Sheriff Focus of New Report

Although the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has seen a drop in the percentage of arrests involving use of force by deputies, more than half of such incidents now involve “significant force” -- a trend that a new report cautions “may have costly consequences” if left unchecked.

The findings, part of the 22nd Semiannual Report on the Sheriff’s Department, scheduled to be released today, also highlight continuing tensions in the management of the county jails. The report describes Sheriff Lee Baca and his department as being trapped between federal court orders to ease overcrowding and improve safety in the 18,000-bed jail system, the largest in the nation, even as the department faces criticism for releasing county inmates after they serve fractions of their sentences -- a policy intended to ease such overcrowding.

Special Counsel Merrick Bobb, who has monitored the department for more than a decade, said a modest jail-reform package approved last month by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will fall short of solving the dilemma.

“Although clearly a positive,” Bobb said of the $258-million effort, the least sweeping of six plans proposed by Baca, “if anyone thinks that’s going to eliminate overcrowding or end early release -- it won’t.”

Bobb also expressed concern about discrepancies in the department’s record-keeping on use of force. In a “simple audit,” the report’s authors discovered the department’s data on use of force had “consistently been at odds with the department’s official arrest data.” Last year, for example, the department inadvertently double-counted more than 6,000 arrests in the data system intended to track use of force by deputies.

The report said ensuring accuracy in the statistics should be a priority for the department.

“Untrustworthy data ... paint a false picture of real events and can lead an organization to make bad decisions,” the report said.

The report found that even as arrests have climbed in recent years -- from 97,503 in 2000 to 107,579 last year -- the percentage of time deputies used force fell. Although the rate of use of force dropped, the overall number of incidents involving a deputy’s use of force climbed from 2,233 in 2000 to 2,772 last year.

And when force was used, it was more likely to result in “visible and verifiable injuries” -- 52% of such arrests last year, up from 47% six years ago -- a trend the report said was also reflected in data available so far this year.

Bobb said monitoring deputies’ use of force is key for sheriff’s officials to understand what is going on in the field.

“Why are they causing more verifiable and visible injuries and what does that mean? Are there reasonable explanations or is it the start of a worrisome trend?” he asked. “Risk of liability of the department because of use of force is a concern and it also very much affects community relations -- the perception of police and the degree to which a community will cooperate or fail to cooperate with the police.”

At the same time, the report noted that accidental shootings by deputies had dropped from a high of 26 in 1996 to two in 2005, the lowest since Bobb began monitoring the department. In addition, the overall number of shooting incidents involving deputies fell last year for the first time in five years.

The 82-page report also covers recent changes in how inmates are classified and housed -- long-planned policy moves made earlier this year in the wake of large-scale race riots in the county jail system that left two men dead and scores injured.

Bobb generally praised the direction taken in the housing of inmates but said the reliance on a “hodgepodge” of two classification systems continued to lead to errors in where inmates are placed, jeopardizing safety in the jails.