A Valuable Law-Enforcement Lesson : Report on sheriff underscores importance of citizen participation; now for the LAPD . . .

The third semiannual Kolts Commission report on the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department was issued the other day, and what another good and helpful report it was.

While filled with appropriate praise for the efforts of Sheriff Sherman Block in reforming his troubled department, it also had constructive and specific criticism of what he still needs to do to get the Sheriff’s Department into better shape. The report reminded Los Angeles anew of the value of citizen participation in civic affairs.

Written by volunteer Tuttle & Taylor lawyer Merrick Bobb and a small volunteer staff, the report systematically ticks off virtually every reform recommended by the Kolts Commission in its original report of 1992--the report that tried to do for the Sheriff’s Department what the Christopher Commission sought to do for the Los Angeles Police Department in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating. The only difference is that when the Christopher Commission went out of existence--after its landmark report was published but before some of its recommendations were adopted--that was the last time the LAPD was subjected to a thorough, up-and-down public examination of what has been accomplished and what still needs to be done.

Not so with the Kolts panel, chaired by retired Los Angeles County Superior Judge James G. Kolts. Because the Sheriff’s Department does not have a standing police commission, as the LAPD does, to oversee the progress of reform, the members voted to keep in place a mechanism whereby every six months the commission’s chief counsel would issue a public progress report. That decision looks very wise in retrospect.

To date the Los Angeles Police Department has had nothing comparable. And it would only be oversimplifying the matter slightly to suggest that this is a major reason why reform proceeds apace in the Sheriff’s Department but seems to be moving at a snail’s pace in the LAPD.