Raking Muck at the LAPD
By
Joshua Wolfson
OF THE SLUG! STAFF
When Los Angeles Times reporter Scott Glover learned that six pounds of cocaine was missing from a Los Angeles Police Department evidence locker, he thought he might be on to a good story. What he didn't know was how big it would become.
"We had no idea," said Glover, a 1992 graduate of the San Francisco State University journalism department . "We felt there was something to warrant us digging away at this for a year. We always felt there was a light at the end of the tunnel."
That light eventually became the largest police corruption scandal in Los Angeles history.
Covering the LAPD beat, Glover and a fellow Times reporter broke the scandal while investigating reports that an officer, Rafael A. Perez, was responsible for the stolen cocaine. After being arrested for the crime, Perez testified to widespread corruptio
n at Los Angeles' Rampart Division as part of a plea bargain.
The fallout from his testimony - which included tales of officers shooting unarmed people and planting evidence - and the investigation by Glover and his partner, Matt Lait, has to date resulted in the removal or suspension of more than 20 LAPD officers a
nd the dismissal of 46 criminal cases.
Working to uncover the scandal meant Glover, 33, had to gather information from a police force that often took a hostile attitude toward him.
"The challenges are that no one wants to talk to you and everybody hates you," he said. "If you just took no for an answer, you wouldn't get anything. Just asking for stuff is not good enough. You've got to hustle for stuff."
That is not a problem for Glover, according to Lait, his partner on more than 70 stories.
"He pursues leads and sources with a lot of vigor," said Lait, an 11-year veteran of the LA Times. "He doesn't take no as an answer.
"He's just tenacious."
Though he eventually found his niche as an investigative reporter, Glover didn't start out in journalism. His first career was as a scuba instructor in San Francisco.
Glover caught the journalism bug after a close friend suggested he take a newswriting course at San Francisco State.
Although he failed his first writing class, he eventually became a star reporter on the Golden Gater. In 1991, he wrote a series of investigative pieces for the campus newspaper that earned him a grant from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
He's been a muckraker ever since.
"What motivates me, what I like the most, why I subject myself to a job where the pay is not commensurate with the people you cross paths with everyday, is the watchdog element," Glover said. "Like with the Rampart scandal...giving a voice to the voicele
ss. That's what I like most about it.
"What I love is finding out what people don't want you to know. I love the process. I love going from this broad hazy sort of picture and refining it to something that's in focus."
Following his graduation in 1992, Glover interned at the Grants Pass Daily Courier in Oregon, then worked as a stringer for the LA Times Valley Edition.
"I saw it as an opportunity to be around people who had been in the business for years and knew what they were doing," he said. "The first couple months were horrible. There was definitely a feeling that I was over my head...and that was great because a
fter six months or so, it was kind of like journalism boot camp, I was ready to work at papers significantly large than the Grants Pass Daily Courier."
From there, Glover went to the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey followed by a two-year stint at South Florida's Sun-Sentinel. There, Glover covered the police beat with his future wife, Evelyn Larrubi. Together they worked on an investigation linking paw
n shop owners to burglary and drug crimes, a story eventually reported on 60 Minutes.
In 1997, Glover returned to the LA Times along with Larrubi, who covers Los Angeles Superior Court, and began working an eight-division police beat. Covering the cops has required him to employ a variety of tactics to obtain information, from reading tho
usands of pages of court testimony to speaking with the ex-wives and girlfriends of officers.
"You've got to get creative," he said. "You've got to be resourceful."
Glover believes successful investigative reporters are those who step away from their desks and get out into the community - a belief he works by.
"You have to have the attitude that I will find what I'm after," he said. "If you ever accept no, it's kind of over before it starts."
