LAPD LAGGING IN WAR ON SMUT : DEPARTMENT SHORT ON FUNDING, STAFFING.

Byline: P.J. Huffstutter Daily News Staff Writer

Saying they are woefully under-trained and under-funded, the Los Angeles Police Department's on-line obscenity and child-pornography team faces some nearly impossible hurdles.

The department's technology inhibits police officers from tracking where much of the material originates. Federal law is still unclear where freedom of speech ends and illegal speech begins. And the City Council hesitates to spend any money on a team that has neither a good track record nor the expertise to tackle these types of crimes.

By choice, the officers ignore most of the Internet, focusing instead on the locally-based - but dwindling - computer bulletin boards. And in two years, the five-man operation has made only 10 arrests.

All this to nail criminals who, if caught, could only be charged with a misdemeanor.

``This doesn't rate that high in the public's concerns about crime,'' said Wendell Nichols, LAPD's commanding officer of fiscal operations. ``The mayor tells us that the people want to get crime and gangs off the street. That's what we're doing and that's where most of the money is going.''

But just last week, FBI Director Louis Freeh pushed for worldwide cooperation among law enforcement agencies to battle on-line crime. Speaking at the International Computer Crime Conference in Manhattan, Freeh warned that law enforcement agencies must overcome their technological limits and fight on-line obscenity.

LAPD critics insist the department's poor arrest record is more philosophical than financial. They point to agencies like the Huntington Beach Police Department, which has a more impressive arrest record with a smaller, better-trained staff.

LAPD goes on line

In the early 1990s, the LAPD realized people were using computer bulletin board systems, or BBSes, to distribute child pornography and obscenity, as well as solicit sexual acts from minors.

A BBS is a network site that provides on-line services such as e-mail, chat lines, computer file libraries and conference forums based on specific interests. Most BBSes are small and confined to a local geographic area of users.

In 1995, the vice department requested money to buy computer equipment. The funds were to come from $1 million-plus in federal asset forfeitures, the bounty of several joint pornography investigations between LAPD vice and federal law enforcement agencies.

That fall, the department received $40,000.

``It has been a slow process and we're still way behind in equipment and manpower,'' admits senior Detective Bob Navarro, acting officer in charge of the LAPD's pornography section. ``When we started, we pulled most of our guys from vice. None of us had any computer experience, so we had to rely on reserve officers who knew about computers to train us.''

Navarro said the division sent a request for funds to cover further training and equipment to the City Attorney's Office six months ago.

So far, no response.

Meanwhile, the business of on-line pornography - legal and obscene - booms. Legal adult entertainment sites generated nearly $52 million in sales in 1996, about 10 percent of the estimated $530 million in Web sales, said Bill Bass, an analyst at Forrester Research, an information technology research firm based in Cambridge, Mass.

Police insist people are making money on obscene material on line, though no one knows how much. Thanks to the Net's lack of physical borders, traditional tracking measures - and, for that matter, state obscenity laws - can be circumnavigated.

For example, U.S. law prohibits American companies from cyber-casting live sex shows. But a dozen bordellos in Amsterdam have been doing it for nearly two years.

``It's important for the LAPD to make sure our community standards are not being violated, either on line or off,'' said Assistant Los Angeles City Attorney Ed Fimbres.

Drawing the line

Community standards are a difficult thing to police since even the federal government hasn't drawn a moral division between preserving freedom of speech and protecting the public from obscenity.

Consider last year's battle over the Communications Decency Act. The measure, part of the sweeping telecommunications reform enacted in February 1996, outlawed the on-line transmission of any ``indecent'' or ``patently offensive'' material.

Last summer in Philadelphia, a panel of three federal judges ruled the CDA unconstitutional. The government appealed; the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear the case this spring.

When it comes to on-line obscenity, the computer really doesn't matter. Sharing and selling obscene material is illegal, whether the medium is a photograph, videotape or digital image. The computer only serves as a means of distribution, one that allows people to send this information further and faster than ever before.

Even if the police catch someone distributing or selling digital obscene material, the person could only be charged with a misdemeanor. It's the same penalty as a person hawking the images on paper out of a pickup truck.

If convicted, a first-time offender can pay up to a $1,000 fine and spend as much as six months in jail.

None of the first-time offenders caught by the LAPD's obscenity team - all 10 people arrested - has served any time, said Assistant City Attorney Debra Sanchez.

The team only responds to complaints from the public, and only if the material comes from a BBS based within the city limits.

