Board to Be Privately Briefed on Rampart

The politics of police corruption make strange bedfellows. Witness the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

In one corner is Supervisor Mike Antonovich--pillar of the local conservative Republican community, reserve cop, staunch supporter of police and proponent of denying government services to illegal immigrants.

In the other corner is the rest of the board--including longtime civil libertarian and police critic Zev Yaroslavsky, and Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina, whose blue-collar constituents frequently complain of misconduct by police and immigration officials.

Yet there was Antonovich on Tuesday, describing to a crowd of reporters the threat to democracy posed by the LAPD’s mistreatment of immigrants and others in the Rampart Division. Meanwhile, his colleagues, after refusing to second yet another of Antonovich’s motions that the county look into the scandal, headed for the exits.

Antonovich’s interest in police corruption may have something to do with the fact that he supports challenger Steve Cooley against incumbent Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti in the November election.

Cooley, Antonovich, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks and others have made an issue of Garcetti’s response to the scandal, but the rest of the county supervisors have not. They support Garcetti and have been mum about the scandal at their meetings.

On Tuesday, they finally made one concession--approving an Antonovich motion to have the public defender privately brief supervisors about the scandal and asking the district attorney to do the same.

But they shot down Antonovich’s motion to have a countywide law enforcement panel publicly discuss the issue, with Molina, the current chairwoman of the board, interrupting him to ask rhetorically: “Is there a second on this item?”

Of course, there was none. The motion died--much like one last month in which Antonovich asked the board to urge Garcetti to prosecute allegedly criminal LAPD officers.

This time Antonovich proposed that the supervisors refer a persistent question of the Rampart scandal to the countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee: Could the criminal justice system have spotted alleged LAPD corruption that sent innocent men to jail?

That committee comprises the district attorney, sheriff, LAPD chief and representatives of the courts, county Probation Department and state and federal law enforcement agencies. Antonovich said he was acting at the recommendation of Sheriff Lee Baca, who already has spoken of placing his department’s internal affairs unit under civilian oversight to protect against possible corruption.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Antonovich said he hoped that Parks, who sits on the committee, brings up the question himself at a future meeting. The supervisor took a swipe at the district attorney’s office for not detecting the corruption, saying the office had prosecutors in some of the areas where alleged wrongdoing occurred.

But Antonovich said he had broader concerns.

“The entire justice community has to use this tragedy as a means of educating their men and women,” he said. He added that his fellow supervisors’ refusal to support him “shows a complete lack of commitment.”

Supervisor Don Knabe, a Republican who often sides with Antonovich but has endorsed Democrat Garcetti in the November runoff, said he did not support the motion because “there’s too many things going on” regarding Rampart. “I didn’t want to confuse the issue.”

Yaroslavsky was more blunt. “It’s part of an ongoing spat between the chief of police and the D.A. that Mike has chosen to carry on.”

Yaroslavsky has been one of the strongest critics of the LAPD on the scandal, although he and Parks are longtime friends. As such, he has drawn criticism from some for not examining how the parts of the criminal justice system under county control may have factored into the scandal.

Antonovich, meanwhile, has never been shy about going after the district attorney. He was one of the most vocal critics of Garcetti’s child support operation and the lack of prosecutions over the Belmont Learning Complex, the costly and environmentally plagued high school project that the Los Angeles Unified School District has decided to abandon in mid-construction.

On Tuesday, Antonovich said his concerns about police corruption predate his feud with Garcetti.

“It’s very important that we have law enforcement that supports and protects the community,” he said. “I’m not a Johnny-come-lately on this.”