LAPD Female Hiring Goal Called Too High : Law enforcement: In a new report, personnel officials say it is unrealistic to expect 43% of new officers to be women, a long-term goal set by the City Council. Chief Williams urges gradual approach to the target.

City personnel officials say in a new report that it is unrealistic to expect that 43% of officers hired by the Los Angeles Police Department each year will be women, and that the City Council would expose the city to lawsuits by establishing such a goal.

The officials complain that despite their outreach efforts, police work is still viewed by most women as a dangerous male domain. Recruitment drives can only go so far to change societal attitudes, they said.

Those who are pushing for more women at the LAPD dismissed the report as the work of city bureaucrats reluctant to change their ways. “This is so off the mark,” said Katherine Spillar, national coordinator for the Fund for the Feminist Majority.

The City Council has already set a long-term goal of achieving gender balance at the LAPD by increasing women’s representation on the force to 43%--which is the percentage of women in the Los Angeles area work force.

Council members are currently reviewing a plan that would increase the annual hiring goal from 30% to 43% by redoubling recruitment efforts aimed at women and reviewing tests to make sure they are fair to both sexes.

Today, about 14% of LAPD officers are women--a long way from 1981 when 2% of the force was female and a civil rights consent decree forced the city to begin the recruitment of women. Targeted hiring efforts resulted in a new class last year that was 33% female, officials said.

Ray Allen, acting general manager of the city’s Personnel Department, says in his report that the council ought to abandon its plan to raise the annual hiring goals for women to 43%. Behind the scenes, Police Chief Willie L. Williams has also recommended that the department not be required to reach the higher target too quickly.

Allen’s report, which was delivered to council members in recent weeks and obtained by The Times Wednesday, says city recruiters have worked aggressively to increase women’s representation on the force but have been frustrated by a relative lack of interest among women.

In the coming year, the city intends to target teachers, social workers, day-care workers and others in so-called female-dominated occupations. But still, Allen wrote, “it is still a non-traditional job for women, and recruitment cannot undo societal conditioning.”

Increasing the number of women who are selected without also increasing the female applicant pool would expose the city to reverse discrimination suits by white males, he said.

Hiring more female police officers was one of the key recommendations of the Christopher Commission, which said that more women in the LAPD would be “the key” to substantially reducing police violence. The commission also found widespread sexual discrimination and harassment in the department.

Those who are pushing for the higher annual hiring goal said they were shocked by Allen’s report and accused him of looking for excuses to avoid what is admittedly a difficult target. Members of the council intend to hold public hearings on the issue next month.

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“Are there enough qualified women out there to fill 43% of the class? You bet there are,” Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said.

The city recruiters complain that the calls for increased recruitment come at a time when their advertising budget for city jobs has been slashed from $620,000 to $367,000.

Past recruitment campaigns included seminars and focus groups, public service announcements and special brochures--all aimed at women. Other recruitment efforts have taken place at military bases and large sporting events.

“This has been done because women do not seek us out as a potential employer the way men

(especially Caucasian men) do because law enforcement is still very much a non-traditional career for women and likely to remain so for some time,” Allen’s report said. “In addition, many women consider police work to be just too dangerous.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said the council’s Budget and Finance Committee will look for additional funds to broaden the recruitment campaign.

Yaroslavsky and Goldberg also called for a review of potential gender bias in the interviewing of applicants and the Physical Abilities Test, both of which men are more likely to pass than women.

The council members particularly want an examination of whether police officer candidates ought to have to perform activities that favor upper body strength.

At a news conference Wednesday after the passage of Mayor Richard Riordan’s police plan, Williams said the 43% goal will be difficult to reach in the short term but could be attainable if the department gets enough resources.

“I think in a reasonable amount of time we’ll be able to achieve it,” he said.