LAPD Reform: Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

The Los Angeles Police Department’s frustratingly slow progress in implementing the Christopher Commission reforms can be blamed, in part, on severe structural problems in the city charter. Chief Willie L. Williams reports to 21 bosses: the five-member Police Commission, the 15-member City Council and the mayor. While no one would relish such a situation, Williams has had four years to figure out how to maneuver in Los Angeles’ peculiarly treacherous political thicket. A key report released last week indicates that the Christopher Commission reforms, spawned by the 1991 beating of Rodney King, have advanced in the LAPD, but not nearly enough.

Patience is not a civic long suit here. So the major question for Williams is whether he can muster the political cooperation necessary to make reform progress so dramatic that he can “own” police reform and defy the pundits who say his time as chief is running out.

His work remains cut out for him: An independent analysis of the LAPD’s progress, released nearly five years after Warren Christopher made public his blueprint for change, found the department slow to accept and implement recommendations, lacking in commitment to technology and lacking in oversight of problem officers and risky situations that can lead to citizen complaints, lawsuits and huge judgments against the city. The LAPD--in this way more like the 1950s “Dragnet” than anyone would wish--continues to hand-count officers for work attendance records, along with just about everything else. Analyzing data collected by hand is at best inefficient and at worst nightmarish.

Among the other findings in the new report: Arrests are down; use of force has declined proportionately; officers still use force in about 1% of arrests, about the same rate as before the King beating. However, the kind of force used has changed. Officers now prefer to use pepper spray in place of batons. Suspect injuries and hospitalizations are down. Meanwhile, injuries to officers have not risen. That is encouraging.

The report was crafted by Merrick J. Bobb and Mark H. Epstein, who both were deputy general counsel to the Christopher Commission. The report notes a change of tone, and greater dissent, in the department, which is not a wholly unhealthy development. Dissent of any kind was not tolerated during the tightly controlled tenures of Williams’ predecessors. But excessively loose management reins can foment constant challenging of the chief’s authority, and this may well be a factor in the increased tension reported between men and women and among racial and ethnic groups in the LAPD.

For all the meddling coming from the City Council and the mayor’s office, it is department leadership that will determine the fate of LAPD reform. The segment of the old guard that continues to resist change should know that it can’t successfully defy or ignore policy. And the chief himself must demonstrate consistency in word and deed. If those two things could happen, reform within the LAPD finally would really take hold.