Chief’s Response to Critical Letter Is Disputed

Responding to a letter from senior Los Angeles police detectives who expressed grave concerns about a recent reorganization of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division, Police Chief Willie L. Williams agreed Tuesday to review the shake-up but then ran into a new controversy by asserting that the city’s Police Commission had approved it.

Williams told reporters that he had recommended the reorganization to speed up investigations into police shootings, a politically sensitive task that previously fell to a specialized group known as the officer-involved shooting team. But now, seven months later, the reorganization has come under public scrutiny, the result of a letter written by 10 senior detectives in the LAPD’s fabled Robbery-Homicide Division.

In a bluntly worded seven-page document, the authors told Williams that the 36 detectives in their unit are so burdened with police shooting investigations that they have only been able to field four new murder cases in the past seven months. Traditionally, Robbery-Homicide has handled the city’s most complicated and highest-profile murder investigations, but under Williams’ reorganization its detectives are responsible for all police shootings as well, including those in which no one was hit.

According to Robbery-Homicide detectives, those new duties have so overwhelmed the unit that its members can no longer devote the time and energy needed to crack complex murder cases.

“The great majority of the detectives within the homicide section of RHD believe it is an utter wasting of the expertise they have developed,” said the letter, signed by 10 senior Robbery-Homicide detectives. “If our public knew the number of hours we put into these non-hit shootings rather than use our expertise to solve murder cases, they would be outraged.”

On Tuesday, Williams said he intended to meet with the authors of the letter, whom he described as “hard-working men and women” whose views on the subject were welcome. But Williams also said the reorganization was not his decision alone--an assertion that compounded the debate by raising new questions about the chief’s credibility.

“The decision that was made was one that was made by me and was approved by the Board of Police Commissioners,” Williams said at a brief morning news conference.

“Absolutely not,” former Commission President Enrique Hernandez Jr. said later. “It was never approved by the commission.”

In fact, Hernandez said that he and other commissioners had pressured the chief to reform the LAPD’s shooting investigations but that Williams had surprised the panel by unveiling a reorganization without first seeking the commission’s approval.

“There was a level of outrage by the commission that he would do this,” Hernandez said.

Under the City Charter, the five-member civilian Police Commission is responsible for setting policy for the LAPD, and Hernandez said board members believed that Williams should have submitted his reorganization to them for approval.

Current Commission President Deirdre Hill stood a few feet away as Williams told reporters that the commission she heads shared responsibility for the controversial reorganization of the Robbery-Homicide Division. When questioned, she pointedly presented a different scenario.

“The commission left it to the chief of police to run the department,” she said. “This was the chief’s recommendation of how to deal with it.”

In an interview later, she went further, acknowledging that the commission did not, as Williams said, vote to approve the reorganization.

“The commission certainly didn’t take any formal action,” she said. “There may have been some crossed signals with the chief.”

The reorganization of the Robbery-Homicide Division became the subject of controversy and high-level City Hall interest this week when the letter from senior division detectives to Williams became public.

In the letter, the detectives said they are now so overburdened with police shooting cases--the majority of which are incidents in which no one was hit--that they are unable to tackle high-profile murder investigations. In addition, the shifting responsibility has created a significant morale problem within Robbery-Homicide, where the letter’s authors say at least four detectives recently have retired because of the reorganization and at least four more are contemplating retirement next year for the same reasons.

Hill said she was troubled by the letter and its authors’ observations about the changing role and mood of the Robbery-Homicide Division.

“That’s a real concern to us,” she said. “And it should be to the chief as well.”

She and the commission directed Williams to study the issue and report recommendations for change to the board. Williams, who intends to meet today with the authors of the letter, said he would look into the matter and make a public report to the commission.

“If there’s a recommendation to do anything differently,” Williams said, “we’ll make those decisions down the road.”