LAPD May Jettison Drug Testing for Officers : Police: Program is snagged on a dispute between Mayor Bradley and the police union. Mandatory examinations have never been fully implemented.

A year-old program of mandatory random drug testing for Los Angeles police officers, intended to boost public confidence in a “drug-free” Police Department, was never fully implemented and may be scrapped because of a simmering dispute between Mayor Tom Bradley and the city’s powerful police union.

Bradley, angered by a union-backed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the testing, has refused to honor the hard-fought agreement that provides for departmentwide urine testing in exchange for extra vacation days for about 1,800 tenured officers.

“When the Police Protective League filed the lawsuit, everything was put on hold, and as far as he is concerned, that is where it remains today,” said Bradley spokeswoman Val Bunting.

Under the agreement reached in late 1990, extra vacation days for the tenured officers were to be awarded this month. But Bradley effectively scuttled the deal by refusing to support an ordinance needed to authorize the additional benefit. The mayor has also blocked allocation of $354,000 requested by the department to run the program this fiscal year, city officials said.

“I personally spoke to the mayor about it, but he was adamant,” said Councilwoman Joy Picus, who chairs the council’s labor relations committee. “It wasn’t like you could persuade him. His mind was made up.”

Bunting would not respond to questions about the mayor’s role in derailing the agreement. “He has nothing else to say about the matter,” she said.

Since the agreement took effect last January, the department has been conducting drug tests using funds and laboratory equipment from a separate testing program for new recruits and probationary officers, officials said. Even with the limited resources, the department has conducted about two-thirds of the random urine tests required by the agreement, according to the Police Protective League.

But Police Department officials are so pessimistic about the future of the program that they have not requested funding for it in next year’s budget.

“There is talk of abandoning the whole program,” said one knowledgeable source, who asked not to be identified.

Bill Violante, president of the Police Protective League, said the union has been working with the mayor’s office “in an attempt to ensure that the officers get their vacation days” earned last year regardless of the program’s long-term future. He would not elaborate.

Meanwhile, the league, which only reluctantly agreed to random drug testing under pressure from Bradley and Police Department management, has jumped on the program’s near collapse to renew calls that it be scrapped.

“The program is a waste of the taxpayers’ money,” Violante said. “In these hard economic times, it could be money much more wisely spent in trying to implement some of the positive recommendations in the Christopher Commission report.”

The arguments have apparently caught the attention of some supporters of the program at City Hall. Picus, who voted for the agreement when it came before the council, said she still favors random drug testing in concept but now has second thoughts about the city’s effort.

“I thought it was a good agreement, but I would have to rethink it in light of the current financial situation,” she said. “That didn’t enter into the picture at all when we reached the agreement.”

Capt. Paul Coble, who oversees implementation of the agreement for Chief Daryl F. Gates, said the city’s budgetary woes have not shaken the department management’s belief that mandatory drug testing is good for the department. Even with limited testing, he said, the program serves to assure residents that officers “have their minds on the job and not on drugs.”

Coble said a reduced program is better than none.

“If you promise me a trip in a Cadillac, and you show up at my door with a Chevrolet, do I say I am not going to go?” he said. “No. You play the hand you are dealt.”

The Police Department would not disclose the number of officers tested under the program last year or the number of positive results. Coble said the information might send the wrong signal to officers on the force.

“I don’t want someone out there thinking the drug program is virtually nonexistent,” Coble said. “That is not true. We are doing the best we can.”

Unofficial statistics released by the Police Protective League, however, show that 6,700 tests were conducted last year, with none indicating substance abuse. Under the agreement, about 10,100 tests were to be conducted, including all 7,800 sworn officers with the rank of lieutenant or below and 2,300 higher-ranking officers selected randomly by computer, according to league officials.

Agreement on the testing program was announced in December, 1990, by Bradley, Gates and league officials after months of bitter negotiations. The league agreed to drop its opposition in exchange for an extra day of vacation for 1,500 officers with 21 or more years of service and two extra days for about 300 with a least 26 years on the force.

In agreeing to the program, Los Angeles joined a growing number of big-city police departments--including those in New York, Boston, Miami and Honolulu--that have adopted random drug testing of rank-and-file officers, according to the Police Foundation, a Washington-based law enforcement research organization.

During the course of negotiations, Bradley rejected as “outrageously excessive” a union-backed proposal to provide five extra weeks of vacation for each of 50 senior officers in exchange for the mandatory testing. Bradley agreed to the final deal only because it spread a relatively minor benefit over a large number of officers, his aides said.

Even so, the final agreement began to unravel just weeks after its widely publicized unveiling.

George Aliano, the former union official who negotiated the pact, said he was puzzled by Bradley’s attitude after the deal was struck. Aliano, now adjutant for Deputy Chief William Booth, said the league made no secret of its plans to support a court challenge to the drug-testing program should one arise.

The league went so far as to include a provision in the pact stating that the union “does not waive any argument or claim that it or any officer(s) represented by it may have regarding the legality or constitutionality” of the testing.

When Detective Thomas Dawson complained in February that the tests violated his privacy and said he wanted to sue, the union’s board of directors voted overwhelmingly to file a lawsuit in state court on his behalf. Dawson was unhappy that all rank-and-file officers were required to take the tests even though there was no evidence of widespread illicit drug use in the department.

Aliano said Bradley became “very upset” about the lawsuit and accused the league of plotting to derail the drug testing in court while jockeying to keep the extra vacation days. To address those concerns, the league agreed to forfeit the vacation days if the drug testing were struck down in court. The concession, however, did not placate the mayor.

“It was a question of timing,” said Coble, Gates’ liaison. “We hadn’t even been in the program a week, and they say right away they are going to challenge its constitutionality. Over at City Hall, that set some folks’ teeth on edge. It seemed a tad ungrateful.”

Ray Hamilton, a spokesman for the Police Foundation, said in a telephone interview that operating drug testing programs in police departments is never easy.

“Drug testing programs are controversial no matter where they are implemented. Los Angeles is no exception,” he said. “Unions and civil libertarians almost always have a problem with mandatory drug testing. But there is some legitimate basis for drug testing in circumstances where the public safety and the integrity of public services are at stake.”

Attorney Diane Marchant, who represents Dawson, said the deadlock between Bradley and the union could drag on for months if the lawsuit is the obstacle. Marchant said both sides are still interviewing witnesses and the case has not even been assigned a date in court.

Several sources, however, said the conflict may be resolved as a result of behind-the-scenes negotiations at City Hall.

“There is a lot of talking going on about how we could do something here to meet everyone’s concerns,” said Assistant City Administrative Officer Thomas Sisson, who oversees labor negotiations. “If someone could come up with an alternative, I am sure both sides would listen.”