* 1992 - entrepreneur Peter Ueberroth led an effort to rebuild South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots that followed the acquittal of the officers who attacked King.
"Chemerinsky berated Riordan and then-Police Chief Bernard C. Parks for stonewalling investigations, at one point commenting, “There has been no way whatsoever in which Riordan has been a force for positive change in the Police Department.”
Chemerinsky was called upon by the Los Angeles Police Protective League to prepare an analysis of the Police Department. produced a 154-page report – subsequently endorsed not just by the police union, but also by civil rights lawyers.
* 1998 - "code of Silence"
U.S. District Judge Letts is on the record regarding LAPD "Code of Silence"
LA Times
* 1999-2000 - Rampart investigation and trial
“Any analysis of the Rampart scandal must begin with an appreciation of the heinous nature of what the officers did. “
“…and judges must share responsibility when innocent people are convicted.”
“No single reform can be sufficient. Reform is not an event, but a process that will take many years to complete. The hope is that this crisis provides a unique opportunity for reform. This opportunity must not be squandered. This report is written with the strong belief that reform is possible and that future Ramparts can and must be prevented."
“No single reform can be sufficient. Reform is not an event, but a process that will take many years to complete. The hope is that this crisis provides a unique opportunity for reform. This opportunity must not be squandered. This report is written with the strong belief that reform is possible and that future Ramparts can and must be prevented.
Erwin Chemerinsky, 2000
* June 19, 2000 - Police Chief Bernard Parks Granddaughter shot
“ 2000- Loyola Law School Symposium
…judges tried and sentenced a staggering number of people for crimes they did not commit. How could so many participants in the criminal justice system have failed either to recognize or to instigate any meaningful scrutiny of such appalling and repeated perversions of justice?”
“…we felt a particular obligation to ensure that no aspect of the Los Angeles criminal justice system, including the lawyers and judges, escaped scrutiny. A law school, with its concern for all aspects of the justice system, is the obvious place for such an examination.”
David W. Burcham, and Catherine L. Fisk, Loyola Law School Symposium, Los Angeles, 2000
*September 2000 - Independent committe report
The Los Angeles Police Department’s deepest problem is an internal culture that not only gave rise to the Rampart corruption scandal, but also tolerated it, according to the author of a new, highly critical study of the LAPD.
Moreover, the report’s principal author says, the department’s culture–defined as its unwritten rules, codes, values and outlooks–must be changed before Los Angeles can expect meaningful police reform.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at USC, undertook the analysis on behalf of the Police Protective League union, which sought an independent review of the LAPD’s internal Board of Inquiry report.
LA Times, Beth Shuster September 09, 2000
* December 22, 200o - Connor overrules jury verdict
"in a highly unusual move, Connor released a 19-page ruling in which
she wrote that the jury's verdict had been compromised by an apparent
misunderstanding of a common phrase of police slang, and that she had committed a "fatal error" by not recognizing the misunderstanding."
Twila Decker and Henry Weinstein, LA Times
* January 2001 -
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley announced Thursday that he will
appeal a judge's order throwing out convictions of three LAPD police officers
accused of framing gang members--keeping alive the first prosecution in an ongoing investigation into corruption at the LAPD.
"We believe Judge Connor erred in her ruling overturning the jury verdicts
convicting Sgts. [Edward] Ortiz and [Brian] Liddy and Officer [Michael] Buchanan," Cooley said in a short statement released with the notice of appeal.
The appeal could take up to a year for the state Court of Appeal to resolve,
according to legal experts who say it will be difficult for Cooley's office to win given that the judge has partly blamed herself for an error that led her to throw out the convictions.
Twila Decker and Henry Weinstein, LA Times
* 2001 - Business as usual
“Beyond Scandal: The Rampart Corruption Incident as 'Business-as-Usual' in LA”
Jason E. Whitehead, 2001
