Los Angeles, May 4, 2007 -- The brutal rampage by LAPD in McArthur Park on May 1, 2007 was culmination of a 6-year old secret but intricate policy by the Bush administration and local forces of the extreme right in reversing attempts to reform LAPD after Rodney King Beating and Rampart Corruption Scandal.
In early 1999, the US Department of Justice under then-US Attorney General Janet Reno began an aggressive plan to impose reform upon LAPD. By the time the LAPD's Rampart Corruption Scandal became public in 1998, the Clinton Administration knew that previous attempts to reform one of the largest police departments in the World had largely failed.
In June 1999, rumors began to circulate within the ranks of the LAPD and its powerful union (Police Protective League - PPL) that President Bill Clinton and Janet Reno were about to implement drastic anti-corruption measures against LAPD. At the time, the LAPD and PPL alleged that these acts represented the federal government's attempt to "violate the LAPD’s 10th amendment rights" and interfere in LAPD's "internal affairs." These rumors, however, were not baseless. During 1999, Janet Reno's US Attorneys in Washington, D.C. were busy drafting a historical federal civil rights lawsuit against LAPD in which the Clinton administration was charging LAPD with "endemic corruption and systematic violation of constitutional rights of residents of Los Angeles." Additionally, at US DOJ headquarters at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue serious discussions were taking place about using the federal funding of the LAPD as leverage in imposing anti-corruption reform on LAPD.
Sensing the warning of the incoming tsunami from Washington in their direction, the LAPD and its PPL began to brace for a defensive position. In 1999, the LAPD and PPL began their work to secure the local front. To secure the local front meant getting rid of Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles County District Attorney who in the post-Rampart LA politics had begun to prosecute LAPD officers for corruption. Garcetti's public statements at the time, such as, "I can't tell you whether we will wind up with three, four or five dirty cops or 25 or more," was making LAPD and PPL gravely nervous. In a desperate attempt to shield LAPD from Garcetti, LAPD and PPL funded and fielded Steven Cooley, a Republican and an LAPD Reserve Officer, as their own candidate for the LA District Attorney position. Public court records from the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco show that at the same time PPL-sponsored Cooley was campaigning to unseat Garcetti, PPL, through its high-powered lawyers, was filing multiple motions and appeals against Attorney General Janet Reno's attempts to impose a federal-mandated reform upon LAPD. The above multiple attempts by PPL to prevent the Clinton administration from initiating its anti-corruption program proved to be legally frivolous since the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied all of them.
In September 1999, the Republican Cooley began his PPL-funded campaign to unseat DA Garcetti. PPL was against Garcetti's criminal prosecution of LAPD officers. In his 1999-2000 campaign against Garcetti, Cooley received more than $1 million from PPL while publicly speaking against LAPD's Rampart Corruption Scandal and criticizing Garcetti for not being forceful and efficient enough in his criminal prosecution of corrupt officers. Of course, Cooley was engaging in blatant public deception since he knew that he had received the $1 million from PPL to try to unseat Garcetti and shield LAPD officers from any further criminal prosecution. History would show that Cooley's 1999-2000 campaign against Garcetti for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office was one of the biggest frauds against the voters of Los Angeles since at the same time PPL was waging federal court battles against President Clinton's attempts to fight corruption in LAPD, PPL was paying for Cooley's campaign commercials which depicted Garcetti as not forceful enough in fighting corruption.
On the federal level, significant developments were taking place. Attorney general Reno was putting her final touches on the draft of the federal civil rights lawsuit against LAPD. About three weeks before the document was filed in the federal court, on October 11, 2000, then-governor Bush made the following statement in his televised debate with Al Gore in North Carolina: "One of my concerns, though, is I don't want to federalize the local police forces. I want to -- obviously in the egregious cases we need to enforce civil rights law, but we need to make sure that internal affairs decisions at the local level do their job and be given a chance to do their job. I believe in local control of governments, and obviously if they don't there needs to be a consequence at the federal level." Bush, however, knew that the LAPD's "Internal Affairs" was a source of corruption in itself.
On November 2, 2000, Janet Reno filed her historical anti-corruption lawsuit against LAPD in federal court in Los Angeles. LAPD was charged with systemic violations of civil rights, including, "having a pattern of arresting residents of Los Angeles Without probable cause." SEE page 2 of the Complaint at: http://www.freemarje.com/US%20Fed%20Lawsuit%20v%20LAPD%2011-03-00.pdf
Nevertheless, two critical historical events followed which reversed the course of anti-corruption attempts at LAPD for the following six years. In fact, these two events resulted in emboldening, empowering, and expanding the forces of corruption in the LAPD on a gigantic and unprecedented scale. On November 7, 2000, Reserve LAPD Officer and Republican Cooley, with substantial backing from PPL, defeated Gil Garcetti. On December 12, 2000, George Bush was declared as the new President of the United States. On January 1, 2001, Cooley took office as the new District Attorney of Los Angeles. According to the recorded statement made by one of the senior Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles and reviewed by this researcher, within two weeks after taking office, Cooley walked into the six-man office of Rampart Task Force which Garcetti had set up within the Special Investigations Division of the DA Office and simply said: "wrap it up!" Shortly thereafter the office was closed and all Rampart Corruption Scandal investigations in DA office ended.
