Keeping Records to Fight Crime

Southern California’s two biggest law enforcement agencies have made progress since citizen commissions began keeping an eye on them a few years ago. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has kept better track of problem officers, reduced costly excessive-use-of-force legal settlements, improved patrol operations and more fully integrated its uniformed ranks since the Kolts Commission made its recommendations in 1992. The L.A. Police Department is better integrated since the 1991 Christopher Commission report. However, women and minorities remain largely excluded from coveted positions in both departments. The pressure for reform must not subside.

The jails remain a major trouble spot for the Sheriff’s Department, according to lawyer Merrick K. Bobb, who has monitored reform in both departments and released his latest analysis Tuesday. Disturbances and assaults are fairly common in the county’s eight overcrowded custodial facilities, which house nearly 20,000 inmates in space designed for about 12,000. Bobb requested statistics on jail riots, assaults and use of force and pepper spray by guards. He received conflicting and incomplete information, which means the scope of the problems can’t be accurately determined. The department keeps inadequate statistics, according to Bobb, who however cited some recent improvement in that area.

Could poor record keeping account for the erroneous release of three inmates this year? Record keeping, much of it still done on paper in this era of computers, is a weakness of the LAPD too. The lack of adequate statistics hampers the analysis of data. For example, Mayor Richard Riordan asked months ago why LAPD arrests have dropped (arrests are up slightly in the Sheriff’s Department). The mayor is still waiting for an answer.

The percentage of excessive-force complaints is unchanged for the LAPD. Surely, the LAPD can learn from the Sheriff’s Department in this regard.

The LAPD and Sheriff’s Department have changed decidedly since the 1991 police beating of Rodney King focused attention on law enforcement in Los Angeles. But much more remains to be done: first and foremost, better record keeping; full integration of the command, elimination of problem officers and an end to excessive use of force and the subsequent lawsuits that drain taxpayers and erode public confidence. Public safety requires no less.