Searching for smut 

Tucked away in a corner office, the five-man team spends its days searching computer networks for obscenity and child-pornography. Stacks of computer magazines advertising local computer bulletin boards like ``XXX BABES-O-RAMA!'' cover nearly all of the desk space. A scrawled message on a dry-write board reads, ``There's no law west of the modem.''

The inside joke reflects an unnerving truth: For all its eagerness to curb obscenity locally, the LAPD continues to fall behind in the technological race to fight crime.

``We've done some occasional stuff with BBSes that are located just outside the city but is advertised in the free computer magazines available in Los Angeles,'' said Lt. Dave Muro with the LAPD's pornography section. ``There aren't enough of us to do anything more.''

The Huntington Beach Police Department achieves much more with considerably less.

In October, the department tapped a former computer systems analyst for a similar on line-porn venture. Huntington Beach police Detective Deryk Rowland works alone, part time, with a computer he already owns.

In the past five months, Rowland's investigations led to five arrests.

``I got lucky,'' said Rowland, who worked in general law enforcement for 12 years and vice for two years. ``I just knew where to look.''

Huntington Beach department staff attribute this success partly to the detective's technical experience.

``You can have all sorts of great equipment, but it doesn't matter if you don't have a trained staff,'' said Roger Ham, Huntington Beach police's information systems manager and communications administrator. ``You can't just put yourself into the shoes of a smart 12-year-old and wander around. You have to know what you're doing.''

Expanding the search

Though nobody knows the true prevalence of obscene material or child pornography on line, most of what is available is unlikely to be hidden on private BBSes.

Bulletin boards are often run as entrepreneurial businesses. Their audience small, their reach local, the BBS world relies on offering specific information for a nominal fee.

This helps the LAPD, whose legal reach stops at the city limits. It doesn't matter where the images came from or how many places they were sent. In order for the LAPD to make an arrest, a person must physically possess the obscene material, which is usually stored on a hard drive or a disk.

But focusing specifically on BBSes defeats the LAPD's end result, which is to crack down on child pornography and obscenity accessible within Los Angeles. Why? Because technological advances already lure most computer users away from the text-heavy, slow-connecting BBS world and into the multimedia - and international - realm of the World Wide Web.

``For the police to only focus on bulletin boards seems ridiculous,'' said Stanton McCandlish, a former BBS operator who now works for the free-speech, nonprofit group Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. ``The audience follows the material. And that's out on the Net.''

The Internet traditionally falls into the FBI's bailiwick, counters Navarro of the LAPD. And the federal agency traditionally does not pursue obscenity cases in California.

``They're not very active here because our obscenity standard is not as tough as other states,'' Sanchez said. ``They're mostly interested in child pornography.''

A multi-agency task force could be the solution to the LAPD's jurisdictional problem. In July 1995, the Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement team formed to handle and consult on investigations involving child sexual abuse, both on- and off line. Funded by the FBI, the 15-member SAFE team pulls staff from local, state and federal agencies and covers a seven-county region in Southern California.

Most of the investigators have extensive computer experience, said Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Sgt. Tom Sirkel, a SAFE team leader.

In 1996, they made 27 arrests, with seven felony indictments and nine felony state filings.

``These particular crimes give law enforcement a very specific problem - money,'' Sirkel said. ``It's expensive to fly officers around the country to investigate images on a hard drive on the East Coast. The federal approach, where we're tapping lots of people in lots of places, is the only approach that will work in the future.''

Councilwoman Laura Chick, whose district includes the west San Fernando Valley, said the City Council needs to review whether the LAPD even should be investigating the distribution of on-line obscenity.

``I've had conversations with the LAPD command staff and have asked them if they need more money. All I keep hearing is everything's OK,'' said Chick, who chairs the Public Safety Committee. ``Obviously, everything's not OK. If they need more money, they need to tell us. But I don't know whether throwing a bunch of money at the LAPD is the answer to this problem.''

WHAT'S OBSCENE?

Much of the pornographic material available on line - from live strip shows to interactive erotica - is legal in California.

For example, though computer users can go to an adult-entertainment Web site and pay strippers to simulate sexual positions, it's not prostitution because there's no physical contact, according to the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. And it's not illegal as long as the strippers don't violate state obscenity statutes.

All child pornography is illegal. As for what is obscene - and therefore illegal - California laws ban, among other things, images of bestiality, fisting, defecation, urination and acts of bondage.

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Box: WHAT'S OBSCENE (see text)