LAPD Reform Falls Short, Study Says

Five years to the day after the Christopher Commission permanently altered the landscape of Los Angeles law enforcement, leaders of a broad-based community coalition said Tuesday that the LAPD has fallen far short of its reform mandate, failing to deliver on promises made in the early 1990s and mismanaging its civilian complaint process.

“Five years is long enough,” said Anthony Thigpenn, a leader of the recently formed Communities United for Police Reform. “We’re out of patience.”

Thigpenn and other representatives of nearly a dozen Los Angeles organizations gathered in front of police headquarters Tuesday morning to express disappointment with the Police Department. And they released a study concluding that a key aspect of the department’s complaint process remains woefully inadequate five years after the police beating of Rodney G. King and the reform movement that it sparked.

According to the new study--conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and titled “Reform Delayed: Five Years After the Christopher Commission”--a majority of LAPD stations still do not make complaint forms readily available. In addition, officers contacted for information about complaints frequently gave incorrect answers to ACLU interns posing as friends of people seeking information about how to file a complaint, the report said.

The study produced immediate results: Police Chief Willie L. Williams issued a directive ordering that every police station in the city make complaint and commendation forms available by July 17 and demanding that station captains make sure that their desk employees can accurately answer questions about the complaint process.

*

According to the ACLU report, some officers responded to questions from the ACLU interns by saying that complaints could not be made over the phone--even though LAPD policy specifically states that they can. Others, the study said, indicated that a person’s immigration status or gang affiliation might influence the handling of a complaint, suggestions that might dissuade potential complainants from pressing the issue.

Only six of the LAPD’s 18 police stations displayed complaint forms in their lobbies, and only one of those was fully stocked, the ACLU report said.

Moreover, it said, even among stations that had complaint forms available--sometimes underneath a counter or otherwise out of public view--disturbing patterns emerged: In the Devonshire Division, a heavily white area, complaint forms were only available in Spanish, Korean and Cantonese; in the Southeast Division, a majority Latino area, the forms were offered only in English.

Only four of the city’s police stations had forms available in all four languages, the report concluded.

Allan Parachini, a spokesman for the ACLU, called the complaint intake process a “bedrock, fundamental” aspect of police reform, and said the department’s slow progress in addressing it over the past five years was unacceptable.

“In five years,” he said, “the LAPD has advanced probably from a grade of F to a grade of D-minus.”

In fact, the results reported by the reform groups Tuesday mirror earlier studies, including one conducted by the Los Angeles Police Commission in 1994. Auditing the department’s complaint process that year, commission staffers reported that many stations did not have forms readily available and did not have them in all four languages.

Art Mattox, acting president of the Police Commission, said he was disturbed by the ACLU findings.

“I find it extremely troublesome that some of the problems we pointed out in December 1994 are still there,” Mattox said, adding that he intends to bring the ACLU report to the attention of his commission colleagues. “We plan on addressing it.”

Katherine Mader, the Police Commission’s new inspector general, said she intends to examine the LAPD’s complaint process and push for improvements.

*

The problems with the department’s complaint intake system represent the latest criticism of its commitment to reform, and they raise questions about the LAPD’s assertions that it has made significant progress in improving the behavior of its officers. LAPD officials often cite the decline in civilian complaints as evidence that the department has improved its relations with various communities in Los Angeles, but leaders of some civil rights organizations say they are receiving just as many complaints as ever.

Those officials suggest that the Police Department makes it so difficult to report misconduct that residents are reluctant to pursue complaints. If so, the decline in complaints could reflect fear and frustration with the department--not satisfaction with its officers.

“If you do everything you can to discourage people from complaining, it’s no surprise that you have very few complaints,” Parachini said.

Although the ACLU report was the highlight of the community organizations’ news conference, leaders of various groups pointed to area after area of disappointment and sounded a common theme: Reform is taking too long at the LAPD, and residents are growing impatient.

According to the representatives who spoke Tuesday, hiring and retention of women and minorities remains far too low, treatment of minority citizens remains far too callous and community involvement in police affairs remains far too shallow.

Constance Rice, western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said widespread bias against minorities and women has hampered diversity efforts at the LAPD. And though the department is more diverse than it was in 1991 when the Christopher Commission examined it, Rice said recent figures show that the LAPD has scaled back its hiring of African Americans.

At the same time, she added, female officers are being driven out of the Police Academy and the department “at an extraordinary rate.”

Other speakers, including former Portland, Ore., Police Chief Penny Harrington, echoed those concerns about the LAPD’s diversity efforts, particularly with respect to women.

The wide community disappointment with the LAPD’s reform efforts calls attention to a growing problem for Williams, who came to Los Angeles from Philadelphia as a champion of police reform. Many of the activists who appeared at the press conference Tuesday hailed Williams’ appointment in 1992, but they are far more tepid in their assessment of him five years later.

Genethia Hayes, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called it “foolish and naive” not to understand the degree to which city politics have hampered reform efforts. But she described the Police Department’s performance as “ultimately the responsibility of Willie Williams.”

Similarly, Parachini said the department’s entire chain of command had failed to tackle the problems in handling citizen complaints.

“The buck stops in the chief’s office,” Parachini added.

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas did not attend Tuesday’s news conference, but he too has raised questions about the pace of police reform. In an interview, he said he believes part of the problem has been the shift from Mayor Tom Bradley, who championed reform, to Mayor Richard Riordan, who stresses department expansion.

“This is not the reformist administration,” said Ridley-Thomas, an influential council member and frequent critic of the mayor. “This is the expansionist administration.”

For the reform backers who gathered Tuesday, the issue is not so much Williams or Riordan as it is the need for speedier progress on the array of issues facing the LAPD. No matter who heads the department or who champions reform, they said, the process needs to move more quickly if the LAPD is ever to achieve genuine partnership with the communities it is pledged to protect and serve.

“Five years is too long,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of the Multi-Cultural Collaborative. “The time is now.”