Christopher Commission Won’t Meet Deadline

The July 1 deadline for the Christopher Commission’s report on the Los Angeles Police Department cannot be met and the document will more likely be completed after Independence Day, the panel’s chairman said Monday.

Warren Christopher, who heads the 10-member commission, said the delay was caused by a “massive amount of data” the commissioners and more than 100 staff members and volunteer accountants have had to wade through in the last 2 1/2 months.

“I don’t see any massive slippage of days,” Christopher said, “but I would not be inclined to expect it until after the Fourth of July.

The commission received an estimated 1 million pages of documents from the LAPD alone, including 90,000 pages of transcripts from patrol car computers that officers use to send messages to each other.

It also is reviewing documents from the city attorney and district attorney. In addition, many witnesses who testified at the public and secret commission hearings or who met with commission staff members also supplied written materials.

The commission will meet “every day or every other day,” Christopher said, noting that the panel was scheduled to deliberate Monday night. The session, as with most held so far, will be closed to the public.

Christopher said the commission’s report will be “driven much more by data and documents” than opinions. The computer records, he said, may provide a candid look “as to the way police officers feel.”

The commission was formed April 1 by Mayor Tom Bradley in the wake of the police beating of Rodney G. King. Its mandate is to review the Police Department from top to bottom, focusing on excessive use of force. It later merged with a similar panel that had been formed by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.