LAPD Training Practices Are Slipping, Report Says

The Los Angeles Police Department, long lauded as the finest police training institution in the country, has seen recruit testing scores slip below the state average in recent years and has allowed 31 officers to be assigned to field jobs even though they repeatedly fail tests of their shooting ability.

Those findings are contained in a recently completed consultant’s report that analyzes the support divisions of the LAPD, including its systems for training officers and their performance on state Peace Officers Standards and Training examinations.

In area after area, the so-called Blue Marble report represents a shocking indictment of LAPD training and raises new questions about the city’s police hiring boom, in which the Police Department is attempting to expand by 2,855 officers in five years. Police Department officials and other city leaders acknowledged that the report highlighted long-standing problems with the department’s training and other areas, but said the LAPD already is responding to many of those concerns.

“We still think we have the best training program in the country,” said Cmdr. Tim McBride, a spokesman for the department.

According to the report, commissioned by the city at Mayor Richard Riordan’s request, recruit scores on the state POST test have exceeded the state average only once since 1989. Meanwhile, the report found that training officers are overworked, that Spanish language training is of questionable quality, and that the Police Academy lacks modern equipment.

Other areas of the department came under equally withering appraisal. According to the voluminous report, prepared by Blue Marble Partners in Torrance and Decision Management Associates in Redondo Beach, years of neglect and poorly conceived management practices have left the LAPD with outdated equipment and inefficient work practices. Among the findings:

* The Communications Division is beset with abysmal morale, and the 911 system compares unfavorably to those of other big-city California police departments. Last year, 24.3% of the callers to 911 in Los Angeles abandoned their calls; the next-highest of the cities studied in California was 10.3%.

* The Scientific Investigation Division, much-ridiculed during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, needs new equipment, strong leadership, staff, facilities and a long-term department commitment to improvement if it is to overcome its many problems.

* The Fiscal Support Division needs more staff to handle its growing workload and responsibilities, and ultimately needs to adopt automated systems to replace some of the work now done manually. Automation could eliminate dozens of positions now devoted to the “Herculean task” of assembling that information by hand, the report said.

Chris O’Donnell, Riordan’s budget director, said the report “clearly does identify some chronic problems in the department and the Training Division,” but stressed that the problems predate the police expansion plan spearheaded by the mayor. O’Donnell added that the new city budget, to be unveiled Friday, will attempt to tackle some of the issues highlighted by the consultants.

As officials digested the Blue Marble study, many focused on its brief but dire warnings about 31 police officers who repeatedly have failed to meet minimum standards with their firearms and yet remain assigned to LAPD field operations.

The report highlights what it calls “the Chronic 31,” a group of police officers hired in the late 1980s and early 1990s who regularly fail to qualify with their 9-millimeter pistols. All police cadets must pass a shooting test in order to graduate from the Police Academy, and those who at first fail are put through rigorous remedial training.

Once graduated, officers must requalify with their firearms every other month. Officers who fail to qualify may take the test again, using their own money to pay for extra ammunition. If they cannot pass during the month, they receive departmental discipline, beginning with a note in their personnel files and escalating up to suspension.

The Chronic 31, according to the Blue Marble study, “is a group of officers . . . who systematically fail their in-service qualifications, yet this group, as well as other nonqualifiers, are allowed to resume field duties without remediation and qualification.”

The LAPD would not release the names of the officers, but McBride said they turned up in a departmental audit.

Some of the officers on the list failed to qualify only two or three times before eventually passing the bimonthly shooting tests, said one person who has seen the audit, but others had far worse records. One officer failed the test 25 times before finally recording an acceptable score. He, like the others, is assigned to field work and carries a gun.

The report’s discussion of the Chronic 31 troubled some City Council members, department officials and others.

“That certainly causes me concern,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who chairs the Public Safety Committee and who has long warned about the potential consequences of the department trying to expand faster than its support systems are able to accommodate. “I don’t think any of us want officers out on patrol who can’t fire their guns properly.”

