Grading Chief Bratton

William J. Bratton is seeking a second term as Los Angeles police chief after having led departments in New York and Boston. Here is a summary of the 59-year-old official’s first-term performance:

Crime rate

Violent crime has declined every year since he became chief. Serious offenses dropped 29% since 2001, the first full year before he took the department’s helm; murders fell 18%. Last year, there were 55,035 fewer victims of robberies, rapes, assaults and other felonies compared with 2001.

Some experts say the drop had more to do with a national trend of declining big-city crime then Bratton’s own tactics, which include using computer models to concentrate patrols in high-crime areas.

One crime category rose last year: Gang crime was up 15.7%, although it was still far below levels seen in the early 1990s and mid ‘80s. Bratton quickly announced an initiative targeting the worst gangs, and so far this year gang crime is down 5.9%.

Post-Rampart reforms

Police misconduct lawsuits and the amount paid in settlements have dropped significantly. But the number of citizen complaints against officers is up. Bratton says that’s because the department does a better job of taking complaints and investigating accusations.

The department is still recovering from a corruption scandal that erupted eight years ago -- predating Bratton -- when officers working an anti-gang unit in the Rampart Division admitted to framing, beating and shooting people without justification. The city subsequently agreed to implement reforms laid out in a federal consent decree.

Under Bratton, the department has achieved a majority of the mandates but missed a deadline last year to complete them all within five years. The delayed projects include the development of a computer system to track officer conduct, which recently became fully operational. Last year a judge extended the decree’s term three more years, a costly development because the LAPD must spend up to $10 million a year to monitor reform efforts.

Fatal shootings by officers went from seven in 2001 to 15 the next year, spiked at 16 in 2004 and dropped to 12 last year. Critics say officers still too often use excessive force. To improve relations in troubled neighborhoods, Bratton has moved toward more community-based policing, including having senior lead officers help residents solve problems before crimes occur.

Size of force

After years of decline, hiring is on the rise, but Los Angeles remains one of the most under-policed big cities in America. The force peaked at 9,852 sworn officers in June 1998 but dropped below 9,000 by 2001 because of several factors, including low officer morale caused by the Rampart scandal.

In one of Bratton’s first budgets, the City Council -- often at odds with then-Mayor James K. Hahn -- refused to expand the force by 320 officers. Bratton said he made a political mistake then in “not fully appreciating that to get those officers was going to require a mayor-council partnership.”

Last year that partnership emerged when the City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa agreed to raise trash collection fees to pay for 1,000 additional officers over five years. The ranks have risen so far this year above 9,500.

Department morale

The Los Angeles Police Protective League has praised Bratton’s leadership, with qualifiers, although it has stopped short of endorsing him for another term.

“While [the membership] will not always agree with Chief Bratton on his decisions or views -- and we do not expect that he will always be in agreement with the officers’ union -- during his term in office, he has shown the willingness to hear our views and weigh our positions on a variety of issues,” union president Bob Baker said.

The union is battling with the chief over a proposal to have officers disclose their personal finances as a hedge against corruption if they are assigned to sensitive gang and narcotics details.

Personal style

Bratton admits to hitting bumps in his first term. At times, his rough-and-tumble East Coast mentality compelled him to toss barbs at activists and council members. To a television interviewer, he once scoffed that two council critics “do not know what the hell they’re talking about.” One of them was Bernard C. Parks, the former police chief turned elected official.

That and other disputes led five council members to complain to the civilian Police Commission, which ruled that the chief’s comments did not rise to the level of misconduct but that he “ideally would have acted differently.”

Bratton has also been criticized for frequently being away from his post. This week he is set to travel to El Salvador and Mexico with the mayor. When he returns Friday, he will have spent 35 of the first 124 days of the year on business trips that included conferences in London, Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Bratton calls such travel necessary to bring more money to the city from the federal and state governments and to establish relationships with counterparts in other agencies.

“I make no apologies for that travel. It’s the nature of the business today,” he said.

The Police Commission will hold a public hearing on the chief’s application for another term today at 6:30 p.m. at the Department of Water and Power auditorium, 111 N. Hope St. in downtown Los Angeles.

-- Patrick McGreevy