Lots of Talk, Inaction on LAPD Reform

In the ever-political world of Los Angeles law enforcement, everyone these days wants to be a reformer.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams and union boss turned Deputy Mayor William C. Violante have each claimed the reform mantle, sometimes at the other’s expense. Mayor Richard Riordan won on a platform of improving public safety and rebuilding the Police Department--a rare point of agreement with rival Michael Woo.

But reform, for all its diverse backing, remains a painfully slow process. After more than two years, more than a third of the 130 proposals advanced by the blue-ribbon Christopher Commission--named for its chairman, now-Secretary of State Warren Christopher--still have not been fully realized. Tight budgets and disputes over how to proceed have hampered the process, and recent delays in the transition from Tom Bradley’s Administration to Riordan’s have also slowed the pace.

The result: Police officers still work in dilapidated stations and worn-out cars, certain training programs are on hold, counseling services are woefully understaffed and proposed incentives to lure officers into patrol jobs have moved ahead slowly, if at all.

And at the top of almost every department critic’s list of important but still unfulfilled reforms is a computerized officer tracking system known as OBITS, an acronym for Officer Behavior Indicator Tracking System. The system would give department supervisors the ability to instantly call up a list of complaints filed against any police officer.

With much left to be done, reform advocates say that Riordan’s commitment to the process is essential, and they are concerned about the level of his support for remaking a department that hit its low point after the Rodney G. King beating.

The appointment of Violante, who as union chief opposed passage of a 1992 reform measure, stunned some reform backers. And Riordan’s decision not to reappoint any of the five current police commissioners--especially Stanley K. Sheinbaum and Jesse A. Brewer, who spearheaded the reform movement on the commission--only deepened those concerns.

Some of Riordan’s new commission appointees--most notably Rabbi Gary Greenebaum--have enthusiastically backed LAPD reform. Others pledged their support last week for the Christopher Commission reforms that grew out of the King beating. But unlike their commission predecessors, the new panelists are untested, and even Riordan’s symbolic commitment to the civilian group has been called into question by his comments indicating that he would prefer to see the body meet less frequently--perhaps twice a month instead of weekly.

Even the newly hired executive director of the Police Commission--whose post was created to tighten the panel’s oversight of the department--said late last week that he has yet to meet with anyone from the mayor’s office.

“The whole question is going to rest on how serious the new mayor is about strengthening the department and not going back to the old ways,” Sheinbaum said in an interview last week. “The appointment of Violante in particular is a worrisome sign. If the mayor’s not going to ride herd, then there’s going to be a lot of slippage.”

Earlier this year, the LAPD produced a comprehensive update on the progress of reform and found that a great deal of progress had been made. According to that status report, presented to the Police Commission in late March, most of the Christopher Commission reform proposals were in place or in the process of being implemented, although it also identified several areas where more work was needed.

In presenting the status report to the commission, Williams acknowledged that many reforms were still incomplete, but he nevertheless expressed satisfaction that the department had come this far, this fast.

Other reviews have been more guarded. In an internal Police Commission study of the department’s progress obtained by The Times, commissioners noted that “while many recommendations have been fully implemented, others have not been realized, either because they are subject to the lengthy process of labor negotiations or, more discouragingly, dependent upon funding, which is severely limited.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and other proponents of police reform in Los Angeles were even more critical.

“While there has been a great deal of publicity about implementation of the Christopher reforms, the department’s own status report shows clearly that dozens of important components of the reform process are not in place or are incomplete, often because of a stated lack of financial resources,” civil rights groups said in an April letter to the mayor’s office. “The (status report) raises grave concerns that the Christopher Commission reforms, so widely embraced in this community, will be defeated quietly in the budget process by a lack of financial resolve. This vital reform process must not be allowed to be undermined in this way.”

Since those tentative verdicts a few months ago, some additional steps have been taken to implement the Christopher Commission’s recommendations. But observers inside and outside the LAPD admit that the gains have been marginal.

