LAPD Balks at Panel’s Complaints Proposal : Police: Inclusion of unsustained charges in performance evaluations of officers would be unfair, officials say.

Los Angeles Police Department officials on Monday took exception to a Christopher Commission proposal that unsustained citizen complaints should be included in the performance evaluations of police officers.

To “just wholesale put all unsustained complaints in a personnel evaluation would be unfair” to the officer involved, Capt. Paul Cobel, employee relations coordinator for Chief of Police Daryl F. Gates, told a City Council committee.

The Christopher Commission recommendation was based on a review of 700 LAPD personnel files that found performance evaluations generally failed to give an accurate picture of disciplinary histories.

Placing such information in personnel files would “go a long way” in ferreting out officers who have problems relating to the public and in restoring confidence in the 8,300-member department, said the Christopher Commission’s chief lawyer, John Speigel.

“That is not to say an officer who has a number of unresolved complaints should be disciplined or penalized or not promoted,” Speigel said. “But it does mean that the information . . . should not be blocked from view of promotion boards or commanding officers . . . .”

Police Department and union officials who testified before the committee expressed legal and labor-related concerns about the proposal.

Bill Violante, president of the Police Protective League, said it would “violate law and due process and make officers second-class citizens.”

In an interview, Violante said later that unsustained allegations are not allowed to be admitted into court as evidence of misconduct so they should not be used in evaluating an officer.

While the department is not currently using unsustained complaints in personnel evaluations, it is compiling use-of-force complaints and officer-involved shooting reports to identify problem officers. “We can get a more accurate picture of somebody when they do start to go down the wrong path,” said Capt. Jan Carlson of the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division.

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who sits on Councilman Marvin Braude’s ad hoc committee, said that is not enough.

All complaints should be included in personnel evaluations, he said, because “the most important thing we have to do now is communicate to the public that the LAPD is serious about police accountability, particularly as it relates to alleged misconduct.”

The rate of citizen complaints has increased dramatically since motorist Rodney G. King was beaten by police officers on March 3. Between January and October, the Police Department has received 2,556 complaints--about 700 more than were filed by this time a year ago, police officials said.