Officers View Report as Rush to Judgment

The Los Angeles Police Department described by the Christopher Commission is not the same one Sgt. Greg Dust sees.

“It’s totally inaccurate,” he says.

Whereas the commission found a department that overlooks the crimes of racist, violent officers, the one Dust knows is obsessed with discipline. “Harsh,” he said. “They’ve always been harsh.”

Once brought up on departmental charges himself--”I hit this guy in a holding cell who was handcuffed”--Dust now serves as a “defense rep,” helping other officers accused of anything from improper shootings to stealing library books. From his perspective, the commission was “some people sitting in their ivory tower” with no appreciation of the “blood bath out there.”

Top Los Angeles police officials have been reluctant to criticize the Christopher Commission, in large part because they do not want to be misunderstood as defending the indefensible: the head knockings, bigoted computer messages and the like. “The die is cast,” said one commander. “It’s time to implement.”

But when pushed and prodded, some police leaders and law enforcement experts make a case against many of the panel’s findings--taking issue with everything from statistics to basic assumptions.

* They say a commission loaded with lawyers virtually ignored a key feature of the police disciplinary system--its litigious nature. It is not easy for police officials to punish officers accused of wrongdoing, who fight back every step of the way.

* They complain that the commission’s advocacy of the latest fashion in law enforcement--community policing--gives short shrift to the political and fiscal pressures facing a big city police force. How can police be chastised for focusing on emergency response time when politicians, community groups and the media were obsessed with that measure of performance just a blink of an eye ago?

* They shake their heads at how the plan to implement reforms pays little attention to the central role--and power--of the police union. “We’re not going to have cops go through a meat grinder to placate other people,” said Lt. George V. Aliano, head of the Los Angeles Police Protective League. “It’s not going to happen.”

After release of the commission’s report last week, police officials openly challenged it on only one point: a finding that when an officer shot someone, cops at the scene often were “gathered together and interviewed as a group,” apparently to “get their stories straight.”

LAPD officials said they abandoned such group interviews in 1982. The head of the unit that investigates officer-involved shootings complained that he was never interviewed by the commission.

Chief Daryl F. Gates cited this finding at a news conference when he asserted that some of the report was “not based on fact.”

“What they did,” he said, “was take (police) reports going back into (the) 1970s. . . . Nine years ago we stopped doing what they are accusing us of doing now. That’s wrong.”

Gates held back from going through the report point by point. His testimony before the commission had conceded the central findings: Police supervisors had not adequately used citizen complaints to identify violent officers, and clearly had not made a priority of eliminating racist banter.

“I don’t want to criticize the report, that’s not my purpose,” he told the news conference, cutting off the questions--although, in typical style, he could not resist one last jab at the massive study: “It was done in 100 days, and there are an awful lot of things they didn’t think of.”

Indeed, the discussion of police shootings raised questions about procedures used in the commission’s dissection of the Los Angeles Police Department.

While commission officials stuck by the contested finding, it was hard to trace the origin of their information. One panel source directed a reporter to a private attorney who represents citizens suing the Police Department. But the attorney said he had handled only one wrongful shooting lawsuit--and did not have full information on that case.

“We didn’t have the cleanest lines of authority and responsibility,” the commission source said. “A lot of people worked on the report and . . . it’s hard to say any one person was responsible for any one section.”

To the average citizen, the details of how police investigate shootings are less interesting than a more gut-level issue: Are Los Angeles cops trigger-happy?

Twice, the Christopher Commission cited 1986 statistics suggesting they were. “Compared with officers in the other of five of the six largest cities in the United States,” the report said, “members of the LAPD killed or wounded the greatest number of civilians, adjusted to the size of the police force.” More shootings per officer, in other words.

William A. Geller, associate director of the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum, analyzed 1989 police gunplay from a different perspective: How often did cops shoot suspects when measured against the number of arrests for violent felonies?

Because Los Angeles police make more arrests than counterparts elsewhere, they fell well back under this measure, behind Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia cops. Dallas cops had a shooting for every 250 arrests for violent felonies; the LAPD lodged 400 such arrests for each shooting.

More than quibbling over statistics, critics of the Christopher Commission point to its tone and assumptions in several key areas.

POLICE DISCIPLINE

“Give me a break!” exclaimed attorney Diane Marchant, reacting to a recommendation that the department end a practice of allowing cops accused of wrongdoing to select the high-level officers who hear their appeals.

It was a small point, easily lost in the thick report. To Marchant--who frequently represents police officers--it showed misunderstanding of the reality of the disciplinary process.

Under the current system, once the police chief orders punishment for an infraction--say a 10-day suspension for careless driving--the accused cop can ask for a Board of Rights hearing to review the case. The names of six command-level (captain and above) officers are drawn randomly. From those, the accused picks three to be his judges.

The Christopher Commission recommendation: The board should include one civilian, and the officer should have no role in selecting the other two members.

Marchant recognizes that to an outsider, the fact that officers pick their judges may look like a loophole to help wrongdoers escape punishment.

But to the person facing charges, she said, it is a small dose of fairness in a system stacked against them.

“You’re dog meat,” she said. “The chief has already determined that (you’re) guilty.” No matter whom you pick to hear your appeal, the top officers are “all beholden to the chief. No one there is on your side.”

The commission acknowledges the LAPD’s reputation for discipline, saying it “vigilantly enforces” rules covering corruption, drug use and other conduct that “embarrasses the department.”

