Police Polled on Training in Community Relations, Force

The Los Angeles Police Department, as part of a massive internal survey ordered in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating, is asking more than 1,500 officers to give their frank opinions about the quality of police training in community relations and the use of excessive force, it was learned Friday.

Meanwhile, the citizens panel that is doing a top-to-bottom review of the department as a result of the King beating is seeking similar information from about 200 training officers at four Police Department divisions, including the Foothill Division, where the four officers charged with beating King were assigned.

The Police Department survey, initiated by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates last month, involves face-to-face interviews with as many as 700 officers and written surveys sent to the homes of about 900 officers, said Lt. Jim Vogue.

In both cases, the officers are being offered anonymity, but are not required to take part, he said.

“All of the questions are open-ended. It’s not a true-and-false thing because the chief wants to make a concerted effort to find out what we need to do to improve ourselves,” said Vogue, who is helping organize the interviews.

“Occasionally, we get an officer who says ‘Aw, do I have to do it,” then saying no when we tell him he doesn’t,” Vogue said. “But for the most part they are responding very well.”

Both the officers being surveyed and the officers conducting the interviews represent “a good mix” of men and women officers from all ethnic groups, he said.

As part of a similar but separate effort to gauge the opinions of officers on the Police Department’s training program, the department sent about 200 letters last month to training officers at the Foothill, Wilshire, Devonshire and 77th divisions, asking them to agree to interviews with commission staffers and giving them the phone number of the commission’s offices, said Cmdr. Rick Dinse. This was done at the request of the Christopher Commission, the citizens panel investigating the Police Department.

Those officers also are not required to participate and have been guaranteed anonymity, Dinse said.

Bryce Nelson, a spokesman for the commission, would only say that the commissioners or members of their staff have interviewed more than 100 police officers so far. More than a dozen officers have come forward and offered testimony voluntarily.