Baca urged to cancel ‘Academy’

When Sheriff Lee Baca agreed to let Fox showcase the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Academy in a reality TV show, he won praise for generating more revenue for the county and raising the department’s profile.

But after two seasons, the department’s Office of Independent Review is calling on Baca to cancel “The Academy,” saying it subjects young recruits to on-air humiliation, invasion of their personal privacy, harassment and threats to their safety.

“The show worked to the detriment of the trainees,” Michael Gennaco, who serves as the department’s independent monitor, told The Times. “They didn’t have a real chance to say no to being televised. The show featured some of their personal lives and then people called them out as they worked in the jails because they recognize them from TV. It ended up being a real problem.”

Gennaco said in his report that most of recruits who took part in the show said they would have preferred not to have been involved. Some recruits interviewed by Gennaco said they felt the show was a source of humiliation, with its tendency to focus on those struggling to meet the demands of the 18-week training.

“The show was dominated by scenes of drill instructors screaming at recruits” for such infractions as not polishing shoes, not tucking in their shirts or being careless with equipment, Gennaco said in the report.

The show also showed embarrassing moments when recruits were kicked out of the academy.

Gennaco also expressed concern that criminals were identifying deputies after watching the show. “Some of the recruits who were recognized by inmates reported having a sick feeling at the moment of this recognition because they believed the inmate saw them as vulnerable,” he said in the report.

A spokesman for Baca defended the show, saying that the sheriff disagrees with Gennaco and would like to see a third season filmed.

“The sheriff thinks it is worthwhile because of the transparency that the show provides. It is vital for the public to see the rigors a trainee goes through to become a deputy sheriff,” said Steve Whitmore, Baca’s spokesman.

“In this day and age, law enforcement needs to get used to it, when they do their job it is going to be television. As the sheriff likes to tell deputies, ‘When you are out on the street you’re doing your job on CNN.’ ”

The sheriff, he said, believes the issues raised by Gennaco can be addressed.

The report found that the show also brought benefits, including boosting the department’s profile, giving the public insight into policing and generating $250,000 from licensee fees and profits from the first two seasons.

County supervisors asked Gennaco to examine the TV show as well as a series of dire state inspections that led Baca to close the academy to new trainees in May for 30 days while problems were addressed.

Roxane Marquez, spokeswoman for county Supervisor Gloria Molina, said Gennaco’s audit “mirrors the supervisor’s concerns from the moment she heard about the show. . . . It’s sad that the supervisor’s concerns are now a reality.”

State inspectors had dubbed the show an inappropriate and unnecessary distraction that disrupted the learning environment and forced the Sheriff’s Department to change the scenario of one test after it was broadcast.

Far from the gold standard training program featured on the Fox television show, the academy was nearly decertified as a state accredited facility to train police officers earlier this year because it was so poorly run, the report said.

State inspectors found serious deficiencies in training and testing methods. Gennaco said they were result of attempts to fulfill the sheriff’s goal to train 1,000 new recruits, and an arrogant academy management that failed to listen to concerns raised by state inspectors since fall 2007.

At the heart of the deficiencies were management’s sloppiness with record keeping, and instructors who gave recruits answers to tests, allowed trainees to graduate without taking the required physical conditioning classes and let recruits to retake tests until they passed.

“The department’s hiring pushed in the past two years undoubtedly placed pressure on the academy -- explicit or implied -- to graduate recruits. The testing violations noted in the [state] report are partially explained by this atmosphere of accelerated hiring,” Gennaco wrote.

Although improvements have been made across the board in recent months, problems remained. In an October 2008 class, Gennaco noted, 41 recruits had to undergo remedial training for failing the initial weapons test. All but five passed the retesting and became deputies, he stated.

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richard.winton@latimes.com.