LAPD Documents Reveal Heavy Use of Consultants

At a time when the Los Angeles Police Department is under pressure to streamline its operations to pay for thousands of additional officers, internal police documents reveal that 16 different consultants are simultaneously advising the department--at a cost of more than $3 million.

The documents are contained in a report prepared by Police Chief Willie L. Williams at the request of the city’s civilian Police Commission, which expects to schedule a public review of them in the coming weeks.

Most of the consultants were hired by the mayor or City Council, not the LAPD. According to the report, they are tackling an array of issues, from drafting suggestions on how to expand the Police Department’s computer operations to assessing the effectiveness of department organization and leadership.

Moreover, the list produced by the LAPD includes only those consultants who were still at work at the end of 1995. Many others did projects during the year but had finished by year’s end and were not included in the report. A few on the list are also looking at other city departments, not just the LAPD.

The abundance of outside advisors in some cases reflects the distrust other city officials have of the LAPD’s ability to examine itself, and some department leaders say the parade of consultants has been distracting.

In addition, some commissioners and council members are alarmed at the amount of money being spent on projects and question the value of some of the consulting work, particularly a few of the smaller studies.

“We need to be careful not to overwhelm the department with all these studies; it can make people feel under siege,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who heads the Public Safety Committee. “I look at this list right now and say: Enough.”

Raymond C. Fisher, a member of the Police Commission, received the list this week and said he was determined to follow up on it with questions about how the consultants are being overseen. Similarly, commission Vice President Art Mattox said the list had raised a number of questions and concerns for him.

“Quite frankly, I was surprised that we have so many groups doing consultant work,” Mattox said. “I’m concerned that we need to manage these groups. We need to remember that the time they spend with police officers is time that takes them out of the field.”

Several top-level LAPD officials echoed that sentiment, complaining that the bevy of management analyses ordered by City Hall has distracted the department from its core mission: protecting city residents from crime.

“Generally speaking, all our people’s plates are full,” said Cmdr. Tim McBride, a spokesman for the department. “It is extremely distracting from their day-to-day work to have all these consultants at work.”

McBride and Mattox emphasized that some of the projects have been fruitful. But each study requires time to brief new consultants on LAPD operations, to schedule meetings with officials and to answer questions that arise in the course of the consultants’ work.

At City Hall, officials criticized some of the consulting projects and defended others. Two of the largest, for instance, were requested by Chick, who wanted outsiders to look at the LAPD and develop plans for expanding its facilities and retooling some of its operations.

Combined, those two studies are expected to cost more than $1 million. Nevertheless, observers inside and outside the department credit those projects with helping refocus some LAPD operations. The observers also praise those studies for incorporating aggressive follow-up plans.

Edith R. Perez, a member of the Police Commission, is helping oversee one of those studies, a $638,720 look at the LAPD’s facilities and expansion plans. She said the group has bolstered the expertise of LAPD personnel, few of whom have real estate or construction backgrounds.

“I was a little astounded that detectives are the point people on real estate matters,” said Perez, a lawyer who is used to handling major real estate deals.

But some of the smaller projects have drawn scorn and ridicule.

Why, some observers ask, did the LAPD spend $10,000 on a consultant to assist with examinations for deputy chief slots--a process that the department has gone through for decades? And why did Williams turn to another consultant to help him evaluate his own organization?

Mattox defends the first of those projects, saying that he believes the department needed to revise the way it measures the leadership skills of its deputy chief candidates. An organizational development group headed by Dennis A. Joiner was hired to oversee a new method for administering the latest deputy chiefs’ exam, which was given late last year.

Predictably, Mattox said, officers who fared well on that examination praised the new approach, while those who fell closer to the bottom of the pack criticized it. Beyond them, however, other officers who were unaffected by the test results have complained that the consultant’s work did not warrant the expense, and still others have questioned the results of the new procedure.

Whether by design or not, the rankings of the 15 deputy chief candidates seemed to parallel their perceived loyalty to Williams, with Cmdr. Gregory Berg finishing at the top of the heap and Cmdr. Scott LaChasse finishing last.

Berg, an outspoken community policing advocate with impressive academic credentials, is seen within the department as a Williams loyalist, while LaChasse has long and commended field experience but has been a leader of the Command Officers Assn., a group that has criticized the chief’s performance and has twice contemplated holding no-confidence votes on his leadership.

Without commenting on the individual officers, Councilwoman Chick said she too has heard complaints about the deputy chief study and intends to question department officials about it.

At least one other project has drawn grumbling and speculation within and around the department. McKinsey & Co. consultants were asked to review organizational and management issues and to report their findings to Williams. The company agreed to do the work at no cost to the city.

Sources say the company conducted a number of interviews with high-level department officials and came away with critical assessments of the chief’s performance. But the company has not made its findings public and has agreed to show them only to Williams.

Mattox declined to comment on that study, but McBride said the process was intended to produce candid responses that officers might be unwilling to give if they thought their comments would be made public.

“This type of work is conducted not so you can punish but so that you can manage,” he said.

But some officials at City Hall, where rumors about the McKinsey study abound, have complained that keeping its work private deprives other officials of the chance to evaluate the LAPD’s leadership. Police commissioners, who review Williams’ work as part of their responsibility for giving him an annual performance evaluation, have not requested the McKinsey study, but some have considered commissioning their own analysis.

Many officials acknowledged that the sheer number of consulting projects suggests a lack of political confidence in the LAPD to handle some tasks itself. In some cases, that reflects the department’s limited expertise--in areas such as engineering and real estate, for instance.

But in other instances, it indicates the desire on the part of some officials to rely on the perceptions of outsiders, rather than on the department’s employees. In those cases, Perez said, the department may have to continue turning to outsiders, at least until it can convince the public and city leaders that it can be trusted.

“Given the recent events at the department, I think the department needs a look from outsiders to either reassure people that it efficiently and effectively works or to identify ways that it does not,” she said. “We were the premier [Police Department], and to make it the premier again, we need to be open to the outside.”