LAPD Told to Study Crime Lab Merger : Law enforcement: Police panel suggests teaming much-maligned unit with sheriff’s.

Reviving a long-standing and controversial proposal, members of the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday directed LAPD officials to investigate merging the police crime lab with the Sheriff’s Department facility--a move that backers believe would save money and restore credibility to the LAPD’s much-maligned evidence-analysis unit.

After years of debate and resistance by the LAPD, the issue has resurfaced in the wake of the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, which featured an aggressive defense challenge to the reliability of the Police Department’s lab and its personnel. But while police and city officials continue to wrestle with that trial’s fallout, Tuesday also brought good news to the LAPD: According to a newly completed hiring report, the Police Department has topped 8,500 officers for the first time in its history.

That report, which is dated Dec. 4 and was forwarded to Mayor Richard Riordan’s office late Monday, indicates that the LAPD has a total of 8,555 sworn police officers either on duty or enrolled at the Police Academy. That is the highest number ever, according to officials in the mayor’s office and Police Department.

“I am very pleased by the numbers,” Riordan said. “But I am a man of constant improvement, and I won’t be satisfied unless we keep seeing these numbers go up.”

Riordan said he took particular pride in bolstering the number of officers without increasing taxes. He said his expansion plan for the department is “on target now.”

During his 1993 campaign for mayor, Riordan pledged to expand the LAPD by 3,000 officers in four years. Although he appears destined to fall short of that goal, recent increases in hiring have begun to expand the department at a much faster pace and could bring it back on schedule to meet the more modest targets outlined in the city’s Public Safety Plan. That plan was drafted by Police Chief Willie L. Williams at the mayor’s request.

The expansion plan calls for the addition of 2,855 officers in five years. Although attrition has left the department struggling to meet those goals, the new increases in hiring are, for the first time in the Riordan administration, overcoming the attrition-related deficits.

Department officials joined the Riordan administration in welcoming the latest deployment update.

“We are excited about the growth that the department has had the opportunity to experience,” LAPD Cmdr. Tim McBride said Tuesday. “We think it will bode well for our ability to serve all of our communities.”

Still, amid signs that the LAPD expansion plans are making headway, officials remain mired in the complex task of restoring public confidence in the department, a mission that has been under way for years and has suffered periodic setbacks, most recently as a result of the Simpson trial.

One highlight of the trial was the defense team’s stinging attack on the LAPD’s crime lab and its employees. After Simpson’s acquittal in October, police commissioners asked their staff to study the trial and determine whether improvements were needed in the lab.

Last week, Bill Russell, the LAPD’s director of support services, produced a 21-page report proposing appointment of a blue-ribbon commission to study the lab and identifying $7.2 million worth of equipment and training needs.

That money would make the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division a first-rate operation, Russell told the commission. A portion of that amount, about $2.9 million, would bring the laboratory up to speed, he said, and another $300,000 would pay to accredit the facility, he added.

“We think certification’s important,” Russell said. “Most crime labs are not accredited, but given the challenge to our credibility, we feel it’s important here.”

In addition, the report revived talk of merging the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department labs, an idea long debated in local government circles but generally resisted by the LAPD, whose officials have worried that they would lose control of their operations if they joined forces with the sheriff.

“This is something the department has been reluctant to pursue,” said commission President Deirdre Hill, who has long supported consolidation but has previously been outvoted by colleagues.

In the wake of the Simpson acquittal, support for the consolidation idea has been growing. Riordan said this week that he was intrigued by the suggestion.