The Commission Says: OK, We’ll Do the Job : Monitoring of police reform taken away from LAPD

Three years ago, in the wake of the landmark Report of the Independent (Christopher) Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, critics of the police force and committed police officers alike were finally hopeful that the LAPD would soon see happier days. They were looking forward to a time when the memory of the horrible and unnecessary beating of Rodney G. King would fade, when the memory of aloof headquarters administration would fade, when the memory of insensitive policing would fade. For bedeviling the collective consciousness was the notion that the LAPD had become a law unto itself and this was a city that had allowed its police department to get out of control.

The new hope seemed well-placed, for a while. Almost the entire city embraced the fair-minded but forward-looking 1991 Christopher report, and in June of 1992 the voters of the Los Angeles passed, by an overwhelming margin, sweeping police reforms that created new civilian controls on the LAPD and new term limits for the police chief so that it would be impossible for another chief to resist accountability.

That same spring, a new chief arrived--Willie L. Williams, from Philadelphia. Finally Los Angeles had in place a top police official who was truly committed and enthusiastic about reform. And it had in place a veritable blueprint for reform, in the Christopher recommendations.

Since then, Williams has established himself as the city’s most popular official, and almost overnight police-community relations, on the whole, seemed much improved. But for all this, most people who knew the true score about police reform were getting more worried by the day.

For one thing, the chief, popular outside the department, was clearly having difficulty getting control of this deeply entrenched, civil service-insulated police bureaucracy, and the department seemed somehow to be losing momentum--if not sliding back to the old ways, at least settling into a comfortable catalepsy.

For his part Mayor Richard Riordan, who had made a more efficient law-and-order system and more progressive policing the main planks of his mayoral election campaign in 1993, was becoming alarmed; Chief Williams was becoming discouraged, and the Police Commission was increasingly concerned.

Then last week the Police Commission stirred and rose up. Unhappy about the pace of change and disquieted by the Police Department’s own sometimes mixed and sometimes muddled updates about what was going on under the reform tent, the commission stripped the department of the primary authority for investigating the status of the reforms and decided to do the job itself.

The City Charter does give the panel the authority to supervise the department; it’s good to see the panel, which too often was cowed by the chief under the previous police administration, assume more of its rightful duties. “It’s our responsibility to do this,” said Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, a member of the commission. “We believe this will expedite the reforms, which is our job.”

The Police Commission is to be congratulated for possessing both the good judgment and courage to take on this crucial but difficult job. The panel evidently hopes to develop a continuing audit of the reforms and to present its findings from time to time to Chief Williams. That’s a terrific idea. Our only suggestion would be to conduct these reviews regularly, such as two or three times a year, and to make the findings public. The people, as well as the chief, have a right to know.