter trained to scorn sound bites in favor of seeking out a story’s complexity.

This was a person, I thought, who knows her audience.

I asked if she wasn’t risking her credibility by serving on the Block committee if it comes up with a cover-up report. Won’t you lose standing in the eyes of those who have watched your fight for civil rights? I asked.

No, she said, noting that committee members showed their independence during their first meeting last week, when they sent Block and his top aides out of the room during the election of officers.

So, Allred promises to be Allred.

And if that’s true, it could have an interesting impact on the dynamics of the group, as could the actions of other members who have a track record of speaking their minds.

For example, before he became a big lawyer-lobbyist, committee member Herman Sillas was a community minded Latino politician. And Leticia Quezada has a strong voice on the Los Angeles school board.

But as it stands today, the Block committee is far behind the Christopher Commission.

When the Christopher Commission started up, a volunteer staff of top lawyers, including ex-federal prosecutors, went to work immediately in a large suite of offices donated by law firms. A computer system, financed by donations, was being set up to begin the sophisticated analysis of information that was at the heart of the report.

At this point, the Block committee members have only themselves. No office. No computer. No staff, except for the sheriff’s aides. And nothing resembling the Christopher Commission’s thorough game plan.

An example of that planning was evident when the Christopher Commission went to East Los Angeles, where many complaints against the Sheriff’s Department are centered.

The Christopher Commission held a public session at Wilson High School. The chairman, Warren Christopher, personally heard complaints about the cops from clergy in the area. He also sent staff members to the Aliso Village housing project to hear more stories of brutal treatment.

Will the Block committee investigate the Sheriff’s Department that thoroughly? Perhaps, but Allred and a few others are going to have to push hard to make it happen.