The panel’s point is that violence against the public is treated differently. Here, the brass look the other way; “some thumping” of suspects is permissible.

Cmdr. Michael Bostic testified that many within the LAPD perceive this same discrepancy: “If you lie, cheat and steal we’ll fire you. . . . But if you use excessive force, we won’t.”

The report makes a compelling case that the handling of brutality complaints needs an overhaul. Of 2,152 such allegations from citizens from 1986 through 1990, only 2% were upheld by the LAPD’s internal review process.

Where the panel gives the public a false impression, critics say, is in not relating how the disciplinary process is a “pitched battle.”

Police officers who condemn American Civil Liberties Union types for harping about “due process” for criminals suddenly embrace every protection the law gives them.

Some of the damning allegations about disciplinary laxity were leveled in testimony by retired Assistant Chief Jesse A. Brewer. But he also made reference in one interview to savvy police defense representatives, and how it is not easy “to get rid of” problem officers.

Dust is one of the reps, and he is not the least bit apologetic about helping officers such as the one just suspended for six months for striking a narcotics suspect who, during a foot chase, tried to swallow the evidence.

The officer, with an otherwise “spotless” record, “lost it for a couple of seconds . . . made a mistake,” Dust said.

In Dust’s own hearing years ago, he was exonerated after being accused of one of the offenses spotlighted by the Christopher Commission--striking a handcuffed suspect. Dust said he was trying to subdue a burly man on PCP who had gotten in a fight with another officer after spitting in his face. “Some sergeant thought what we did was inappropriate,” he said.

To him, it was an example of the “double standard” against officers on the streets, who make most of the arrests and inevitably scuffle with “bad guys (who) don’t want to go to jail.”

The commission outlines shocking cases of officers drawing repeated brutality complaints, but remaining on the force for years. To citizens, the message is that the department tacitly approves of such tough cops.

To police officials, the same cases illustrate their frustration trying to enforce discipline.

“I can understand the public . . . saying, ‘Goodness gracious, what are they doing?’ You ought to be able to snap your fingers” and get rid of a bad cop, said Capt. Paul Coble, who heads LAPD’s employee relations section. “The truth of the matter is we cannot.”

Marchant and others who represent police officers cite cases where their clients were fired or suspended for shooting suspects, only to file suit and have the penalties lessened by judges.

It used to be that an officer who did not like a police Board of Rights ruling could appeal it to outside arbitration. In one case, an arbitrator overturned the department’s action taking away the gun of an officer who had drawn many complaints.

“This just made Gates nuts,” Marchant recalled, and in December, 1986, the chief convinced the City Council to rescind the arbitration system.

It was not that Gates thought the arbitrators were too stern--but that these “liberal lawyers” were too lenient.

COMMUNITY POLICING

In 1988, a Virginia-based “think tank” completed a study of LAPD response time to emergency calls, measuring them down to the second.

City politicians scrutinized results in their districts. Black and Latino leaders ordered action, saying police cars took more time reaching minority neighborhoods. The study’s author said that was not true--average response times were similar around the city, a “uniformly long” 9.2 minutes.

Three years later, the Christopher Commission criticized the LAPD for emphasizing quick response times, arrest statistics and other “aggressive” measures. The buzzwords of the times are “community policing,” or helping neighborhoods head off crime by setting up school anti-drug programs, getting Boy Scouts to paint over graffiti, removing junked cars from streets and other measures.

Police leaders concede that by putting the maximum number of officers in cars, “we have moved further and further away from the people,” in the words of Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block.

But there are implications to reassigning officers to foot beats or community relations.

The Christopher Commission noted that the LAPD in 1985 freed eight senior officers from patrol responsibilities in the Wilshire Division to work with community groups. “But Wilshire area’s response time dropped to the worst in the city,” the report said, and the officers were returned to their former assignments.

“You can’t have it both ways,” said Block, who approves of community policing but wonders what will have to be sacrificed. “To do both means a tremendous dollar cost . . . millions of dollars at a time when all levels of government are undergoing budget cuts.”

He is hardly dismissing the Christopher Commission’s recommendations, though.

“We would be fools if we did not analyze that very carefully,” he said. “That process is under way.”

IMPLEMENTATION

Also going through the report line by line is Coble, the LAPD’s chief negotiator with the police union.

The department has a duty to meet and confer with the union on any reforms that might change basic working conditions. The consultation must be in good faith, he noted--you cannot hold perfunctory meetings then tell the union, “You don’t like it? We’re going to do it anyway.”

Aliano, the union president, is busy identifying commission recommendations he will fight, including suggestions that the department give greater weight to a history of complaints against an officer, even if they have not been sustained.

“That the past record could be used against you is totally wrong,” Aliano said, comparing that to punishing a suspect who has been accused of crimes, but acquitted.

Periodic psychological testing of officers? “That’s going to wind up in a battle,” he said.

Though the commission proposes changing the City Charter to enact many of its reforms, “because the people pass something doesn’t mean it’s legal,” Aliano said.

The union fought in court for years to overturn a ballot measure passed in 1982 to limit increases in police pensions.

Coble is not daunted by the prospect of fights on several key points.

“It’s not as simple as some people would make it out,” he said. But “the reality of our existence is doing all we can to make that process work--to breathe life into those recommendations.”