Monitor Sees Progress in Sheriff’s Dept. : Reforms: In report to supervisors, special counsel says agency is making headway against use of ‘gratuitous force.’ But some resist change, he says.

A monitor appointed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to follow the course of reforms by the Sheriff’s Department has reported that he is guardedly optimistic that the agency is making headway in dealing with the use of “unwarranted and gratuitous force.” Special Counsel Merrick J. Bobb, in a 96-page report delivered late Friday to the offices of Sheriff Sherman Block and the five supervisors, also said that new department procedures, including more rigorous investigations of use-of-force incidents, more extensive tracking of the records of problem officers and a more efficient citizen complaint procedure, are taking hold.

But the special counsel warned that elements within the Sheriff’s Department are resistant to change. He found “passivity” and skepticism toward cultural diversity classes and he noted that because of a hiring freeze, little or no progress was made in the last year toward diversifying the ethnic makeup of the uniformed force.

Bobb, a Los Angeles attorney, was the chief staff assistant to retired Superior Court Judge James G. Kolts last year when Kolts prepared a report finding that the Sheriff’s Department had too many officers who resorted to unnecessary and excessive force, that such officers were often inadequately disciplined, and that citizens were discouraged and impeded from filing complaints.

Bobb said he takes heart at a decline this year in deputy-involved shootings, although he acknowledged that the rate of suspects killed in those incidents has gone up since last year.

In 1992, there were 47 shooting incidents involving sheriff’s deputies, compared to 19 in the first nine months of 1993. The number of wounded dropped from 31 for 1992 to six in the first nine months of 1993. But the number of killed, 18, was the same in the first nine months of this year as all of last year.

Bobb said he does not know why there was nearly a 1-to-1 ratio of deaths per shooting incident in 1993, compared to roughly a 1-to-2.5 ratio last year and in 1991.

The number of sheriff’s deputies killed and wounded in the shooting incidents has dropped between 1992 and 1993, he noted, with two killed in 1992 and none in 1993, and six wounded in 1992 and four through September of this year.

When Kolts decided to step aside after issuing his report, the supervisors directed Bobb to make semiannual reports for three years on how implementation was proceeding. The report issued Friday is the first of these efforts.

Block criticized the Kolts report when it was released in July, 1992, but the sheriff eventually said he was in accord with 156 of its 180 recommendations. He cautioned that the department’s tight budget might impede his ability to implement them.

A spokesman for Block said the sheriff would have no comment on the Bobb report until at least midweek.

In the report, Bobb declared that “the seriousness of the problems” at the Sheriff’s Department that gave rise to the Kolts effort could not be stressed enough and that much more than “minor tinkering” is needed.

“It will require terribly hard work by the department, a great deal of money from the county, and patience and restraint on behalf of the public” to consummate reforms, Bobb said.

Cautioning that there will be naysayers, Bobb concluded:

“Cynics and burned-out people within the department who thrive on trashing the courts, the criminal justice system, police critics, plaintiff’s lawyers, the ‘lowlife’ on the streets, the blacks, the Latinos, the gays, or their fellow officers in the Sheriff’s Department who cannot stand the abusive swaggering, must not be allowed to hold sway.”

At the same time, he said, “cynics and burned-out people on the streets who taunt the cops, threaten to kill a cop a day, throw bottles and shoot guns at police cars, and spew venom and filth at the policemen and policewomen who are thrown into the breach and are told to stop crime, must not be allowed to hold sway.”

In reporting on a cultural diversity class that has begun at the department, seeking to build tolerance among deputies, Bobb warned that given current resources, it will take up to four years to complete such training for everyone.

And, he said, there is “significant resistance to this class and other changes under way.”

“When instructors counseled deputies not to fight change, one deputy responded: ‘It’s not just this class we’re objecting to. It’s the whole spectrum of changes. We’re making the wrong adaptations. As the streets get wilder, they’re asking us to be softer.’ ”

The answer, Bobb said, is to reinforce the instructors’ diversity efforts by bringing in departmental executives on the second day of such classes and develop new policy positions “on the most sensitive issues.”

Noting that in the last year promotions as well as hirings have been held up, the report said that in a department that has shrunk from 7,998 officers to 7,550, the percentage of whites has dropped slightly, from 72.4% to 72.1%. The percentage of African-Americans has remained steady at 8.9%, the percentage of Latinos has risen from 16.2% to 16.5% and the percentage of Asian-Americans has gone from 2.0% to 2.1%. Other small groups account for less than 1%.

Meanwhile, females dropped slightly from 12.5% of the force to 12.4%. “We understand that when the department is authorized to hire, the department will feel considerable pressure to hire people and get more deputies out on the street quickly,” Bobb said.

He cautioned that it “should not permit this pressure to overwhelm (its) efforts to create a police force that is representative of Los Angeles County based on gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.”

The department has only three officers who are openly gay, he noted. On other matters, the Bobb report:

* Advocated categorizing the hogtying of suspects as “significant force.” He explained: “Given recent incidents . . . where hogtied suspects died, particularly as they were being transported, hogties should be deemed significant force because of the danger of positional asphyxia.”

* Conceded that the paperwork involved in tracking the significant force records of deputies is unpopular but expressed confidence that the department will adjust to it satisfactorily.

* Said that a personnel performance index, which will be fully operational by late this fall, “is by far the most sophisticated computer tracking system of its kind,” that the department has been working hard on it, but it “has a great deal left to do in the near future to ensure that (it) is used effectively and fairly.”

* Noted that “there was and remains a widespread perception among deputies and sergeants that they are held to harsher standards than lieutenants and other senior officers. . . . Deputies and their union argue vigorously that deputies should not be made the scapegoats for all force-related abuses.”

Declining Use of Force

Shooting incidents involving sheriff’s deputies declined between 1991 and 1992. The pace is also down during the first nine months of 1993, although the rate of citizens/suspects killed has risen. Meanwhile, the number of investigations of the use of force has dropped. Citizen complaints have risen, in part because the Sheriff’s Department has made filing complaints easier.

DEPUTY-INVOLVED SHOOTING INCIDENTS

1991 1992 *1993 Shooting incidents** 56 47 19 Deputies wounded 10 6 4 Deputies killed 0 2 0 Citizens/suspects wounded 40 31 6 Citizens/suspects killed 23 18 18

* Through Sept. 30, 1993

** Incidents in which a deputy intentionally fired at and hit a citizen/suspect

USE OF FORCE INVESTIGATIONS

1992 JAN.-JULY 1993 Suspects shot or killed 52 17 Suspects hospitalized 32 13 (non-shooting incidents)

COMPLAINTS

1992 JAN.-JULY 1993 Personnel complaints 1,277 763 Use of force complaints 145 102 Investigations resulting 58 55 from use of force complaints

Source: Report on Sheriff’s Department by special counsel Merrick J. Bobb