Assault under color of authority: Police corruption as norm in the LAPD rampart scandal and in popular film

New Political Science

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 385-405

  Grant, Judith ^a  

^a OHIO UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85055299419     PISSN: 07393148     EISSN: 14699931     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/07393140307178     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. Skolnick, Jerome H., 1994. Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society, New York City: Macmillan. For examples, see
2. Skolnick. 1994. Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force, New York City: Free Press.
3. Lawrence, Regina. 2000. The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality, 153Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
4. Sarat, Austin, and Kearns, Thomas, eds. 1992. Law's Violence, 6Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. It should be noted that Sarat is not talking primarily about police, but about legal interpretation and the whole range of legal practices.
5. Hart, H. L. A., 1997. The Concept of Law, Gloucestershire: Clarendon. See, for instance.
6. Sarat, Austin, ed. 2001. Law, Violence and the Possibility of Justice, 3Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. am paraphrasing Sarat: "The violence on which law depends always threatens the values for which law stands."
7. Chevigny, Paul. 1969. Police Power: Police Abuses in New York City, New York: Random House. Chevigny's fascinating account concludes that "the anatomy of street-corner abuse is unchanging" and that there is a category of abuses "that are chronic because they are systematically encouraged by the Department" (pp. 276-277). For a discussion of cases of corruption including physical abuse, planting of evidence, excessive force violations, lying on the witness stand and graft in New York, Philadelphia, London and Amsterdam providing data back to 1895, see
8. Punch, Maurice. 1985. Conduct Unbecoming, 22–57. London and New York: Tavistock.
9. Daniels, Ron. 2000. "The Crisis of Police Brutality and Misconduct in America," ”. In Police Brutality, Edited by: Nelson, Jill. 244r–255. New York and London: Norton.
10. March, James G., and Olsen, Johan P., 1984. "The New bistitutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,". American Political Science Review, 78 (3): 741
11. Smith, Rogers. 1988. "Political Jurisprudence, the 'New Institutionalism' and the Future of Public Law,". The American Political Science Review, 82 (1): 95. It may be observed that this "new institutionalist" theory bears a striking resemblance to structuralism. Rogers Smith admits as much. See the aforementioned essay, pp. 96-98. See also
12. Ross, Dorothy. 1995. "The Many Lives of Institutionalism in American Social Science,". Polity, XXVIII: 119–120.:!
13. McDermott, Terry. 2000. "Perez's Bitter Saga of Lies, Regrets and Harm,". Los Angeles Times, December 31
14. McClurg, Andrew. 1999. "Good Cop, Bad Cop: Using Cognitive Dissonance Theory to Reduce Police Lying,". UC Davis Law Review, 32: 12. One exception to this is the first of the Rampart Reports, The LAPD Board of Inquiry into the Rampart Area Corruption Incident. Commissioned by police chief Bernard Parks in 1999 and released in March of 2000, the report concluded that Rampart was the result of the actions of a few individuals. The other two major reports looked to structure. Chemerinsky's, An Independent Analysis of the Los Angeles Police Department's Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart Scandal, and the November of 2000 Report of the Rampart Independent Review Panel, commissioned by the Police Commission and composed of community members both spoke of major longstanding issues related to a code of silence in the police department. Moreover, the US Department of Justice has been monitoring the LAPD since 1996 for excessive force violations. The (Footnote continued)Consent Decree adopted by the LA City council in September of 2000 and signed by then Mayor Richard Riordan in November 2000 stipulates that the US Department of Justice be allowed to monitor LAPD reforms for a period of five years. In November of 2001, Gil Garcetti's successor District Attorney Steve Cooley officially dosed the Rampart investigation.
15. Lawrence, Regina. 2000. The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality, 34Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
16. Grant, Judith. 1992. "Prime Time Crime: Television Portrayals of the Law,". Journal of American Culture, January have discussed this phenomenon in television portrayals of good cops elsewhere. See
17. 2002. "The Shield/Means Justify Ends,". New York Times, April 3 Even that is less true since Rampart. See, for instance, the FX television series The Shield, which features a Rampart-style cop as the hero. Its original teaser proclaimed, "The road to justice is twisted." Qn the show's elaborate website FX described him as, "an effective cop who operates under his own rules" (). In the period just before the show's premier the show was remarkably actually called Rampart. The title was ultimately changed because of complaints from the LAPD (!). See Bernard Weinraub, "In FX's Hit