The above two historical events had drastic and severely detrimental consequences for the people of Los Angeles. On the federal front, the Bush administration brought the federal litigation against LAPD to a screeching halt. The management of the Federal Consent Decree by John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales became a practice in public deception. All federal efforts to reform LAPD were abandoned and the Bush administration became LAPD's "partner in war on terror." Having realized it was now a major force in Los Angeles politics and having successfully rolled back attempts to "interfere in its internal affairs" by both Reno and Garcetti, LAPD and PPL's tentacles began to rapidly grow into the only remaining component of the Los Angeles County Criminal Justice System, the Criminal Division of Los Angeles County Superior Court system. With full support from the Bush administration, police brutality, misconduct, deception, fraud, perjury, criminal conspiracy, fabrication of evidence, and criminal activities by police officers achieved new high marks in the history of Los Angeles.
On local level, Cooley shielded corrupt LAPD officers from any and all criminal prosecution. No more LAPD officers were prosecuted. Even when an LAPD officer fired multiple shots at a black 13-year-old boy (Devin Brown) backing a car at 2 miles-per-hour, the prosecutor Cooley refused to prosecute the liable LAPD officer for the boy's killing. When a disabled black teenager (Donovan Jackson) was beaten up by white LAPD officers on national TV, Cooley and LAPD conspired to prevent a Rodney King type of reaction from the public by deceptively putting the officers on a bogus circus-style criminal trial while at the same time undermined the chances of their conviction by removing a seasoned prosecutor and assigning a young lawyer with no experience in such prosecutions. Cooley further allowed the officer's seasoned defense lawyer to put up evidence before the jury that the "beating" was a "training issue" and not a criminal act. By botching the trial, Cooley guaranteed that LAPD officers Jeremy Morse and Bijan Darvish would not be convicted. Cooley proved to be a loyal puppet of LAPD. He was also aggressively bringing criminal charges against victims of police misconduct, knowing that winning criminal convictions against victims of LAPD misconduct prevented them from filing future civil rights lawsuits and forever closed chances of investigation for these cases. In his reelection campaign in March 2004, Cooley received more than $1.5 million in campaign contribution, mostly from the LAPD's PPL. Thomas Higgins, his most serious challenger, had collected $25,000 in campaign contributions. With enough PPL money to send colorful brochures to every LA voter and substantial TV commercials, Cooley easily won his reelection to a second-term as the LA’s District Attorney.
During the 2001-2007 Bush-Cooley's reign of terror in Los Angeles, hundreds of victims of police brutality and police misconduct cases were charged with baseless and fabricated criminal charges. Cooley and LAPD worked together on fabrication and manufacturing of false evidence against victims. At the same time, LAPD's PPL, having flexed its political muscles and having realized the extent of its power, began to more actively finance the reelection of those Superior Court judges whom Cooley and LAPD viewed as valuable assets in the complex political empire they had engineered. With federal protection evaporated under George W. Bush, hundreds of innocent victims were convicted and sent to prison. State convictions guaranteed that LAPD was shielded from future civil rights lawsuits. During the above period, no LAPD officers were ever charged with any crime arising from fabrication and false manufacturing of evidence.
An example of this policy of terror and criminal conspiracy is in the case of a Swedish woman and mother who was held in pretrial detention for more than four years (2002-2006) based on evidence fabricated by Cooley's DA office and LAPD. Despite four years of incarceration, the woman refused to plea guilty to the charges fabricated by LAPD and Cooley. The case had begun as a police misconduct case when LAPD officers had entered the woman's home without a warrant and by mistake had arrested her while she had fallen unconscious from a wrongly prescribed medication. The officers had wrongly assumed the woman was suffering from an illegal drug overdose. Cooley filed criminal charges against the woman in order to cover up the LAPD's misconduct. Further information on this case and the inner working of Cooley-LAPD's empire can be viewed at www.freemarje.com.
What happened in McArthur Park on May 1, 2007 was the culmination of LAPD's reign of terror under Bush-Cooley policy during 2001-2007. During the above period, the residents of Los Angeles were left defenseless against forces of the extreme right which implemented a policy built on deception, fraud, perjury, and criminal conspiracy.
The events of May 1, 2007 showed that LAPD with the help of its DA Cooley and under the protection of the Bush administration has succeeded in establishing a police state in the most populous county of the United States. Presently, LAPD officers engage in overt misconduct and serious criminal acts with full impunity while exerting undue influence over the largest metropolis of the United States with an iron fist.
In fact, with substantial support from George W. Bush and the local forces of the extreme right, the LAPD, PPL, and Cooley have succeeded in transforming the 4,000-square-mile Los Angeles County to be ruled under a sophisticated and well-engineered police junta composed of the LAPD, Cooley, and an army of 600 mostly corrupt judges who owe their reelections to financial contributions from LAPD's PPL. Without PPL's money, these judges would not be reelected. For further information on how various intricate components of this police junta operate in tandem, SEE pages 19-26 at http://www.freemarje.com/Federal%20Complaint%20Filed%20Against%20Defendants.pdf