Few Local Police Chiefs See Need for Reforms : Christopher report: Most law enforcement officials in county say the panel’s proposals are either already in place in their departments or don’t apply because of smaller size.

There is scarcely a police chief in Los Angeles County who hasn’t read it. Command officers keep copies on their desks. Even beat cops, from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, are passing around copies of the Christopher Commission report.

The scathing review of the Los Angeles Police Department has made provocative reading throughout the county’s police community.

But while local law enforcement executives are intently reviewing the LAPD’s prescription for reform, most say their own departments don’t need the same medicine.

The heads of most of the county’s 46 other municipal police departments say that the Christopher Commission’s proposals--improving cultural sensitivity training, expanding positive contacts with citizens, strengthening civilian oversight of police conduct and limiting the term of the chief of police--are either already in place in their departments or unneeded because of the much smaller scale of their operations.

“Even though we’re the same species as the LAPD, we’re a very different animal,” said Pasadena Police Chief Jerry Oliver.

Civil rights activists disagree, saying the county’s other police departments should not be so quick to shrug off the recommendations that grew out of the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King.

“They are foolish if they don’t get the message,” said Ramona Ripston, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “Brutality exists in every police department and law enforcement agency in this county.”

Ripston and others say that Christopher Commission-style reforms--particularly greater civilian review of excessive force allegations--would benefit every police department in the county.

But so far, activists concede, most communities do not have the political will to impose additional controls on their police. The one city that has made substantial changes, Long Beach, did so after its own controversial videotape hit nationwide television--a white policeman apparently pushing black activist Don Jackson through a plate glass window.

Although the King beating has focused attention on the LAPD, most of the county’s residents receive police service from other agencies. Together, suburban police departments and the county Sheriff’s Department patrol nearly 10 times the area and protect more than 1 1/2 times the population as the LAPD. While the Los Angeles department remains the biggest with 8,300 officers, the Sheriff’s Department has 7,600 deputies, and the 46 other municipal police departments have a total of nearly 4,600 officers.

Sheriff Sherman Block has led the way in asserting the Christopher Commission report’s significance for law enforcement, making it required reading for all his department’s administrators at the rank of station commander and above.

After hearing county residents protest to the Christopher Commission that their complaints about deputies were being thwarted, Block ordered that supervisors, rather than deputies, receive all personnel complaints. The sheriff said the change “gives the sense to the person making the complaint that it is being taken seriously. I think that is important.”

But several other Christopher Commission findings don’t apply to his department, Block said in a recent interview. He said, for instance, that sheriff’s deputies have not been guilty of transmitting the kinds of racist and sexist computer messages that the Christopher Commission said proved the existence of prejudices within the LAPD.

Block also said discipline in his department is adequate, opposing calls by some for creation of a panel like the Christopher Commission to review the Sheriff’s Department.

The sheriff said the public already maintains control of his department through its votes: Every four years the sheriff must run for reelection.

Police executives in the rest of the county say that they, too, are already under much tighter civilian control than LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates, who has Civil Service protection and can only be fired for cause.

In other cities, where police chiefs usually serve at the will of their city councils and city administrators, officials said they don’t need the two five-year limits for chief recommended by the Christopher Commission.

“As it is, most of us live from council meeting to council meeting,” said Pomona Police Chief Lloyd Wood.

Officials in many cities say they have already adopted the commission’s concept of “community-based” policing--which attempts to increase positive contacts between residents and police officers. El Monte shows its officers a training film called “Be Nice,” Huntington Park police conduct anti-drug and self-esteem courses at local schools and Santa Monica officers receive cultural sensitivity training and patrol the 3rd Street Promenade on bicycle.

“It’s a new way of law enforcement, getting them out of their cars,” said Santa Monica Chief James Keane. “It’s working for us.”

As to the commission’s call for routine psychological testing to root out problem officers, most police chiefs said their departments are so small that they can keep close tabs on officers. While most use psychologists to help officers through shootings and other traumatic incidents, they said regular screenings would be too costly.

“I’ve been here 27 years with the department,” said Theodore Heidke, chief of the 26-officer Maywood Police Department. “People know me. . . . They know they can come to my office any time and see me. It’s very difficult for an officer to develop that kind of pattern (of misconduct) and not have it known by the brass.”

To most police officials, the most distasteful implication of the Christopher Commission report is the need for increased civilian involvement in police affairs. The commission recommended increasing the power of the civilian Los Angeles Police Commission, which sets policy for the LAPD.

But many police officers are openly hostile to independent review groups.

“What does a citizen know about what we do,” said Burbank Police Capt. Bob Heins. “I don’t see any merit in that.”

Others say city councils already function as citizen review panels in smaller cities--with residents able to take their complaints directly to elected officials.

“We have five or seven elected officials in most cities,” said Manhattan Beach Police Chief Ted Mertens, president of the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Assn. “Another panel is a level of bureaucracy that we don’t need.”

Civilian oversight has received limited support around the county, though.

In Beverly Hills, for example, Councilman Robert K. Tanenbaum has endorsed a civilian review panel. “I believe you cannot have police investigate police,” Tanenbaum said. “You need an independent group of citizens to hold them accountable.”

Tanenbaum said he thinks the rest of the council will support the proposal when it is discussed next week.

In Long Beach, a citizens panel has already been established, part of the fallout from the Jackson videotape.

The city formed its Citizen Police Complaint Commission and made other reforms after the January, 1989, confrontation between Jackson and two Long Beach policemen.

“It took Rodney King to do in L.A. what Don Jackson did for us,” said Barbara Shoag, chairwoman of the new commission.

Chief Lawrence L. Binkley began instituting other reforms even earlier. Long Beach now screens police computer messages for signs of misconduct, tracks officers repeatedly linked to the use of force and provides cultural awareness training.

Activists who for years complained that the department was replete with racism and excessive force violations say the reforms have already brought improvements.

“The department was on notice that they were being watched, and they changed. There’s no doubt they changed,” said Alan Lowenthal, head of one group that lobbied for the citizens commission.

Other departments, however, have been left virtually unaltered by their own controversies.

Torrance, for example, agreed two months ago to pay $6.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a teen-ager killed in a traffic collision with an off-duty Torrance police sergeant. A jury had earlier concluded that the county’s third-largest police department had a “custom and policy” of covering up its officers’ misconduct.

The department faced its own troubling videotape three years ago, which depicted one Torrance officer choking a 20-year-old man, while another struck him repeatedly with a baton. The city settled the ensuing lawsuit for more than $100,000.

But police executives and City Council members defended Torrance’s officers. Residents did not demand reforms.

Jackson, now a graduate student in Pennsylvania, said the Torrance Police Department and others “are in denial. There is this feeling of, ‘No, not in my department.’

“A lot of these places have been able to skirt major reform,” Jackson said, “because they don’t have the political constituency that the LAPD faces. When anything happens in Los Angeles, it is very politically charged.”

Activists said they must keep the pressure on if there is any hope of spreading reform to other departments. Today, minority groups and representatives of the county’s police chiefs will have their second meeting since the King beating to discuss relations.

But reforms such as citizen review panels remain a contentious issue, said Joseph H. Duff, president of the NAACP in Los Angeles. “That is just one of those things that people will have to have rammed down their throats,” Duff said. “Nobody wants to have someone coming in from the outside and telling them how to run their departments.”