Chief Puts Focus on Citizens’ Complaints : LAPD: Internal Affairs will work with the public under Williams’ sweeping reforms. The changes include more training for officers.

Acting on key recommendations made two years ago by the Christopher Commission, Police Chief Willie L. Williams announced Wednesday that he is beefing up the citizen complaint process and making long-needed improvements in the way officers are trained for patrol duty.

The changes, which begin this month, come at a time when the Los Angeles Police Department has been authorized by City Hall to sharply increase the size of its force and plans to open a series of new Police Academy classes in fall and winter.

Under the plan, more officers will be placed in the police Internal Affairs and training and personnel divisions, despite Williams’ yearlong promise to get more officers out of desk jobs and onto the streets.

The chief said that while he remains committed to putting more officers on patrol duty, he also believes that other improvements recommended by the Christopher Commission in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating must be made.

“We’re fine-tuning and making a more efficient process,” Williams said. “We are making the department more accountable to its employees and far more accountable to the public. I want to get every able-bodied person on the street. But we can’t abandon the rest of the organization in order to do that.”

In the past, many citizen complaints have been handled by field supervisors. Only the major cases have drawn the expertise of the Internal Affairs Division, where detectives work at police headquarters and bring most of the disciplinary cases against officers accused of misconduct.

But now, Williams said, Internal Affairs will handle all but the most insignificant complaints. To accomplish this, eight to 10 new internal affairs investigators will be assigned to work in the department’s South Bureau and, as the program spreads throughout the city over the next two years, 40 to 50 internal reviewers will be located in all of the department’s geographical areas.

“We want to make sure complaints are investigated and reported back to the complainant in a timely manner,” the chief said. He said that in the past some complaints have languished for six months or more. “We readily admit right now that the timeline is too long.”

In the area of training, Williams said he will bring in all of his field training officers--senior patrolmen who supervise new recruits--into the academy this summer for an in-depth evaluation to make sure that new officers are receiving sound on-the-job training.

In addition, he said, class sizes at the academy will be cut in half to about 40 students and students will be tested in a wide range of subjects, such as language skills, cultural awareness and use-of-force tactics.

Williams said veteran officers also will be given increased in-field training throughout their careers.

“We have a responsibility to not just push people through the academy and then forget about them for 20 or 30 years,” Williams said.

The chief said that under the new 1993-1994 city budget approved by City Hall, the department will be authorized to increase its ranks to 7,900 officers. There are about 7,650 officers; each year 300 officers leave through attrition.

To reach the 7,900 level, Williams said, the department will hire about 500 officers over the next 12 months.