RAMPART PANEL GETS GO-AHEAD TO START PROBE INQUIRY TO FOCUS ON CAUSES.

Byline: James Nash Staff Writer

After months of delays and false starts, a nine-member panel got approval Monday from a City Council subcommittee to investigate the causes and consequences of the Rampart police scandal.

The Blue Ribbon Rampart Review Panel, which includes four lawyers who have sued the city and the Los Angeles Police Department, is supposed to ``drill down to the limestone'' of what caused Rampart anti-gang officers to frame suspects, falsify arrest records and commit other crimes, said noted civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who heads the panel.

The Los Angeles City Council's Public Safety Committee waived conflict-of-interest rules that would have prevented the lawyers who have sued the city from serving. The council committee also agreed to protect the panel members from lawsuits that could arise from their work.

Councilman Jack Weiss said the blue-ribbon panel will go a long way toward addressing the underlying causes of the Rampart scandal, which broke in 1998 with the arrest of former Officer Rafael Perez for stealing cocaine from an evidence locker.

``This day has been an awfully long time coming,'' Weiss said.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who was chief of police when the Rampart scandal began, has refused to cooperate with the blue-ribbon panel's inquiry but nonetheless voted Monday to allow the group to proceed. Before casting his vote, Parks questioned several of the rules under which the panel will operate and expressed concern that the Rampart inquiry could drag on for years.

``If you don't come to grips with this information once and for all, you're going to be doing this in 2015, 2020,'' Parks said.

Several members of the blue-ribbon group have been openly critical of the LAPD's last major review of the Rampart scandal, the 2000 Board of Inquiry report. Another report produced for the Police Protective League said the Board of Inquiry study minimized the extent of the Rampart misconduct and failed to address its fundamental causes.

Police Chief William Bratton created the blue-ribbon panel last summer. The group has a budget of $367,000, of which about a third has been raised through private donations, Rice said.

Rice said the panel is expected to produce its report in about six months. Unlike previous Rampart probes, the latest report will focus less on individual officer misconduct and more on the culture in which the misconduct thrived, as well as how to prevent it from recurring, Rice said.

James Nash, [phone]

james.nash(at)dailynews.com