Larry Feldman, a prominent Los Angeles lawyer who often represents plaintiffs in civil cases, agreed and warned that the city would be in serious legal trouble if an officer who repeatedly failed to qualify with his or her firearm injured or killed someone in a shooting.

“Certainly, if one of them hits an innocent bystander, there would be tremendous exposure for the city,” Feldman said.

Police Department officials say results of the Blue Marble report have not been fully circulated, but already it has made waves inside the LAPD.

Even before the report’s completion, officials at the LAPD were recommending special training for the 31 officers to help them overcome their shooting difficulties.

Similarly, the decline in recruit test scores on the state POST examination has stirred concern, though some officials attribute it to the broadening of the LAPD labor pool and to the overall performance of Southern California schools.

Among other things, the POST exam tests for overall mastery of the policing curriculum and general reading ability. Scores by LAPD recruits have fallen at roughly the same rate in both categories, those officials note.

The report stresses that the declines began in the late 1980s or early 1990s, before the recent Police Department expansion launched by Riordan.

Whatever the cause, the authors of the Blue Marble study said they were bothered by the declining scores.

“There is an alarming rate of decrease in the POST scores for the LAPD,” said the report. “Until 1988, the LAPD consistently scored above the state average. However, beginning in 1989 and with the exception of one time in 1992, the LAPD has scored below the state average.”

That shortcoming exists even though LAPD recruits undergo far more instruction time than state standards require, leading authors of the report to suspect that staffing shortfalls and overworked trainers are at least part of the problem.

“Two other possible contributing factors which should be considered are: (1) the overall quality of applicants being selected for the academy, and (2) the possible lack of experience of the training officers themselves,” the report added.

In many cases, those training officers are hampered by out-of-date equipment and facilities. At the Police Academy, for instance, trainers are responsible for instructing young recruits on how to use a police radio. Trouble is, the entire academy only has four such radios.

“Thus most of the radio training is simulated through the use of wooden blocks which substitute as radios,” the report said. “As a result, there is constant and justified criticism from field operations that the recruits don’t know how to use the radios.”

Outside the Police Academy, the picture is no better.

Exhausted field training officers, according to the report, are outnumbered by the burgeoning number of recent academy graduates, do not receive adequate training themselves and lack facilities to do their work.

To deal with those issues, the report suggests that Riordan may need to revisit the hiring goals in his much-ballyhooed Public Safety Plan--the police expansion blueprint that is the cornerstone of his mayoral administration.

Although the report does not blame increased hiring for falling recruit test scores, it does suggest that the rate of LAPD expansion is putting new burdens on field training officers, who are considered the linchpins of Police Department street training.

“The constraints on available [training officers] precludes the LAPD from meeting the staffing goals of the [Public Safety Plan],” the report concluded. “We therefore recommend that either the goals of the [Public Safety Plan] be adjusted or the LAPD develop special training to increase the number of qualified [field training officers] or a reexamination be completed to modify the current recruit training process.”

Again, the LAPD and other city leaders are working to address that issue. Department leaders are seeking permission to add 100 new training officers, about 40 of whom would be assigned to the academy or other training operations, and about 60 of whom would be sent to field operations.

According to O’Donnell, those requests will be part of the budget package forwarded to the City Council this week. Also included in the budget, O’Donnell said, will be money for equipment to make up for shortages identified in the report.

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Falling Scores

From 1986 to 1994, Los Angeles police recruits’ dropped from several points above the state average on the Peace Officer Standards and Training test to 5.3 points below the average. Police Department officials say a number of factors are at work, but a new report called the drop alarming and recommended that the LAPD take steps to boost recruits’ scores. The chart below shows the number of points above or below the state average that each Police Academy class scored.

1986* Average state score: 4.0

1994: -5.3

* The test is administered several times a year.

Source: “Review of the Support Services of the Police Department, City of Los Angeles,” report by Blue Marble Partners and Decision Management Associates.