Minority Hiring Study Assails Sheriff

With the exception of Latinos, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has failed to significantly increase its percentage of women and minorities in the last four years, a monitor appointed by the Board of Supervisors said Monday.

In the fifth report he has submitted, attorney Merrick J. Bobb lamented that little progress has been made toward diversity of uniformed personnel in the department since a landmark 1992 study urging reforms by retired Superior Court Judge James G. Kolts.

But Sheriff Sherman Block responded that Bobb “is overly critical.”

“If you look at the numbers, I think we’ve made significant progress,” Block said. “We’ve set some goals and we haven’t quite gotten there. Recruiting has been good. . . . The last several [training] classes have had a good number of women.”

But, the sheriff acknowledged, some women and minority recruits have been unsuccessful in completing the training, and there has been some early attrition of new minority and women deputies, as some find law enforcement “is not what they expected.”

Bobb, however, said the raw numbers of people on the force are not encouraging.

“Men were 87.5% of the force in 1992 and 86.6% in 1996,” he said in his written report. “White males constituted 69% of males in the sworn [uniformed] ranks in 1992. They are 69.5% today.”

African Americans make up 10% today, he said, compared to 8.9% then. But the increase is principally due to the sheriff’s merger with the Los Angeles County Marshal’s Department.

“Not counting the marshals, there are actually fewer African Americans . . . in absolute numbers than at the time of the Kolts report,” Bobb said.

“On the other hand,” he added, “Latinos have gained some ground. Latinos constituted 16.2% of the force in 1992; today, Latinos are 19.2%.”

Still, Bobb said, among blacks and Latinos, the percentages in the Sheriff’s Department lag behind the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD is about 15% African American and 27% Latino, he said.

As for women, the monitor said, the percentage in the Sheriff’s Department has increased from 12.5% four years ago to 13.4% today (while the LAPD has 17%).

But, here too, the figures can be misleading, because of the merger.

“If the marshals are not counted, there were 997 women in the department in early 1992 and 998 women in early 1996, a net gain of one,” Bobb said.

These numbers reflect long-standing problems with the status of women in the department, he added, saying the Sheriff’s Gender Equity Committee “has responded only tepidly” to these issues.

“There is one bright spot, however,” he acknowledged. “Of the 153 current deputy trainees, about 26% are women.”

Bobb went on to express concern that minorities “have lost some ground in the upper ranks of the department.”

“At the time of the Kolts report, there were two African American chiefs, two African American commanders and three African American captains,” he said. “Today, there is one each in these upper ranks.”

But Latinos have increased their numbers in some of these categories. There is one Latino chief now, the same number as in 1992, but there are two commanders, compared to none before, and five captains as against four before.

Women, he said, “have advanced slightly in the upper ranks, but have lost some ground elsewhere.”

He added that the numbers of Asians, Native Americans, lesbian and gay individuals in the department remain small.

Also, he said, among 258 highly coveted field training positions, traditional steppingstones to advancement, there are “troublesome disparities” in the representation of women and minorities.

Only four of these positions is held by women, he said, 2% of the total, and only 12 by blacks, or 4.7%, half their representation in the force.

Bobb said that in other areas, the department has shown itself highly capable of reform “when it sets its sights on it and puts can-do people in charge. . . .”

“It’s high time that the same initiative be shown on issues involving women and minorities,” he said. “In the next six months, we recommend the department to roll up its sleeves and get to work hiring and promoting women and minorities.”

In another matter, Bobb found there has been a slight upturn in some categories of officer-involved shootings after several years of progress toward smaller numbers.

The number of shooting incidents increased from 29 in both 1993 and 1994 to 34 in 1995, he noted.

“Although the 10 resulting deaths in 1995 were the fewest in five years” by a very considerable number, down from 22 in 1993 and 18 in 1994, “the number wounded jumped from 11 in 1994 to 24 in 1995,” he said.

The number of deputies killed rose from zero in both 1993 and 1994 to two in 1995, and “non-hit shooting incidents” rose from 14 in 1993 and 23 in 1994 to 27 in 1996.