PERSPECTIVE ON LAW ENFORCEMENT : Good Marks for a Good Start : Sheriff’s Department makes progress on reform of excessive violence. But change is fragile, cynics are many.

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has begun to make significant progress in the last year toward addressing excessive force, and my staff and I are guardedly optimistic that the department can implement the recommendations in the July, 1992, Kolts Report. Our conclusions result from our recently completed three-month review of the department, the first of six compliance reviews ordered by the Board of Supervisors over the next three years. But eliminating excessive force is a complex job that cannot be done by the Sheriff’s Department alone. It also requires vigilance, cooperation and financial support from outside.

Our sense of progress comes from Sheriff’s Department policies to identify and deal with officers who have a potential to misuse force, to investigate and analyze incidents more objectively and comprehensively and to improve the quality of feedback and training to prevent recurrences.

Also, community advisory committees have formed at all sheriff’s stations which, if the department allows, can have meaningful citizen input on priorities and dialogue about grievances and problems. The Kolts recommendations for an independent ombudsman to resolve citizens’ complaints and a judges panel to review the results if the citizen is dissatisfied are about to be implemented. This should help ensure fairness and reinforce community confidence in the Sheriff’s Department. The department deserves an “ ‘atta boy” for its progress on the Kolts recommendations.

But this is only the barest beginning, and there are formidable impediments to progress that cause us to temper our hope with caution. Money is one. Cynicism and resistance inside and outside the LASD are others. It is time to steadfastly defend good, hard-working, productive deputies who get criminals off the street, who are highly professional with the public, who know how to square the demands of the job with community expectations of service and who know when and how to use force judiciously.

It is also absolutely necessary that there be continued public vigilance and involvement. The media, the Board of Supervisors, community groups and local government must stay focused. Reporters have to stay on this beat. Too many commissions have worked too many years on police misconduct, only to have their recommendations left unfulfilled. We need only cite the McCone Commission, which predated the Christopher Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, or the Knapp Commission, which predated the current Mollen Commission on the New York Police Department. With this Sheriff’s Department, there is a chance that things can work out differently if there is continuing vigilance and watchfulness.

As deeply as we want even better relationships between the Sheriff’s Department and the increasingly diverse community it serves, and as much faith as we have in the earnestness and goodwill of many within the Sheriff’s Department, we cannot stress enough the seriousness of the problems. The Kolts recommendations are not minor tinkering with an already smooth running machine; it is not like giving a BMW a tuneup. It will require hard work by the department; a great deal of money (passage in November of Proposition 172, the continued half-cent sales tax, is a start), and patience, support and restraint by the public.

Cynics and burnt-out people within the department, who thrive on demeaning the courts, the criminal justice system, police critics, plaintiff’s lawyers, the “low life” on the streets, blacks, Latinos and gays, must not be allowed to hold sway. Neither must cynics and burnt-out people in the community, 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 officers who are thrown into the breach.