from LA Indymedia:
2001 - 2007: LAPD's Reign of Terror Unchecked
by Kelly McSwain Thursday, May. 03, 2007 at 8:08 AM
The brutal rampage by LAPD in McArthur Park on May 1, 2007 was culmination of a 6-year old secrete but intricate policy by the Bush administration and local forces of the extreme right in reversing attempts to reform LAPD after Rodney King and Rampart Scandal.
Los Angeles, May 3, 2007 -- In early 1999, the US Department of Justice under then-US Attorney General Janet Reno began an aggressive plan to impose reform upon LAPD. By the time the LAPD's Rampart Scandal became public in 1998, the Clinton administration knew that previous attempts to reform one of the largest police departments in the World had largely failed.
In June 1999, rumors began to circulate within the ranks of the LAPD and in the meetings of its powerful union (Police Protective League - PPL) that Bill Clinton and Janet Reno were about to implement drastic anti-corruption measures against LAPD -- what the LAPD alleged as the federal government's efforts to "violate the officers' 10th amendment rights" and interfere in LAPD's "internal affairs." These rumors, however, were not baseless. Janet Reno's US Attorneys in Washington, D.C. were busy in 1999 drafting a historic federal civil rights lawsuit against LAPD in which the Clinton administration was charging LAPD with "endemic corruption and systematic violation of constitutional rights of residents of Los Angeles." Additionally, at US DOJ headquarters at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue serious discussions were taking place about using the federal funding of the LAPD as a leverage in imposing anti-corruption reform on LAPD.
Sensing the warning of the tsunami coming from Washington in their direction, the LAPD and its PPL began to brace in a defensive position. The LAPD and PPL knew that first they needed to secure the local front. They needed to get rid of Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles County District Attorney who had begun to prosecute LAPD officers for corruption. In September 1999, LAPD and PPL funded and fielded Steven Cooley, a Republican, as their own candidate for the LA District Attorney position. LAPD and PPL knew too well that if they took over the District Attorney's office, they would at least be shielded from criminal prosecution on state charges. They remained, however, gravely concerned about what Bill Clinton and Janet Reno had in mind for LAPD.
In September 1999, the Republican Cooley began his PPL-funded campaign to unseat DA Garcetti. PPL was vehemently against Garcetti's criminal prosecution of its officers. In his 1999-2000 camping against Garcetti, Cooley received more than $1 million from PPL while publicly speaking against police corruption in Rampart Scandal and criticizing Garcetti for not being forceful and efficient enough in his criminal prosecution of corrupt officers. Of course, Cooley was engaging in blatant public deception since he knew that he had received the $1 million from PPL to try to unseat Garcetti and shield LAPD officers from any further criminal prosecution.
On the federal level, significant developments were taking place. Janet Reno and Bill Clinton were putting their final touches on the draft of the federal civil rights lawsuit against LAPD. On October 11, 2000, then-governor Bush made the following statement in his televised debate with Al Gore in North Carolina: "One of my concerns, though, is I don't want to federalize the local police forces. I want to -- obviously in the egregious cases we need to enforce civil rights law, but we need to make sure that internal affairs decisions at the local level do their job and be given a chance to do their job. I believe in local control of governments, and obviously if they don't there needs to be a consequence at the federal level." Bush, however, knew that the LAPD's "Internal Affairs" was a source of corruption in itself.
On November 2, 2000, Janet Reno filed her historic anti-corruption lawsuit against LAPD in federal court in Los Angeles. LAPD was charged with systemic violations of civil rights, including, "having a pattern of arresting residents of Los Angeles without probable cause." SEE page 2 of the Complaint at: http://www.freemarje.com/US%20Fed%20Lawsuit%20v%20LAPD%2011-03-00.pdf
However, two historical events followed which reversed the course of anti-corruption attempts at LAPD for the following six years. In fact, these two events resulted in empowering and expanding the forces of corruption in the LAPD on a gigantic scale. On December 12, 2000, George Bush was declared as the new President of the United States. On November 7, 2000, Republican Cooley, with substantial backing from PPL, defeated Gil Garcetti. Cooley became the new District Attorney of Los Angeles on January 1, 2001. Within two weeks after taking office, he disbanded the special investigation office within the DA office Garcetti had set up to fight LAPD corruption by working on further criminal charges against corrupt LAPD officers.
