Elephant-Size Abuse, Mouse-Size Reform : After documenting a litany of horrors, the Kolts report comes up short, failing to place blame where it belongs.

We can conclude after reading the Kolts report, page after page documenting brutality, organizational dysfunction and intolerance in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that the problem in Los Angeles always did extend beyond one African-American motorist and four cops on trial--that the crack in the foundation exposed by the Christopher Commission crossed city, county even state boundaries.

How then to explain the failure of the special counsel to come to terms with the weight of its own findings in issuing its recommendations? While the Kolts report issues a scathing indictment that consistently indicts the management of the sheriff’s department, it fails to place blame where it belongs, on Sheriff Sherman Block.

And though acknowledging the existence of scores of rogue deputies within the ranks, a failed and illogical disciplinary system and the lack of uniform tracking of excessive-force complaints, the Kolts report--in contrast to the bold Christopher Commission--fails to call for a truly effective independent civilian review body.

Despite calls for beefing up “community participation,” the philosophy of the Kolts report is apparently to let the police continue to police themselves. Community “participation” in policing stops short of community empowerment.

Despite a year of rewinding the Rodney King videotape, the Christopher Commmision hearings, the Los Angeles City Council’s debates on “community-based policing,” passage of Charter Amendment F by almost 70% of the voters and the most costly urban rebellion this nation has known, the lesson has not been learned at the state level, either. The California Senate recently amended the last bit of muscle from a significant piece of police reform legislation, then last week buried the skeleton by failing to even vote it out of committee.

What are we to make of this sort of thing, knowing that police lobbies contribute millions to state legislators, concentrating on the liberal Democrats who head the Senate Judiciary Committee? Whatever the dynamics, it is clear that the political leadership for years has acquiesced to this police lobby, allowing it to keep police brutality hidden from prying civilian or government scrutiny and control until it cost so many millions of tax dollars in lawsuit settlements that the truth was forced out.

We can implement reformist recommendations. But abuses of power can only be prevented by true structural change. As a people we must insist on the principle that no public official or civil servant is above civilian oversight or the rule of law. In no other profession licensed by the state do we tolerate the secrecy, unaccountability and abuse that are revealed in the Kolts report.

The special counsel’s report is an overdue step in a longer journey. Let us now begin to remove the iron curtain that for too long has cloaked abuses committed under color of authority. Let us enact laws and policies that can be enforced in the openness of public debate with full civilian oversight and public participation.

We must let our county officials and state legislators know that they’ll be held accountable in November and beyond.