Officers Walk as LAPD Waits

Ninety-six Los Angeles police officers accused of wrongdoing escaped possible prosecution over the last two years because LAPD investigators waited until the statute of limitations had passed before submitting the cases to the district attorney’s office.

Hundreds of pages of police disciplinary records and more than 650 internal reports by prosecutors reviewed by The Times reveal that LAPD officers were suspected of roughing up citizens, driving drunk and lying to investigators in a total of 65 cases that were dismissed because the LAPD did not seek charges until the legal deadlines had passed. Many of these officers had a history of misconduct.

One officer threatened two people with his service revolver in a drunken holiday brawl; two others drove to work, and reported for duty, intoxicated. Police records show that another officer assaulted his girlfriend’s ex-lover, then forced the man to walk barefoot on broken glass.

Despite the repeated failure of the Internal Affairs Division, now known as the Professional Standards Bureau, to meet legal deadlines, the LAPD suspended, demoted or dismissed 30% of the accused officers. Most got one- to 10-day suspensions without pay. Capt. John Egan, head of the bureau’s administrative division, said the figures, if accurate, “would indicate something is wrong with the system.”

Egan could not explain why so many cases against LAPD officers were submitted so late. “We should be making a good-faith effort to get these cases to the district attorney before the statute of limitations expire,” he said.

No other law enforcement agency in the county has been as lax as the LAPD in meeting the statute of limitations. Of the 324 rejected cases by the district attorney from other police agencies, only six were declined because they were submitted too late. Robert Kalunian, chief deputy for the Los Angeles County public defender’s office, said the cases show the LAPD “is protecting their own and their department’s reputation.”

Victor Martinez, a supervisor in the alternate public defender’s office, said, “These findings just show what happens when the police investigate their own. There just has to be more civilian oversight.”

Police officers investigate crimes and prosecutors review their work to decide whether there is enough evidence to convict suspects in court. Most of the time, prosecutors reject cases for lack of evidence, not because police turn in their evidence too late. Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s policy has been to review all allegations of police misconduct, including misdemeanors, for possible prosecution.

The Times analysis shows about one of every five LAPD cases that prosecutors rejected over the last two years was submitted late. Excluding cases from the Rampart scandal, Cooley’s Justice System Integrity Division, which handles police wrongdoing, rejected 345 LAPD cases from Jan. 1, 2001, to May 5, 2003.

The cases included perjury, grand theft, assault, drunk driving and lewd behavior. Some involved the illegal use of LAPD computers to get private information on friends or enemies. The vast majority of the allegations were misdemeanor crimes.

In one computer case, a detective involved in Little League baseball and high school football illegally ran a background check on a baseball coach he didn’t like, as well as a football player on a rival team. Another checked up on his ex-wife. In a grand theft case, an officer twice pawned a 9-mm Colt pistol that he took from the police evidence room and then filed a lost property report.

The number of lost cases surprised prosecutors.

“It is bad and looks bad,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Doyle, who heads the justice integrity unit. He said his office will start objecting in writing whenever a case comes in late.

David Guthman, Doyle’s boss and the director of fraud and corruption prosecutions, said he didn’t know about the problem. “Not having read any of the cases, I’m concerned about it,” he said.

It is not unusual for cases to be dismissed because a crime is not reported until after the statute of limitations has expired.

But that wasn’t the case for the 96 LAPD officers. In each, police and prosecution records show, the department violated the time limit even though the alleged misconduct was known before the deadline. In many, the department sought to discipline the officers on its own before taking the cases to prosecutors.

Although some of the cases may not have warranted prosecution even if submitted in time, the department’s tardiness prevented prosecutors from considering the merits.

Many officers who escaped prosecution were accused of offenses that endangered lives.

For example, two Pacific Division detectives drove to the police station under the influence and reported to work smelling of alcohol, police and prosecution records show. It was the second offense for both, but the department presented the cases to the district attorney too late to consider filing charges against them.

There also is the case of Det. Darryl McGreggor, an armed, angry and intoxicated off-duty officer who got into a brawl with friends in a moving car on the Century Freeway on July 4, 1998. He had been suspended five times for other misconduct when the LAPD started investigating the Independence Day incident.

In that case, McGreggor, who had been drinking, gave his car keys to a friend, and they piled into his vehicle with six others to go to a fireworks display, according to findings by a LAPD disciplinary panel. En route, he began arguing with a woman in the front seat. From his place behind the driver, McGreggor exchanged blows with her and accidentally hit another passenger. He unholstered his service weapon and threatened to shoot two of them, a disciplinary panel later ruled. After the driver pulled off the freeway and stopped, the fight spilled over onto the shoulder. McGreggor lost his weapon, pushed a 16-year-old female down, causing a leg injury that required medical treatment, and, while drunk, drove away. He left his companions, including two children, ages 5 and 9, records show.

