LAPD Panel Names Civilian Overseer : Government: Joseph Rouzan is given powerful role as Police Commission executive director. The move fulfills a key recommendation of Christopher Commission.

In a move to establish greater civilian oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department, the five-member Police Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to select Joseph T. Rouzan Jr., a deputy city manager in Long Beach, as the panel’s first permanent executive director.

The action, climaxing a search that began early this year, fulfills one of the key recommendations of the Christopher Commission by placing the LAPD’s policy-making body under an administrator who does not report to the chief of police. Previously, management functions of the Police Commission and its staff of 60 sworn and civilian personnel were overseen by sworn members of the department.

“This selection is one of the most important decisions this commission has had to make,” said commission President Jesse A. Brewer. “He will be able to identify problems and offer criticism,” Brewer said. “And he does not have to be reluctant to do so (because) he does not have to answer” to the police chief.

He called Rouzan a well-prepared, independent-minded administrator.

Rouzan, 61, was one of 76 applicants for the $80,000- to $99,000-a-year job. The post was authorized last June by Charter Amendment F, the police reform measure approved by city voters. Rouzan, who said he expects to start the assignment by mid-June, said his top priorities will be to “unfreeze” about 10 budgeted positions and expand the commission office’s role in reviewing citizen complaints and police intelligence-gathering efforts.

“All of those things that have gotten the department into trouble in recent years, we’ll be able to put some effort into that,” Rouzan said.

Since 1991, Rouzan has been a deputy city manager and executive director of the Citizen Police Complaint Commission in Long Beach. He also served as police chief and city manager in Compton and police chief and assistant city manager in Inglewood.

Earlier in his career, Rouzan was an LAPD captain who served as the commanding officer of the Police Commission from 1974 to 1975.

“He certainly will understand the role . . . and the relationships that should exist,” Brewer said.

Commissioner Ann Reiss Lane said she expects Rouzan to take an active interest in a number of issues raised by the Christopher Commission report, which sharply criticized LAPD procedures in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating.

“He can, as he says, hit the ground running, because he understands the department itself and knows where to ask the right questions,” Lane said of the new executive director. “I found him to be very, very experienced and knowledgeable with a lot of good ideas about how the commission might more effectively play its role.”

Before selecting Rouzan, commissioners spent much of two days interviewing eight finalists, Brewer said. Those candidates included Noel Cunningham, port warden for the Los Angeles City Harbor Department and a former LAPD captain; Richard Dameron, the Police Commission’s acting commanding officer; Louis Fair, a former airport director in Detroit; Kevin Gano, director of public safety in Norwalk; Katharine Krause, a member of the Kolts Commission, which reviewed practices in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; Fred Loya, the executive director of a Los Angeles-area family service agency; and Jack White, a former LAPD commander who previously served as the commission’s commanding officer before becoming a chief detective with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office under Ira Reiner.

Rouzan, whose official starting salary still has not been set by the commission, has an associate of arts degree in police science from East Los Angeles City College, a bachelor of arts degree in public management from Pepperdine University and a master’s degree in business administration from Pepperdine.