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From: Jasper
Date: Sunday, April 29, 2007
Time: 01:05:08 PM
Solitairea1, …In the first interview about a week ago Fuhrman said that Phillips and Roberts retired “this month.” That makes it sometime in April, 2007. I have often wondered why Phillips didn’t retire in the late 1990s around the time Lange and Vannatter did considering the fact that he started before they did. However, I didn’t give much weight to his decision to stay longer because many people stay on the job much longer than they have to for lots of reasons. The interesting thing to me is that he and Roberts retired around the same time, which suggests that they collaborated on the timing. And THAT suggest that both of them had a strong mutual interest in leaving the department when they did. ………….. I have a feeling that something big was happening in the LAPD or an accumulation of unpleasant little things that put simultaneous pressure on them to get out while the getting was good. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they were under a serious Internal Affairs investigation or anything that dramatic – although I wouldn’t rule it out until I have more to go on. It could be that they were tired of dealing with changes in the structure and leadership of the LAPD that wouldn’t allow them to do their jobs the way they wanted to. Whatever base of power they had with people and structures put in place by Daryl Gates have certainly eroded over time with new people and new structures. I also suspect that membership and leadership of the Police Protective League has changed to such an extent that it is no longer an asset to them. ………….I do not feel that Phillips and Roberts were bursting to tell their story of the Bundy murder investigation free of departmental constraints as Fuhrman implied. As LAPD Homicide department heads PLANNING TO RETIRE, they had a built-in platform to call a press conference, to steer it in any direction they chose, and THEN to retire. Neither of them did that. ………….Fuhrman did not appear to be prepared for his interview or the interview with Gary Spence that preceded his. In fact, Fuhrman’s entire interview was predicated on answering Spence’s claim that Fuhrman’s lie about the n-word (not his use of the word itself) torpedoed the criminal case against O.J. Simpson. …………Fuhrman naturally fell back on his old claim that Vannatter and Marcia sunk the case by conspiring to keep HIS PARTNER Brad Roberts off the witness stand. I got the impression that he made an on-the-spot calculation that the media would go no farther than learning that he told the truth about THAT issue IF they followed up on it at all. It sounded like a declaration of war but the more I think about it the less I think it was. Marcia did conspire to keep Roberts off the witness stand but the criminal trial transcripts show that Fuhrman and Phillips took active parts in that conspiracy. Neither Marcia nor Vannatter can go there without admitting that there was a conspiracy to hide Roberts. ………….We see a risk in Fuhrman’s comments that a reporter will interview Phillips and Roberts and put some things together that we did by taking the next logical step of investigating THEM. If Fuhrman thinks otherwise he’s probably right. But Phillips and Roberts might not see it that way if Fuhrman blindsided them. I think he did. –Jasper