Let's See If Cooley Can Hit One Out of the Park This Time

Points West

By Steve Lopez

Every civic center in America has them â€" the grifters, fixers and flim-flammers who, for a fee, can hook you up with anybody or anything. They're like ants at a picnic, always on the move, looking to see what they can carry away before anyone notices.

Now, if I were in that business, I wouldn't be shining my penny loafers in New York or Chicago or Philadelphia â€" rusted-out cities where larceny is pure sport, and graft gets as much attention as the local pro teams.

I'd set up shop in Los Angeles. Here, you could steal City Hall itself, and it'd take six weeks for the authorities to round up a posse and six months for the public to take notice.

A case in point is the Thursday story by my colleagues Ralph Frammolino, Nicholas Riccardi and Ted Rohrlich, which carried the headline:

"How D.A.'s Office Failed to Follow Up on Graft Allegations"

The investigative piece, about a prominent lobbyist accused of bribery and assorted tricks of the trade, ran the same day as a story about Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's having amassed $710,000 for his reelection. Last time around, Cooley told us what a slugger he'd be when it came to corruption.

But the jury's out on that one. Sure, as Cooley insisted when I dropped in on him Thursday afternoon, his corruption unit has filed 61 felony complaints and won 44 of the 45 that have gone to trial.

Attaboy, Stevie. But that's a lot of singles and doubles from a guy who got elected by criticizing the last D.A. for being a wimp on corruption, and promising he'd swing for the fences.

Cooley whiffed on the LAPD's Rampart police scandal and the Belmont Learning Center fiasco. And now, with another chance to knock one out of the park, he couldn't even get the bat off his shoulder.

The Times story was like a chapter from "L.A. Confidential" â€" a deepening web of political intrigue, complete with bribery allegations, bugging devices, a bag man and a dogged prosecutor turned away by his bosses.

At the center of it all is lobbyist Art M. Gastelum, who denies any wrongdoing. But an LAPD detective told the D.A.'s office about a bag man who claims to have delivered payola to public officials for Gastelum.

Also, a lobbyist cooperating with the D.A.'s office said Gastelum and LAX airport commissioner Leland Wong had muscled him to slip an airport concession contract to Gastelum's daughter. (Wong, like Gastelum, denies any wrongdoing.)

Then we've got the allegation that Gastelum may have steered $10,000 campaign donations to two school board members while he was trying to snag a $1.2-million contract for the Belmont project.

But with all of that to work with â€" along with an FBI recording of Gastelum suggesting how he could deliver $1 million to a San Diego water official â€" Cooley's lawyers couldn't get any traction and eventually dropped the Gastelum investigation.

Only when Times reporters confronted Cooley with the findings of their own investigation did the D.A. reopen the case.

"So let me be impolite," I said to Cooley in his 18th-floor downtown office, "and ask you why the L.A. Times had to do your job for you?"

Cooley didn't like the characterization, but admitted he had learned "one or two things" from Times reporters that had prompted the reopening of the case. They caught some bad breaks during their own investigation, Cooley told me, and things didn't pan out despite an all-out run at Gastelum.

It's a shame, he said, because this would have been a "great prize" for his trophy case. But you don't have a case if you can't prove a crime, and they couldn't.

Fair enough. But I asked Cooley if he had been in on the decision to drop the case, and he said not exactly. He said he's got 60,000 felonies in his office, and he can't weigh in on every one of them.

Wait a minute, I said. This wasn't some nickel-and-dime enterprise.

This was potentially about who owns whom at City Hall and at the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, among other places. It was a window into a world in which public officials hand out jobs and contracts like Christmas presents under pressure from shady operators with fat checkbooks.

It was about the rip-off of taxpayers.

So where was the D.A.?

Cooley said he knew in general what was going on, but he had some of his best deputies on the job and trusted their decision to throw in the towel.

Well excuse me, but that's not good enough. Especially in L.A., where a well-connected old boys network has always been at work just under the radar, taking advantage of slow-footed law enforcement and an aloof electorate.

It's one more reason we've got to have a take-no-prisoners D.A. who strikes fear into those who manipulate policy and belly up to the public teat. The kind of D.A. Cooley promised to be four years ago.

Now that he's back on the case, let's see what he can do.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

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