City Officials Object to LAPD Hiring Policy

A trio of City Council members raised objections Monday to a Los Angeles Police Department policy that has allowed six people to be hired as officers despite admitting past use of drugs, including cocaine.

Councilmen Bernard C. Parks, Dennis Zine and Greig Smith indicated they plan to ask the full council to reemphasize its long-standing zero-tolerance policy for recruits.

The trio are members of the council’s Public Safety Committee, which held a hearing on recruiting standards Monday.

“If they have voluntarily chosen to use felony illegal drugs, either they caved in to peer pressure or there is a flaw in their character makeup in which they are willing to break the law to experiment,” said Smith, a reserve police officer. “These are not the kind of people we want as police officers.”

Zine also asked for a detailed report on the results of random drug testing of officers after hearing from an LAPD official that 40 police employees have resigned in lieu of facing discipline for drug use during the last two years and another 25 have been terminated for drug-related reasons. Some of those failed random drug tests.

“We have no tolerance for people who take drugs being in the department,” said Zine, a former LAPD sergeant.

Police recruits who admit one-time drug use can appeal for permission to be hired to a committee made up of representatives from the LAPD command staff, personnel department and Civil Service Commission, according to Charlette Rodgers Starkey, a senior personnel analyst.

Two recruits given exemptions involved one-time cocaine use more than two decades earlier. Another wasn’t sure what kind of drug he might have ingested accidentally.

The council voted in 1996 to adopt a policy opposing the hiring of those who have used “hard drugs.”

“The impression we get is that now hard drugs of a certain type can be used, at least on a juvenile level or experimental level,” said Parks, the former police chief.

Zine, also a reserve police officer, worried that standards were being lowered because the LAPD has had difficulty meeting recruitment goals in recent years, something the department denies.

Councilman Jack Weiss, the committee chairman, said he trusts the Police Department is doing what it can to hire the right people.

“The LAPD is employing standards that exceed those of federal law enforcement,” said Weiss, a former federal prosecutor.