PLATFORM : Policing Perjury

JAMES S. MULLER is a civil rights lawyer who specializes in representing police abuse victims. He told The Times:

*

In the movie “Casablanca,” when Nazi authorities raid Humphrey Bogart’s bar/gambling den, a straight-faced Capt. Reynaud claims, “I’m shocked--shocked that there is gambling going on in this establishment.” Reynaud’s sincerity is then demolished when a casino employee hands him his winnings for the night.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s protestations of outrage over the brutality, perjury and racism boasted of by former Los Angeles Police Department Detective Mark Fuhrman ring as hollow as Reynaud’s claims of ignorance. Garcetti, prosecuting attorneys and the majority of state and federal judges sitting in Los Angeles must all share blame with the LAPD for the creation of Fuhrman.

Fuhrman’s views and attitudes were not those of a rogue cop who had somehow eluded detection by the LAPD. He was allowed to flourish by prosecutors and judges who wink at police perjury and a district attorney’s office that prosecutes brutal cops only when the evidence against them is overwhelming.

In the past five years or so, the district attorney’s office has prosecuted officers in Los Angeles County just eight times for the use of excessive force or wrongful shootings. The reluctance of the district attorney’s office to prosecute police is further evidenced by its failure to obtain a conviction in almost all of the cases they chose to prosecute. Individual prosecutors can hardly be expected to go after the police aggressively when on countless other occasions the district attorney has ignored police misconduct.

While the district attorney’s indifference to brutality by police is overwhelming, its lack of interest in police perjury is complete. In the past five years, only one police officer in Los Angeles County has been prosecuted for perjury. This record is especially disturbing in light of the countless civil and criminal cases in which jurors found police officer witnesses not to be credible.

The creation of Mark Fuhrman was no accident. Rather, it was the result of a criminal justice system that fails to apply the laws equally to all citizens, including police officers. Right or wrong, the O.J. Simpson trial has become the Mark Fuhrman trial. It should also be a trial of how the criminal justice system deals with police corruption.