The above two historical events had drastic and severely detrimental consequences for the people of Los Angeles. On the federal front, the Bush administration brought the federal litigation against LAPD to a screeching halt. The management of the Federal Consent Decree by Ashcroft and Gonzales became a practice in public deception. All federal efforts to reform LAPD were abandoned and the Bush's administration began to turn its face the other way as LAPD became more aggressive and emboldened in its rampage against those who came into contact with its brutal force. With full support from the Bush administration, police brutality, misconduct, deception, fraud, perjury, fabrication of evidence, and criminal activities by police officers achieved new marks in the history of Los Angeles.
On local level, Cooley shielded LAPD from any and all criminal prosecution. No more LAPD officers were prosecuted. Even when an LAPD officer fired multiple shots at a 13-year-old boy backing a car at 2 miles per hour, the prosecutor Cooley refused to prosecute the liable LAPD officer for murder. When a disabled teenager (Donovan Jackson) was beaten up by LAPD officers on national TV, Cooley and LAPD conspired to prevent a Rodney King type of reaction from the public by deceptively putting the officers on a circus-style criminal trial while at the same time undermined the prosecution by removing a seasoned prosecutor and assigning a young lawyer with no experience in such cases. By botching the trial, Cooley guaranteed that LAPD officers Jeremy Morse and Bijan Darvish would not be convicted. Cooley proved to be a loyal puppet of LAPD. He was aggressively bringing criminal charges against victims of police misconduct, knowing that winning criminal convictions against victims of LAPD misconduct prevented them from filing future civil rights lawsuits. In his reelection campaign in March 2004, Cooley received more than $1.5 million, mostly from LAPD's PPL. His closest opponent had collected $25,000. Cooley won.
During the 2001-2007 Bush-Cooley's reign of terror in Los Angeles, hundreds of victims of police brutality and police misconduct cases were charged with baseless and fabricated criminal charges. Cooley and LAPD worked together on fabrication and manufacturing of false evidence against victims. At the same time, LAPD's PPL had begun to finance the reelection of those state judges whom Cooley and LAPD enjoyed to work with. Hundreds were convicted and sent to prison. State convictions guaranteed that LAPD was shielded from future civil rights lawsuits. During the above period, no LAPD officers was ever charged with any crime arising from fabrication and false manufacturing of evidence.
An example of this policy of terror and criminal conspiracy is in the case of a Swedish woman and mother who was held in pretrial detention for more than four years (2002-2006) based on evidence fabricated by Cooley's DA office and LAPD. Despite four years of incarceration, the woman refused to plea guilty to the charges fabricated by LAPD and Cooley. The case had begun as a police misconduct case when LAPD officers had entered the woman's home without a warrant and by mistake had arrested her while she was unconscious from a wrongly prescribed medication. The officers had wrongly assumed the woman was suffering from an illegal drug overdose. Cooley filed criminal charges against the woman in order to cover up the LAPD misconduct. Further information on this case can be viewed at http://www.freemarje.com.
What happened in McArthur Park on May 1, 2007 was the culmination of LAPD's reign of terror under Bush-Cooley policy during 2001-2007. During the above period, the residents of Los Angeles were left defenseless against forces of the extreme right which implemented their policy of deception, fraud, and criminal conspiracy.
The events of May 1, 2007 showed that LAPD with the help of its financed puppet DA Cooley and under the protection of the Bush administration has succeeded in establishing a police state in the largest county of the United States, a jurisdiction ruled with the iron fist of a police junta composed of the LAPD, Cooley, and an army of 600 mostly corrupt judges who owe their reelections to financial contributions from LAPD's PPL. These judges know that without LAPD's money, they would not be reelected. For further information on how various intricate components of this police junta operate, see pages 19-26 at http://www.freemarje.com/Federal%20Complaint%20Filed%20Against%20Defendants.pdf.
