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 ears
ago, there was a jailer at LAPD's Parker Center jail whom I'll refer
to as Mr. Casey. If he had a first name, no
one
seemed to know it; to cop and crook alike he was just Mr. Casey.
In a career that covered more than thirty years, he was something
of an official greeter for generations of L.A. criminals as they
arrived at the jail to be booked and then begin their strange journey
into the criminal justice system. Mr. Casey could type faster than
anyone I've ever seen; at his hands, the old IBM-Selectric typewriters
used at the time sounded like teletype machines.
I hadn't thought about him in quite some time, but a story in Sunday's
Los Angeles Times brought Mr. Casey to mind immediately.
The article, by Times writer Lynn Smith, was about the gang
members who have come into sudden wealth through settlements from
the city of Los Angeles in the wake of what has come to be known
as the Rampart Scandal. These young men are the nouveau-est of the
nouveau riche, for many of them were plucked right from the prison
yard to be handed hundreds of thousands — in some cases millions
— of dollars. The article refers to them as victims of police
corruption, but scant reference is made to their victims
— the people they murdered, raped, robbed, or otherwise terrorized
before being nabbed by allegedly corrupt police officers. To read
the article, one might get the impression that the only guns and
drugs to be found on the streets of L.A. are those that have been
planted on innocent people by crooked cops.
Which brings me to my remembrance of Mr. Casey. One night as a young
cop I brought before him a man I had arrested for robbery. Throughout
the booking process the man very loudly proclaimed his innocence
over the considerable din worked up by Mr. Casey and his trusty
IBM Selectric. There came a welcome pause in the man's caterwauling,
and Mr. Casey looked up from his typewriter and through the heavy
wire mesh that separated us, perhaps wanting to see what violence
I had brought upon the man to silence him. (Though greatly tempted,
I had done nothing.) "Mr. Casey," I said, "how long have you been
working here?" "About thirty years," he answered. I asked him if
in those thirty years he had ever booked a guilty man. His answer:
"Not a damn one."
During that same period there was in the station where I worked
a sign that could be read by those confined in the holding cells.
It read:
Welcome
to the Los Angeles Police Department. Please choose one of the following
excuses:
That ain't my dope.
That ain't my gun.
I didn't know it was stolen.
It was some other dude.
The point of all this is that nearly everyone who finds himself
behind bars tells anyone within earshot that he's been wronged by
the system. This was true twenty years ago, and it's even more true
today. But unlike twenty years ago, today there's money to made
in the assertion.
To be sure, some cops working Rampart Division committed abuses
in the guise of fighting crime. In the most shocking instance, two
officers shot and paralyzed an unarmed man, who was later convicted
of assaulting them. The man has been freed from prison but remains
paralyzed. He has received a $15-million settlement from the city
of Los Angeles, and I don't begrudge him one penny of it. And may
the (now former) officers who harmed him spend the rest of their
lives in prison and the rest of eternity in Hell. But many gangsters
have parlayed a life of crime into a quick fortune by crying foul
at the right time. The Times story says the city expects
to pay out $125 million to plaintiffs in Rampart-related lawsuits.
Everyone arrested in Rampart Division in the last 15 years is scurrying
about looking for a lawyer and a big, juicy slice of the pie.
The Los Angeles municipal primary is next month. City Attorney James
Hahn is one of six major candidates running for mayor, and several
city council seats are also being contested. The experiences of
twenty years in police work have conspired in turning me into a
cynic, so please forgive me if I air the suspicion that some of
these Rampart cases were rushed to settlements in the hope of pushing
the mess to the back pages before election day. In the only criminal
trial to date stemming from the Rampart investigation, three of
the four accused officers were convicted of conspiring to frame
a gang member for assaulting them, but those convictions were vacated
by the trial judge when several jurors came forward and admitted
that they had been confused by the evidence in the case. The district
attorney has appealed the judge's decision, but it appears the ruling
will withstand scrutiny in the Court of Appeals.
The Times story describes how some gang members newly flush
with cash have used the money to move to more desirable neighborhoods.
(Conspicuously unmentioned is the fact that it was these same gang
members' criminal behavior that ruined their former neighborhoods
in the first place.) Others have chosen to remain on their home
turf and spend the money on new cars and other such conspicuous
consumption. The story tells of an encounter with the 18-year-old
recipient of a $475,000 settlement. He opened his wallet to show
the reporter his credit card and several hundred-dollar bills. "See
that?" he tells her. "That's what the LAPD gave me right there."
And he didn't even send me a Christmas card.
(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber.
The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect
those of the LAPD management .)
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