Urgent Call for Reform That Los Angeles Must Not Ignore : Christopher panel proposes major changes for the troubled police department

In a sense it’s sad that it had to come down to this.

The Los Angeles Police Department is one of the most important elements of government in this city and by many estimates one of the most professional law enforcement institutions in the nation. Now the department has been examined, put on the operating table and publicly dissected by a special commission impaneled in the aftermath of the horrifying Rodney King videotaped beating in March.

The results are not pretty, to say the least, but they need not be seen as wholesale institutional humiliation. The dedicated men and women of the department must not react as if it were.

Nevertheless, the substantial recommendations of the Christopher panel--the 10-member Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department--were conveyed to the public Tuesday, in a solidly documented report, with an unmistakable sense of urgency. Its overall conclusion is that the department must change and that it must change soon. It must change in order to not only protect and serve Los Angeles better--but to protect and serve its own considerable reputation as a vital and leading law enforcement institution.

DIFFICULTIES OF POLICING THE NEW LOS ANGELES:

No longer is the LAPD policing the same old Los Angeles. This is, increasingly, with every new dawn, a new city, a world city, an ever more complex city--a city where, taken all together, minorities constitute a majority and the once-dominant Anglo culture has to take its place in line with cultures from around the world. This makes policing Los Angeles--with its many crime, violence and drug problems--a fiendishly complex task that would severely test even a picture-perfect police institution.

The LAPD is certainly not that, concludes the Christopher Commission, but its problems are correctable and “the vast majority of the officers,” in the words of commission Chairman Warren Christopher, “are working with skill and dedication--and without excessive force--to protect and serve us. They feel betrayed by the King episode and embarrassed by . . . ‘the bad guys’ on the force.”

A PROUD DEPARTMENT AT A CRITICAL CROSSROADS:

What adds urgency to the proposed slate of reforms, however, is the considered judgment that time is not on the side of a department whose misuse of force is not only “aggravated by racism and bias” but is in part caused by deeply embedded internal management defects--and by external structural flaws in the city’s system of civilian oversight. No easy fixes--no quick paint job--will do. Like the New York Police Department two decades ago, which was compelled to make substantial changes in the wake of the Knapp Commission report on internal corruption, the LAPD today is at a critical crossroads. To turn in on itself and react defensively to these criticisms would be a tragic mistake. This city, torn already by so many divisions, simply cannot afford that.

Consider the wisdom of the commission’s findings. It did not simply identify the existence of overuse or misuse of force but in one key, disturbing section of the 200-page-plus report narrowed the problem down to repeat offenders within the department. That raised the unavoidable question of why a core group of force-misusing officers are permitted to proceed apace in violation of the department’s guidelines--again and again. This, the report said, is a management problem of the first order. Christopher himself--not exactly given to glib overstatement--called this finding “astonishing” and concluded: “We have found the Police Department has failed to use the management tools available to monitor and control the use of excessive force by this problem group of officers.”

And the panel did not simply show the persistence of racist and biased conduct--so transparently obvious in the many egregious radio messages from patrol cars--but also raised the question of why the LAPD’s disciplinary system was not more effectively used to combat racism and bias. Again, these are issues of basic management. So, too, were the examined problem areas of recruitment, training, assignment, promotion, personnel complaints and officer discipline. Wisely, the panel did not simply throw its spotlight on obvious problems and embarrassing anecdotes, which would have been the easy thing to do. Instead, it threw its weight behind the cause of internal departmental reform, such as the adoption of a new system of community policing, a sophisticated concept that emphasizes crime prevention in addition to crime reaction. And it endorsed major fixes in the structure of city government, including changes in the Police Commission and in the office of chief of police that would require voters to approve a revision in the City Charter.

In effect, the panel urged that the Police Commission--in recent years a pale imitation of a well-functioning regulatory body--be made more independent (and exempt from City Council veto) and the police chief somewhat less so. “We have concluded,” said Christopher, a leading Los Angeles attorney and deputy secretary of State in the Carter Administration, “that it is a serious defect to have the Police Commission staff headed by a sworn officer subordinate to the chief of police.”

EXCESSIVE INSULARITY THAT DENIES ACCOUNTABILITY:

The Police Commission would be outfitted with an independent staff to be able to do the job right, and would have the significant power of being able to renew the term of a police chief--initially appointed by the mayor with the consent of the City Council for an initial five-year term--for an additional five years. Under the present system the police chief is under the protective umbrella of a civil service system that affords the incumbent nearly ironclad tenure. In theory that insulates the chief from politics but in reality the effect is to stymie any accountability. This is dangerous in a democracy.

The Christopher panel’s precise prescription for a guaranteed term of only five years will need to be thoroughly discussed; equally plausible alternative formulations come easily to mind.

But it cannot be doubted that the panel is right to insist that a system that, in effect, provides virtual lifetime tenure for the chief of police is not in the true interests of the people of Los Angeles.

THE NEED TO PREPARE FOR AN ORDERLY TRANSITION:

The panel is also right to insist that “the interests of harmony and healing would be served if the Police Commission is now reconstituted with members not identified with the recent controversy involving the chief.” (Tuesday, in fact, two commissioners--Melanie Lomax and longtime panelist Sam Williams--responded to that suggestion and said they would step down.) In that same constructive spirit, the panel suggested that Daryl F. Gates, who has served this city as a police officer for 42 years and as its chief for 13, should now help smooth the way for his successor. That would be a wise and useful move, and Chief Gates, for his part, should not prolong the agony any more. Despite his suggested intention Tuesday to stay on until the City Charter reform is enacted--a process that could be a year or two or even more away--he should accept the honorable way out. That would mean actively and enthusiastically participating now in an orderly transition that might wind up naming an interim chief well in advance of any City Charter change.

THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY OF THIS FAIR-MINDED REPORT:

In little more than a quarter-year’s whirlwind of time--of countless hours of hearing testimony and sifting through documents and transcripts, of stealing time from the office and from the family at home--a commission of nine men and one woman, all of them from the Establishment and none remotely with an anti-police reputation, reached its conclusions methodically, and unanimously. The commission was made up of seven people appointed by the mayor and three by the police chief. All were on board--and so, too, must be all Los Angeles.

Not every city is fortunate enough to get such a fair-minded and public-spirited effort. Indeed, as evidence of its earnestness, the panel asked the City Council to gather implementation reports from all agencies involved in the proposed reforms and offered to reconvene itself in six months to assess how well the job is being done.

Nor does every city get the opportunity to reverse a course gone wrong and direct its energies in a better direction. Los Angeles has just that opportunity. It must not squander it.

YEARS IN OFFICE

The longetivity of police chiefs around the country.

City & Time

Chicago: 4 Years

Dallas: 4 Months

Detroit: 5 Months

Houston: 1 Year

Los Angeles: 13 Years

New York: 1 Years

Philadelphia: 5 Years

Phoenix: 11 Years

San Antonio: 4 Years

San Diego: 3 Years