Implementing LAPD Reforms

In your editorial (“Doing Its Job or Doing a Job?” Aug. 16), you presented your views on the efforts of the City Council’s ad hoc committee on the Independent Commission Report to sort through several hundred recommendations from the Christopher Commission.

You stated that the Public Safety Committee was the first panel to consider the report and that, at its meeting of Aug. 9, it picked apart several significant recommendations pertaining to the selection and removal of the chief of police.

Let me point out that the Human Resources and Labor Relations Committee, which I chair, met on July 24 to consider the Christopher Commission recommendations pertaining to the selection, tenure and conditions for removal of the chief of police. After hearing testimony and after in-depth discussion, we voted unanimously to recommend to the full City Council that a special election be held early in 1992 to ask the voters to change the City Charter in conformance with the commission recommendations. Please note that this meeting took place even before The Times editorialized in favor of a special election.

In April and May, during the time that the Christopher Commission was meeting, the Human Resources Committee held three lengthy hearings on the need for changes in the LAPD. Our recommendations were presented to the City Council on Aug. 14 in a report which was then referred to the new ad hoc committee.

During the next several months, the ad hoc committee and the full City Council will be considering the Christopher Commission recommendations. We may decide to modify some of them. Branding these decisions by elected officials, in serious deliberation and careful consultation with the commission members and staff, as “nit-picking” does little to elevate the level of debate on these vital issues.

JOY PICUS

Los Angeles City Council