Opinion About Data on Police Misconduct Gets Mixed Reactions

The public is not entitled to any information about complaints against a police officer or his agency, the state attorney general has said in an opinion.

Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp ruled, in response to an inquiry from a legislator, that California law forbids release of even statistical information about alleged police misconduct.

The attorney general said that he is personally opposed to the secrecy but that the law is clear: An officer’s privacy rights outweigh any public right to know.

Available to Civil Litigants

He noted, however, that information about complaints will still be available to civil litigants who are able to show it is relevant and to grand juries and prosecuting agencies investigating allegations of police abuse.

The opinion, which received little notice when it was released a month ago, has prompted some law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, to end longstanding policies allowing the release of data detailing the number and types of complaints filed against peace officers, along with summaries of the complaints, with the names of officers and complainants deleted.

“The attorney general’s opinion makes it clear that any police agency has a statutory duty to maintain the confidentiality of the complaints process,” said Deputy County Counsel Gordon Trask, who advises the Sheriff’s Department.

But not all agencies said they intend to heed the opinion.

Los Angeles Police Department officials said they will not change their current policy of telling whoever asks the numbers and types of complaints it receives.

But a Los Angeles police spokesman, Lt. Fred Nixon, said names of accused police officers or complaints are not released unless the department subjects the officers to administrative disciplinary proceedings.

“The only time we will confirm or mention a name of an individual is when the accused is ordered to a Board of Rights, which by law is an open hearing,” Nixon said.

Elsewhere, there is no uniformity. In San Diego, for example, police officials said they have stopped releasing statistical data. In Santa Ana, police said they never had.

Will Ignore Opinion

San Francisco officials said they will ignore the opinion. “That’s an attorney general’s opinion, and we are not bound by an attorney general’s opinion,” said Michael A. Langer, director of San Francisco’s Office of Citizen Complaints. He said the city’s charter mandates that complaints--without names--be made public.

The opinion was criticized by groups concerned with monitoring police conduct.

Law enforcement agencies that refuse to release data regarding police misconduct will make it impossible for the public to monitor the number and types of police abuse incidents, said Michael Zinzun, the head of Los Angeles’ Coalition Against Police Abuse.

Zinzun said secrecy “will make the community more suspicious of the police, making an us-vs.-them attitude.”

Lawyers who have argued police abuse cases said they are concerned that enforcement of the state law on which the opinion is based will send a signal to sheriff and police officials around the state that decreased accountability is acceptable.

“I think it is an outrage that we have a statute like that on the books,” said Michael Mitchell, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in civil rights cases. “We should have a statute on the books that provides for the release of information like this.”

“It’s just part of this closed system that sheriffs and police operate under, and basically they feel that are not accountable to anyone,” said David Lynn, the coordinator for Southern California’s Police Misconduct Lawyer Referral Service.

Response to Inquiry

The attorney general’s opinion was written last month in response to an inquiry from Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto), who was asked to resolve a dispute over confidentiality laws in Palo Alto by city officials. Following the release of the opinion, Palo Alto also reversed its longstanding policy of releasing complaint information.

In a letter to Sher, Van de Kamp’s office said:

“We feel that the discretionary release of statistical summaries of complaints received, of summaries of individual cases with specific identifiers removed, and of the result of the consequent investigations is of substantial benefit to both the public and to law enforcement. The release of such information has broad support in the law enforcement community.”

However, the letter continued, “The Legislature has unambiguously barred any use of information obtained from complaints against peace officers.”

The Legislature did so, the letter said, to encourage the public to file complaints.

The opinion said the only information that the Legislature has authorized released is an annual report by the attorney general’s office on complaints received statewide, without identifying the law enforcement agencies about which they were made.

In 1986, the opinion said, there were 12,811 complaints statewide, of which 2,412 were “sustained.”

According to Los Angeles police, they alone received 1,793 personnel complaints in 1987. Fifty-five percent of those complaints were sustained by department internal investigation. Of those, the majority were made by other police officers. Of the 679 made by civilians, 124 were found valid.

The state law that is the subject of the opinion says: “Peace officer personnel records and records maintained pursuant to (the section establishing citizen complaints procedures), or information obtained from these records, are confidential.”

Alan Ashby, a spokesman for Van de Kamp, said, “We felt that the statute was so clear that nothing could be released . . . no information could be released about law enforcement people, not even information where there has been a notorious case.”

Sher’s staff director, Kip Lipper, said Tuesday that the assemblyman is considering introducing legislation to strike down the code in next year’s legislative session.

Van de Kamp would support legislation allowing the release of statistics, according to Assistant Atty. Gen. Jack Winkler. “This attorney general did not agree with this as a matter of policy,” he said. Winkler said the attorney general believes that it would be in the public’s interest to have limited data about police misconduct made public.

“Our feeling is the more the public knows about the criminal justice system the better,” he said, providing personal privacy is maintained.

But not all law enforcement officials agree.

Officials at the California Peace Officer’s Assn. in Sacramento, the largest in the state, said Wednesday that they support restrictions on the release of statistical data.

Al Cooper, a lobbyist for the association, said the statistics unfairly include a large number of unfounded complaints filed by civil disobedience protesters. It is unfair “just to release the complaints without discussing what is going on,” he said.