“There has been very slow movement,” said Joseph T. Rouzan Jr., whose recent hiring as the first executive director of the Los Angeles Police Commission was in itself a fulfillment of a Christopher Commission recommendation. “Right now, it’s kind of waiting for leadership.”

When Los Angeles voters approved Charter Amendment F in 1992, they propelled the city on one of the most ambitious programs of police reform ever undertaken. Many of the reforms were put in place with the passage of the charter amendment, including the most widely known of the proposals--those to change the way the police chief is appointed and to limit his terms of office.

The charter amendment cleared the way for the LAPD’s most visible change. Chief Daryl F. Gates retired and was replaced by Williams, an ardent advocate of reform. But department critics note that although Williams took over the chief’s job, he remains surrounded by Gates’ former deputies.

“It’s as if you elected a new President but forced him to work with the former President’s Cabinet,” said James Fyfe, a Temple University professor and nationally recognized expert on police reform. “The single most important thing that the mayor could give Willie Williams is the authority to appoint some high-level people of his own.”

Riordan has said nothing so far on that topic, and instead, Williams has moved methodically to implement the Christopher Commission’s recommendations, slowly pressing forward on the long task of structural reform.

The Christopher Commission, for instance, recommended reforms to toughen up the LAPD’s disciplinary system and to give department supervisors better ways to track officers who have potential behavior problems. Last month, Williams assigned more officers to the department’s Internal Affairs Division and moved to increase some training programs--both steps recommended by the commission.

But Williams was only able to assign a small number of officers to each task because of the city’s extraordinarily tight budget. In fact, fulfilling those commission recommendations will take years and could mean pulling officers out of patrol duties, a move that contradicts one of Riordan’s chief campaign promises: to put more officers on the streets.

Budget pressures remain the central obstacle to implementing commission reforms, but some programs could be done at relatively little expense. The success of those reforms, according to many of those who have closely monitored the attempts to rebuild the LAPD, depends almost entirely on the importance that the new commission, mayor and City Council give them.

Chief among the unrealized proposals is the OBITS computerized officer tracking system, according to many department critics.

But the system is feared by many rank-and-file officers, who particularly worry because it will record all complaints, regardless of whether they are substantiated. Officers and representatives of the Los Angeles Police Protective League warn that such a system could unfairly label officers who are falsely accused of misconduct.

As union chief, Violante was sharply critical of the LAPD’s disciplinary system, which has come under fire from many rank-and-file officers. In an interview last week, however, Violante declined to say whether he would now favor implementation of the computer tracking system. “We just want to make sure that whatever system is used is fair,” he said.

Fyfe, a longtime critic of the LAPD, is less equivocal. He said the OBITS system is essential for rooting out officers who rack up a history of suspicious conduct, and he urged immediate implementation of the system.

Paul Hoffman, legal director of the Southern California ACLU, agreed that the implementation of the tracking system must be a high priority for the mayor and his new Police Commission.

“That’s an incredibly important part of the Christopher Commission reforms,” he said. “With a department like the LAPD, you’re never going to have a handle on the brutality unless you have a system that’s tracking. It’s central for keeping control.”

Although the police union has balked at the computer tracking system, it has led the charge for another batch of stalled reforms--most notably those that deal with improving LAPD training. Union leaders argue that the department’s training is inadequate, and they have identified 18 reform proposals that they say are being ignored by LAPD management.

One thing all sides agree on is that the budget issues are not likely to disappear soon. But Violante and Riordan have often said that any budget is a statement of priorities, and both insist that law enforcement is their top priority.

What skeptics want is evidence that the mayor and his new team are committed not only to a bigger Police Department, but a better-run, better-trained one.

“If there’s one thing that cannot be done, it’s to settle back and be satisfied with how far we’ve come,” Sheinbaum said. “You’ve got to be vigilant, and you’ve got to press ahead. That’s the only way that this process will continue to succeed.”