Williams, Union Leader Clash Before U.S. Panel

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams and the leader of the city’s police union clashed Thursday in front of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, disagreeing over the handling of complaints against police officers and the adequacy of procedures for selecting and training officers who train fellow police in the field.

Williams, appearing before a prestigious commission that is conducting national hearings on racism and police conduct, told members of the panel that the LAPD had made great strides in screening and training of “field training officers,” those who teach academy recruits about police work on the street.

But Bill Harkness, the president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League and a famously outspoken cop, responded by saying the chief was out of touch.

Comparing Williams to the captain of a ship, Harkness said: “He doesn’t always know what’s going on in the engine room.”

Harkness went on to suggest that field training officers often lack skills needed to train fellow officers and said he believes quality veterans are being overlooked for training jobs because department managers place too much emphasis on personnel complaints in screening candidates. Williams did not respond directly, but emphasized that he believes it is important for LAPD leaders to be able to review all officers’ complaint histories in order to make decisions about staffing.

That view was echoed by Katherine Mader, the Police Commission’s inspector general, and by Mark H. Epstein, who served as special counsel to that commission and helped prepare a landmark report on the progress of reform at the LAPD. Mader and Epstein joined Williams in opposing two state legislative bills that would remove some police complaint records from the reach of LAPD managers--proposals that Harkness and the police union support.

The exchange between the police chief and the police union boss came on the first day of hearings by the Civil Rights Commission, which is returning to Los Angeles two years after it initially came to study issues of racism and police brutality after the Rodney G. King beating and the 1992 riots.

Mayor Richard Riordan was among city leaders who testified Thursday, telling the panel that he believed the LAPD has made great progress but that more needed to be done, especially in the area of holding supervisors accountable for the actions of their subordinates.

Riordan credited his police commissioners with helping enact reforms urged by the Christopher Commission in 1991. He also defended the decision by his budget team and top LAPD leaders to cut back a proposed expansion of Internal Affairs, the unit that investigates other officers.

*

Joe Gunn, a special assistant to Riordan, took some issue with a story on that subject that appeared in Tuesday’s editions of The Times, saying that the account of the cuts to Internal Affairs was incomplete and emphasizing that complaints against police have dropped significantly in recent years. The drop in complaints helped make the cuts possible, Gunn said, adding that the mayor’s office supported the budget reductions only after a priority list assembled by LAPD officials made it clear that the proposed additional Internal Affairs investigators were expendable.

Asked about the issue, Williams stressed that Internal Affairs today handles more complaints than it did five years ago and investigates almost all allegations of excessive force by police officers. The Christopher Commission recommended that Internal Affairs investigate all those complaints, as well as allegations of improper police tactics, a goal that the LAPD has yet to fully achieve.

The Internal Affairs issue surfaced repeatedly in Thursday’s hearing, and will be on the table again today as the hearings continue.

In written comments to be delivered to the commission today, Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California ACLU, said her organization believes the issue is a highly important one.

“We know the story to be accurate and believe The Times disclosed a major problem,” Ripston wrote. “While it is difficult to assign personal responsibility for this inaction, I suspect that blame for our failure must be shared by the LAPD, the Police Commission, the City Council and the mayor. The net result is that a cornerstone of reform--introduction of an adequately sized, easily accessible IAD--remains a promise of change that is so far unkept.”

*

Commissioners also heard conflicting perspectives about the status of women and minorities within the LAPD. While city leaders emphasized the increasing diversity of the LAPD, others said progress had been too slow. One witness specifically singled out the dearth of top women LAPD leaders: There is no woman at the department above the rank of captain.

“To have in this day and age, in 1996, no women at the top, that’s just unheard of,” said Penny Harrington, a former Portland, Ore., police chief who is now active in Los Angeles policing issues. Although city leaders highlighted the list of witnesses who testified Thursday, a representative of the U.S. Department of Justice also was called to illuminate the commission on a topic that looms in the background of many LAPD issues--the possibility that federal officials may bring legal action against the police force for a pattern of condoning improper police conduct.

Few analysts think such a move is likely, but Steven H. Rosenbaum, special litigation counsel from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, passed up a chance to reassure local officials.

Although Rosenbaum said he is always pleased to see investigations concluded more quickly than predicted, he stressed: “We will stay engaged as long as we need to stay engaged.”