Oh There’s No Rush, Really : Supervisors need to accelerate Sheriff Block’s response to reform report

If the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is not entirely satisfied with Sheriff Sherman Block’s response to the findings and recommendations of the Kolts Commission, it isn’t alone. Police and community relations in Los Angeles County have been on the tense side lately, and so it was with some urgency that the supervisors last December impaneled a commission to probe into controversial issues facing the Sheriff’s Department.

Though avoiding either petulance or obduracy, Block, at a news conference Wednesday, indicated that it would be at least “a few months” before he submitted his detailed response to the board and that in the meantime he would comply with “a few” of the 209 recommendations in the report, prepared by retired jurist James G. Kolts.

That rather leisurely approach to responding should not satisfy the board. The supervisors were right to authorize a special investigation, and they would be right to now hang tough and insist on a more forthcoming attitude on the part of the sheriff.

It’s true that Block, unlike the recently departed LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates, is an official elected by the people and therefore is not directly accountable to the board. But the supervisors must approve the sheriff’s budgets and work with the department closely when other official authorizations are required. In the past the relationship between Block and the supervisors has perhaps been too cozy; but it would be of no use to anyone if that relationship suddenly were to become dysfunctionally chilly.

That might happen if the sheriff fails to read the tea leaves properly. The public is deeply concerned about police-community relations. The passage of the L.A. city police-reform charter amendment last month by an astonishing margin is one good measure of public opinion. The board therefore needs to keep the pressure on. It should hold hearings on the report; it should ask the sheriff--a respected and thoughtful law enforcement official--to be more forthcoming.

Block doesn’t need months. As smart as he is, a few weeks would be more like it.