18. 2002. "The Shield,". Picturing Justice, May For further discussion of this television show and its history, see; available online at:.
19. Howe. 1993. "Review, "Bad Lieutenant,'". Washington Post, January 29; available online at:.
20. Report of the Rampart Independent Review Panel, 1999, Executive Summary, p. 1
21. McDennott. 2000. "Perez's Bitter Saga of Lies, Regrets and Harm,". Los Angeles Times, December 31
22. Report of Rampart Independent Review Panel, p. 5.
23. Erwin Chemerinnsky, An Independent Analysis of the LAPD Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart Scandai, September, 2000, p. 4.
24. See Report of the Rampart Independent Review Panel, 1999, and An Independent Analysis of the Los Angeles Police Department's Board of Inquiry on the Rampart Scandai.
25. An Independent Analysis of the Los Angeles Police Department's Board of Inquiry on the Rampart Scandal, Executive Summary, by Erwin Chemerinsky, p. 2.
26. CNN. 1997. "Serpico Resurrects His Decades Old Criticisms of NYPD,". September 23; available online at:.
27. Boyer, Peter J., 2001. "Bad Cops,". The New Yorker, May 21; available online at:.
28. See also Jason Whitehead, "Beyond 'Scandal': The Rampart Corruption Incident as Tîusiness-as-Usuar in Los Angeles"; available online at:.
29. See People v. Brawn, 250 N.E. 2d 62 (NY, 1969), People v. Anderson, 246 N.E. 2d 508 (NY, 1969), People v. Berrios, 270 N.E. 2d 709 (NY, 1971), People v. McMurty, 314 N.Y.S. 2d 194 (NY Crim. Ct., 1970), and Bush v. U.S., 375 F. 2d 602 p.C. Cir., 1967). Thanks to Jason Whitehead for research help gathering legal citations for this section of the paper, and for Milton Heumann for making me aware of the Dropsey/Doorsey testimony way back in graduate school. See also Younger, "The Perjury Routine," The Nation, May8,1967, p. 596, and Barlow, "Patterns of Arrests for Misdemeanor Narcotics Possession: Manhattan Police Practices 1960-1962," 4 Criminal Law Bulletin 549 (1968).
30. Dershowitz, Alan. 1996. Reasonable Doubts, 60New York: Simon and Schuster.
31. McDermitt, Terry. 2000. LA Times, December 31
32. 2000. "Genesis of a Scandal: Timeline,". Los Angeles Times, 25 April; available online at:. See Ruth Wilson Gilmore's excellent article, "Globalism and US Prison Growth: From Military Keynesianism to Post-Keynesian Militarism," Race and Class, 40:2/3 (1998/1999). She cites the extraordinary statistic that while 70% of those arrested are white, 70% of those imprisoned are people of color (p. 174). Moreover, "The greatest number of prisoners come from Los Angeles County where they have been convicted in nearly two out of three cases of property or drug possession offences… fully 25% of African American men who moved out of Los Angeles County were involuntary migrants in the prison system as were 10 per cent of the Black men who moved into the county… annually more than half the state's 110,000 parolees go back into cages without being convicted of new crimes." They are returned for parole violations (p. 185).
33. Newton, Jim. 2000. "LAPD Gets High Marks for Handling of Protests,". Los Angeles Times, August 18 These protests themselves received very little attention. Often the Los Angeles Times seemed to bend over backwards to compliment the LAPD, which, stinging from Rampart, was given high praise for averting a Rodney-King-style riot by both LA City Mayor Riordan and some writers at the newspaper. See for example.
34. Ehrenreich, Ben. 2000. "LAPD Takes Qn Protesters in Prime Time,". LA Weekly, August 17 A more truthful account was published in the LA Weekly: "Thousands of marchers protesting police brutality came to a stand-off with police outside Staples Center, half an hour before the start of Joe Lieberman's speech Wednesday night. As protesters chanted "The whole world is watching/police shoved many aside with batons and fired rubber bullets into the crowd. At times, tensions threatened to flare into a full-scale battle." See. Not only was the whole world not watching, almost no one was.
35. Boyer, The New Yorker.
36. 2000. 'TNS Suggested Rampart Deportations,". Los Angeles Times, March 2 Revelations included possible involvement by the FBI as well. According to an FBI report on the 18th Street gang, the INS suggested deporting gang members when criminal allegations could not be made. Allegations were also made that the LAPD would falsely arrest people and bring them to the FBI for questioning. In one instance, the FBI questioned a man at the INS offices, asking the adult former gang member with a family to resume his gang activity and become an FBI informant or face deportation. See
37. Glover, Scott, and Lait, Matt. 2000. "Beatings Alleged to be Routine at Rampart,". LA Times, February 14
38. 2000. "Most of Perez's Allegations Are Confirmed, Panel Told,". LA Times, June 20
39. See "Genesis of a Scandal: Timeline," LA Times.