THE THIN BLUE LIE 'TRAINING DAY'S' CORRUPT COP PROVED A DEPARTURE FOR DENZEL WASHINGTON, BUT CLOSE TO HOME FOR L.A.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Six years ago, David Ayer wrote a dark, gritty police drama about a corrupt LAPD cop who plants evidence, deals drugs and generally behaves in ways much worse than the most hardened criminals on the streets. Every studio passed.

``No one believed cops acted that way,'' says the 29-year-old Ayer, who spent his high-school years living in South Central Los Angeles. ``Once the Rampart scandal broke, people took a second look at my script. Suddenly it became topical. But everybody in my neighborhood knew cops like that. They took it for granted. It's only people living north of the 10 Freeway that are surprised.''

Ayer's movie, ``Training Day,'' arrives in theaters Friday, and the writer acknowledges that it probably never would have been made if the scandal involving the LAPD's anti-gang CRASH unit hadn't been uncovered in 1998. The unit was ultimately disbanded in 2000 after various police officers became enmeshed in allegations ranging from evidence planting to drug dealing.

``The thing that ticks me off is that everybody thinks it's about Rafael Perez (the LAPD officer initially arrested in the Rampart scandal), and I'd never heard of the guy when I wrote it,'' Ayer says. ``But I knew the scandal would be good for a sale. It was, once again, a case of reality outstripping fantasy.''

To the streets

In ``Training Day,'' Denzel Washington plays Alonzo Harris, a rogue narcotics officer who patrols L.A.'s mean streets, breaking more laws than he enforces. In what could charitably be called ``the longest day,'' Alonzo tests the mettle of an idealistic rookie cop, Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), an eager go-getter who (rather slowly, given the nature of the behavior) comes to realize that Alonzo isn't much interested in protecting and serving any interests other than his own.

The movie, directed by Antoine Fuqua (``The Replacement Killers''), is noteworthy on two fronts. It marks the first time the normally heroic Washington has crossed over to the dark side of the force. And it was filmed largely in Los Angeles' diciest neighborhoods - South Central, Crenshaw, Lincoln Heights, Echo Park, Rampart and Watts' Imperial Courts housing project.

Director Fuqua never considered alternate locations, even though he says the movie's producers and Warner Bros. studio executives tried to persuade him otherwise.

``What (ticked) me off more than anything is that they would talk as if the people who lived in these places were primitive,'' says Fuqua, who lives in Tarzana. ``They were saying things like, 'We can't control what's going to happen down there.' Such ignorance is easy to ignore.''

And ignore it he did. Fuqua went to each neighborhood, met with community leaders, talked to the gang members, the elderly women, the children and asked for permission to shoot on their streets. Fuqua says gang members ultimately made it possible, crediting various members of the Crips and Bloods factions for providing security as bodyguards. Most of the extras in the movie live in the neighborhoods.

``We didn't have any problems, mostly because these guys didn't want to give anybody a chance to say something negative about their neighborhoods,'' Fuqua says. ``If there was a problem, they'd go in the alley, have a beef and knock each other's teeth out and come back. To me, that said they had a lot of pride. They didn't want anybody to walk away saying, 'They mistreated the crew, they were racist' or any crazy stuff like that.''

Deconstructing Denzel

Not surprisingly, Washington proved to be the biggest hit with the crowds, signing autographs, talking with kids and generally spending most of his time not in his trailer, but curbside with the locals.

``People loved Denzel,'' Ayer says. ``He's such a product of the streets. I didn't know he could play this type of gritty, dirty character, but it turns out that the character he plays in 'Training Day' is closer to the mark of who he is as a guy than anything he's done. And that's why he's so good in the movie. He gets it. He's been in the trenches and knows the streets.''

Fuqua has a different take, namely that Washington is a good actor.

``He has a lot of that darkness to him naturally, but he's a great artist,'' Fuqua says. ``He's able to tap into that, that's all. Whether or not that's closer to who Denzel is, only he knows.''

But then neither Fuqua or Ayer or Washington believes that Alonzo is a bad guy, at least not entirely. In a press conference last month at the Toronto Film Festival, Washington called him ``confused'' a ``guy who has learned to do his job so well that he's crossed the line and found it difficult to go back.''

Says Fuqua: ``I'm sure there are a lot of people who will look at Alonzo and think he's a great cop. And in some ways, he is. He probably started out doing good, but he's taken his authority way too far. And you talk to people in these neighborhoods here in Los Angeles, and, unfortunately, it's not an uncommon problem.''

Ayer could speak from his own experiences as a teen-ager in South Central, but it's not a subject on which he enjoys dwelling. The screenwriter, currently working on the ``S.W.A.T.'' remake, (``one for all the good cops,'' Ayer says), completely understands the frustrations of police officers working in tough neighborhoods.

``I can absolutely justify somebody throwing down guns and crack on gangsters to lock them up because it's a cat-and-mouse game,'' Ayer says. ``It's almost impossible to lock these guys up. They're too freakin' smart. You just never catch them dirty.''

Ayer goes one step further in his admiration for some of Alonzo's talents.

``I wish we had a whole division of Alonzos to send overseas because that's exactly what we need right now,'' Ayer says, referring to the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ``The clean-cut white boys running our intelligence services haven't gotten the job done because of that middle-class, wholesome mentality.

``We need ruthless operators who are dirty, nasty street fighters who are going to sleep with the enemy. We don't need them on the streets of Los Angeles, where the cops tend to think they're freakin' storm troopers. But in Afghanistan right now, that kind of attitude would come in handy.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Law and disorder

Nobody wanted to film screenwriter David Ayer's improbable cop drama `Training Day'

...until the Rampart scandal broke

(2) Director Antoine Fuqua, right, discusses a scene with Ethan Hawke, left, and Denzel Washington on the set of ``Training Day.''

(3) Washington, right, emphasizes his point to a suspect, Brett Sorenson, in ``Training Day.''

(4) ``Training Day'' director Antoine Fuqua, left, pauses for a discussion with director of photography Mauro Fiore on the set.