PERSPECTIVE ON THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT : A Lesson in Making Reforms Stick : Oversight, an ombudsman, advisory groups, judicial review let change take root in a troubled agency.

Do the vile and racist opinions of former Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman, as reflected on the tapes played at the trial of O.J. Simpson, describe prevailing attitudes in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department?

Recently, a jury awarded $15.9 million to 36 Samoan Americans who alleged brutality by deputy sheriffs. Another jury awarded $611,000 to three African Americans on similar claims, and a county attorney recommended a $1-million settlement to a Latino who alleged mistreatment by deputies in the county jail.

Have the Sheriff’s Department reforms recommended by the 1992 Kolts Commission failed? Are the Kolts changes a dead letter?

Not by a long shot. It is important to note that the events underlying the lawsuits mentioned above all happened before implementation of Kolts reforms, which have dramatically reduced Los Angeles County’s exposure and risk. The Sheriff’s Department is making reasonable progress, although full implementation of Kolts reforms is still a way down the road; cultural change is slow, requiring constant vigilance and independent monitoring. Since the Kolts report and the Board of Supervisors’ order implementing its recommendations, force-related lawsuits have declined by 63% and the county’s exposure on sheriffs’ cases has dropped more than 55% (or more than $50 million) since its all-time high in 1992. There were twice as many incidents resulting in lawsuits in the 2 1/2 years preceding the Kolts report as in the same period afterward.

Litigation involving the Sheriff’s Department hit an all-time high between 1987 and 1992, when the county paid nearly $50 million in judgments for excessive force and related litigation, including lawyers’ costs. There was significant unrest and dissatisfaction with the Sheriff’s Department in Latino and African American communities. Although pre-Kolts cases are still being tried and some are resulting in adverse verdicts, as in the cases cited here, the costs to county taxpayers for such litigation have declined significantly since the commission’s report.

As the supervisor who initiated the Kolts process and ensuing reforms, and as the special counsel who has overseen implementation of reforms, we are heartened that excessive force appears to be less frequent and severe than before the Kolts report. As shown in the July report by the special counsel, there have been substantially fewer alleged outright beatings or alleged injury by such weapons as flashlights and batons, and fewer cases in which deputies conducted flawed investigations of citizens’ complaints.

With the concurrence of the sheriff and the supervisors, we created four mechanisms for greater accountability by the Sheriff’s Department and to keep the reform process highly visible and in the public eye. The supervisors:

* Ordered follow-up investigations every six months with written reports to the supervisors, the sheriff and the public. That continuing investigation, oversight and public reporting is the difference between the Sheriff’s Department’s successes and the Los Angeles Police Department’s apparent difficulty implementing reforms recommended by the Christopher Commission after the beating of Rodney King in March, 1991.

* Appointed former LAPD Capt. Rudy DeLeon as county ombudsman, with a mandate to assure the integrity of the Sheriff’s Department citizen complaint process.

* Appointed retired judges as a check on biased or incomplete sheriff’s adjudications and to conduct appellate-like review of serious-force cases.

* Mandated formation of community advisory groups at each sheriff’s station to ensure direct involvement of community representatives in establishing policing goals and priorities.

The attitudes reflected in the Fuhrman tapes are not just Los Angeles problems. Sadly, to a greater or lesser degree, they exist in most urban American police departments. What is happening in the Sheriff’s Department, under the leadership of Sheriff Sherman Block, Undersheriff Jerry Harper and Assistant Sheriff Mike Graham, and with our mechanisms for outside vigilance and oversight, demonstrates that these problems have solutions.

In the case of the Sheriff’s Department, the risks to Los Angeles County and the bill to taxpayers from police misconduct are declining. The full pay-off from the Kolts report may still be some years away, but millions have already been saved. More important, the rights of all people to be treated with dignity and respect have become more secure.