Chief’s Monitoring Remark Surprises LAPD Officials

Despite Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams’ assertion that the LAPD’s Internal Affairs division is monitoring about 100 potentially problem officers, other key police officials said Wednesday that no such comprehensive scrutiny is under way.

“I can’t tell you what the chief was referring to,” said Police Commission President Deirdre Hill. “From my experience, the department has not tracked these particular officers.”

Likewise, former Commission President Enrique Hernandez Jr. said he was taken aback by Williams’ statement, made at a press briefing Tuesday, that the department’s Internal Affairs division had for the past year been monitoring about 100 officers above and beyond 44 labeled as “problem officers” by the Christopher Commission in its 1991 study of the Police Department. Thirty-four of those officers remain with the force.

The additional 100 or so officers had been identified by the number of complaints of sexism, racism or excessive force filed against them, Williams told reporters.

“That was a surprise to me,” said Hernandez, whose commission sought to reprimand Williams for allegedly lying to them this year. “I have never reviewed any paperwork about any kind of monitoring of those officers, and I’m not aware of any kind of monitoring of them.”

Williams’ remarks were made during a news conference Tuesday and were intended to reassure the press and public that the LAPD is taking aggressive steps to keep track of potentially problem officers. An issue at least since the Rodney G. King beating in 1991, that question has flared again in recent weeks because of the revelations about interviews that recently retired Detective Mark Fuhrman gave to an aspiring screenwriter over a 10-year period beginning in 1985.

Asked about the surprise voiced by the commission’s two most recent presidents and by a host of other officials in and around the LAPD, department spokesman Cmdr. Tim McBride acknowledged that the monitoring discussed by Williams did not exist.

“To my knowledge there is no list of 100,” he said. Officers “are given additional attention as appropriate, but there is no list of 100 or 200 or anything like that.”

McBride said Williams was intending to make the point that the LAPD has become more sophisticated in its monitoring of potential problem officers and that it has not limited itself to the 44 who were targeted by the Christopher Commission.

“We have no secret list, but division commanding officers monitor and take appropriate action with employees,” McBride said. “It’s a constantly evolving process.”

Williams could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

News of the apparent discrepancy between the LAPD’s work and Williams’ characterization of it concerned some city officials who had been heartened by the chief’s assurance that the LAPD was tracking a large group of potentially troubled police officers.

“I’m really very curious to get some information about this,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who heads the Public Safety Committee and who has convened a special meeting next week to review the LAPD’s hiring, training and other practices in light of the Fuhrman interviews.

“These are very much questions that the committee will be asking: What do we do when an officer is identified as having a problem, and what do we do when we identify an officer who is a problem?”

In its report, the Christopher Commission found that 44 officers within the LAPD racked up six or more complaints each from 1986 to 1990. An additional 139 officers had four or more allegations against them, and some department officials speculated that Williams might have been referring to that group of 139 officers in his remarks.

In early 1994, LAPD officials completed a two-year review of the work histories of those officers and found that some had left the department and others did not have excessive force problems. The names of the remainder, about 50, were forwarded to their commanding officers, ending that department study.

Since that time, no special Internal Affairs attention has been paid to the officers.

Assistant Chief Frank Piersol, who heads the LAPD’s Office of Administrative Services, said he was not sure what Williams meant when he said the department was giving some special scrutiny to 100 or so officers--a sentiment echoed by several members of the department’s upper echelon in interviews Wednesday.

“All of our officers are monitored,” Piersol said. But as for any special scrutiny given to any specific group of officers beyond those targeted by the Christopher Commission, he acknowledged: “I’m not sure what that would be.”

McBride said he, too, was unaware of any comprehensive Internal Affairs monitoring of officers, but emphasized that the LAPD remained attentive to the issue. Commanding officers are responsible for monitoring their own employees, he said, and identifying potentially problem officers is a process that involves far more than the number of complaints filed against an officer, McBride said.

In fact, some sources said even the LAPD’s attention to the 44 officers most heavily criticized by the Christopher Commission was largely the result of police commissioners asking for an update on their status. Up to that point, scrutiny of those officers also was lax, according to several officials.

Gary Greenebaum, then a member of the Police Commission, requested the update and one was provided. But no details were forwarded regarding additional officers whose work histories might suggest the potential for trouble, according to Hill, who said that she knows of no comprehensive Internal Affairs scrutiny other than that being given to the Christopher Commission’s 44 officers.

“Beyond that,” she said, “I don’t know of any.”