Dirty Cops Make N. Orleans Uneasy

POLICE CORRUPTION has long been as much a part of New Orleans as Tobasco-spiked gumbo, Dixieland jazz and Mardi Gras. Now, after a shocking series of police crimes, the days of winks and nods at cops in "The Big Easy" might be ending.

NEW ORLEANS - "Yeah! Yeah!" shouted Len Davis, a phone to his ear. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rock, rock-a-bye!"

He laughed; he sang.

Davis had called the New Orleans Police Department to get the news he wanted to hear, according to investigators who were monitoring his calls. Kim Groves, a single, 32-year-old mother of three, had been shot in the head.

Davis, the authorities say, had arranged the murder just an hour before in a call to a drug dealer.

So Davis was in a celebratory mood this day in October 1994. But there was no time to party. He was on duty and in uniform.

He was a police officer.

There are those in New Orleans who say that their city's police officers are being unfairly pilloried, that their misdeeds are exaggerated.

"I've heard that from them all the time, that other departments have problems, too," says James Fyfe, a Temple University professor who has studied police brutality and corruption for two decades.

Fyfe doesn't buy it: "Nobody's having problems like they have."

Critics say: Name another urban police force that has had four officers charged with murder over the past two years, with another officer identified as a possible serial killer. Name another that has had a similar spate of scandal - brutality, corruption - while homicide rates soared.

But then, police corruption has long been as much a part of New Orleans as Tabasco-spiked gumbo, Dixieland jazz and Mardi Gras.

This is, after all, where the filming of a movie about corrupt officers - "The Big Easy" - resulted in indictments against two real officers charged with taking payoffs to arrange for jobs in the movie.

Mayor Marc Morial launched a national search for a new chief, returning with Richard Pennington, who was deputy chief in Washington, D.C. Pennington drew up a book-length plan for reform, and has begun cleaning house and improving training and policing.

Officer returns to rob

On March 4, 1995, police officer Antoinette Frank had dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant. An hour later, she returned with an accomplice to rob the place.

Three people were killed, among them Frank's ex-partner, Ronnie Williams, who was working as a security guard. He was shot in the back of the head. Two young Vietnamese, a brother and sister, were killed as they knelt in prayer.

Frank is now on Louisiana's death row. Authorities are still trying to identify human remains found under her porch.

Sgt. Ron Cannatella, a third-generation New Orleans cop who heads the police union, rejects the notion that corruption is widespread. He produces old copies of the union's magazine to support his contention that problems in the department are rooted in the city's neglect.

Police here have long been the nation's lowest-paid big-city force, only last year passing $20,000 as a beginning salary.

Officers have long complained of poor equipment: Radios that don't work, squad cars that are unreliable.

Money went to tourism-oriented projects, such as the Superdome, a new convention center and a new aquarium, while police remained budget bottom-feeders.

`Staggering' corruption

"The scale of brutality and corruption has been staggering," says Mary Howell, a civil rights attorney who has been handling cases for police brutality victims for 18 years.

For a long time, police excesses and a climbing homicide rate caused little outcry - perhaps because both were largely confined to the city's poorest neighborhoods, away from upscale residential areas and the tourist industry's centerpiece, the French Quarter.

But the crime began spilling over, and New Orleans residents awoke in 1994 to find that surveys showed that their city ranked not only No. 1 among large cities in brutality complaints, but also in murder.

Mike Zembower, owner of the French Quarter's Abbey Bar, irritated civic boosters by posting the comparative homicide counts for New Orleans, population 475,000, and Boston, population 565,000.

The New Orleans death toll has been consistently higher.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a 4-decade-old anti-crime agency, hired 23-year New Orleans Police Officer Anthony Radosti as it turned its sights on police corruption.

In one of his first cases at the commission, he located 17 of 23 people whose stolen cars had been recovered but confiscated as police vehicles by detectives who claimed the owners couldn't be found.

Some of his former colleagues came calling, indignantly wondering what Radosti's problem was.

Officer a serial-killer suspect

For eight months, Officer Victor Gant has labored under the heavy cloud of having been identified as a serial-killing suspect.

Last August, his chief said Gant was considered a suspect in the slayings of two women and that federal authorities considered those two deaths related to a string of 24.

Gant's attorney has urged authorities to clear Gant's name if they lack evidence to charge him. Gant remains on the job, in a desk role.

Morial took to heart a controversial recommendation - to go outside New Orleans for a new chief.

Morial chose Pennington. Within months of his arrival, Frank was charged with the triple murder, and 10 officers were indicted in a federal drug-protection sting operation. Len Davis allegedly was the leader of that corrupt crew.

Authorities say Davis arranged Groves' slaying because she had filed a complaint with the internal affairs division, charging that Davis pistol-whipped a teen on the street.

Pennington has put new emphasis on training. He has tightened screening of police applicants and established special "community policing" squads. He put new restrictions on moonlighting jobs often blamed for inviting corruption and fatigue.

He also has replaced internal affairs with a new, FBI-assisted public integrity division that was moved away from police headquarters.

In his first year, the new division handled 918 investigations, leading to 38 arrests, indictments or summonses; 89 suspensions; 18 dismissals; and 24 resignations or early retirements.