More than a year later, he was suspended for 30 days. “This incident could have easily turned into a much more catastrophic set of events,” the panel concluded. Despite those concerns, the department waited almost a year to take the case to the district attorney. Sgt. Louis Maldonado, who submitted the case to prosecutors, said he has been reassigned since then and could not remember why the case was late.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kraig St. Pierre said in his report that the evidence appeared sufficient to file charges of misdemeanor battery and driving under the influence. “The evidence clearly shows he struck [two people] without legal basis,” St. Pierre wrote. “He also drove a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.”

But St. Pierre could not prosecute. “All the misdemeanors are precluded by the one-year statute of limitations,” he said.

McGreggor, who is still with the department, did not return repeated phone calls.

Many of the cases involved repeat offenders.

Former Officers Brian Stothers and Michael Patton were accused in internal investigations of more than three dozen offenses throughout 1999, such as unnecessarily handcuffing and roughing up suspects, covering up misconduct of other officers and falsifying reports. In one case, Stothers was suspended for pointing guns at two people in 1998, according to findings of a LAPD disciplinary panel.

The case derailed by the statute of limitations began in May 1999 when Stothers and Patton drove to the home of a woman Stothers was dating. They went to investigate her complaint that someone may have broken into her house. While inside, someone outside smashed a window in the police car. Stothers’ girlfriend speculated that the culprit was her ex-boyfriend, Alvin Carstensen Jr. Carstensen, who lived across the street, had previously vandalized her home, prosecution records said.

Stothers forced Carstensen, who was barefoot and clad only in undershorts, to step outside. Patton handcuffed him and gripped the back of his neck firmly, police and district attorney’s records state. On the way to the car, Patton and Stothers forced him to walk barefoot through the shattered glass shards from the broken window, causing a minor cut on a toe. The officers eventually freed him.

It took police almost a year to investigate before sustaining allegations of improperly detaining, handcuffing and threatening Carstensen and forcing him to walk through the broken glass. Investigators also accused Patton of pushing Carstensen into a bush. The officers were put on paid leaves on April 10, 2000, pending a disciplinary hearing.

At that point, LAPD investigators still had time to submit the case to prosecutors. Instead, they held it for another year. Sgt. Mario Munoz, the officer who submitted the case, could not be reached.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Pettersen said in his report that the officers barely had reason to detain Carstensen, much less shackle him. “If this matter had been brought to our attention while still within the statute of limitations, we would have filed misdemeanor assault charges,” he wrote.

Stothers declined to comment, and Patton could not be reached. Both resigned three months after the internal LAPD investigation concluded that they were guilty of misconduct.

In some instances, an officer’s misconduct can jeopardize other criminal cases.

Det. Steve Griffin, who was facing possible perjury allegations in 1999, frequently testified against people he has investigated. If defense lawyers can raise questions about his credibility, juries could disregard his testimony against criminal defendants. That was precisely the point that then-Capt. George Gascon, now an assistant chief, made when Griffin was disciplined for lying about the odometer reading on a car he was trading.

In 1994, Griffin signed two state Department of Motor Vehicles documents, both under penalty of perjury, certifying the accuracy of the odometer on a car he was about to trade in. When the sales manager learned weeks afterward that the odometer was about 30,000 miles off, he filed a complaint. Before a disciplinary panel, Griffin denied intentionally deceiving the dealership, arguing that he told two people about the odometer problem. He also told The Times that he didn’t fully understand the documents he was signing.

Gascon said Griffin “willfully” misrepresented the odometer reading in order to get a higher trade-in value on his car. Although Gascon wanted Griffin fired, his two fellow panel members voted to suspend him for 10 days. “Your future ability to provide testimony in a court of law has been damaged, and your value as a sworn officer has been substantially diminished,” Gascon wrote.

Although the disciplinary proceedings were complete, the LAPD waited almost two more years before submitting the case to prosecutors. But instead of taking it to prosecutors in Orange County, where the offense occurred, as the department policy requires, they took it to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. By then, the legal deadline for perjury was just a month away.

Two more weeks elapsed before Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Krag discovered the mistake. He immediately called LAPD Investigator Paul Hernandez to tell him to take the case to prosecutors in Orange County.

But the case never got there, said Michelle Emard, a spokesperson for the Orange County district attorney’s office. The LAPD said it tried to submit the case in Orange County, but was told that the deadline had passed. Griffin is working as a detective in the LAPD’s Central Division downtown.