LAPD Reports Monitoring 60 Officers for Use of Force

The Los Angeles Police Department has spent more than two years monitoring activities of about 60 police officers whose history of excessive force complaints caused commanding officers to pay special attention to their conduct, department officials disclosed Tuesday.

Those officers each had two or more instances of sustained personnel complaints related to excessive force, and were part of a group of more than 100 officers who came under scrutiny in the wake of the 1991 Christopher Commission report. That commission--named for co-Chairman Warren Christopher, now U.S. secretary of state--examined the issue of force used by Los Angeles police officers after the March 3, 1991, beating of Rodney G. King.

Of that group, between 30 and 35 officers were found not to have excessive force problems despite having racked up two or more complaints, Cmdr. Dan Watson told the Police Commission Tuesday. The names of 61 others were forwarded to their commanding officers, who have been charged with monitoring their activities and reporting back to department higher-ups, Watson said. A few of the 61 have since left the department for a variety of reasons, leaving about 50 who still are under special scrutiny, Watson added.

His comments came as members of the Police Commission conducted their third of four sessions intended to assess the LAPD’s compliance with the Christopher Commission reform proposals. Those sessions conclude next week, but already the reports reveal that although the department has made significant progress toward implementing the reforms, some proposals remain unfulfilled, partly as a result of budget shortfalls.

Although it has been nearly three years since the Christopher Commission completed its ground-breaking analysis of the department, the issue of police force continues to dog the LAPD. On Tuesday, ACLU leaders questioned the department’s use of pepper spray, a relatively new device intended to reduce injuries to suspects and police officers but which has been criticized in some quarters.

Allan Parachini, public affairs director of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told police commissioners that the organization continues to harbor concerns about the effectiveness of pepper spray, a cayenne pepper mixture that is supposed to immobilize suspects when it is sprayed into their face. He cited reports of 14 cases in California in which suspects were sprayed and later died.

Monthly reports on pepper spray use for December and January reveal that most of the suspects who were sprayed were black. Parachini said those statistics troubled him. Police Chief Willie L. Williams said department officials will continue monitoring the use of the spray to ensure that it is not used disproportionately against suspects of any ethnicity.