Most Top Brass Criticize LAPD Strategic Plan

The majority of Los Angeles Police Department command officers believe the LAPD lacks a meaningful strategic plan for the next three years and say the department’s leadership has failed in important efforts such as the move to community policing.

In addition, LAPD senior officers say resources are being poorly allocated and teams set up to monitor the progress of the strategic plan have failed to do the job set out for them.

Those findings are contained in a recently completed survey of LAPD top brass conducted by the department’s Planning and Research Division. Although the survey has not been widely circulated, a copy was obtained by The Times Wednesday. Asked about it, the president of the city’s Police Commission said it was refreshing in its candor but troubling in its conclusions.

The five-year strategic plan, titled “Commitment to Action,” was completed in 1995. In a letter accompanying the plan, Police Chief Willie L. Williams said: “Literally thousands of hours were spent collecting information, defining priorities, developing and debating alternatives and selecting the strategies outlined in this plan.”

The plan covered a wide variety of areas, from recommending community policing as the department’s central philosophy to pledging elimination of “all forms of bias and disrespect among employees” to urging creation of a 24-hour-a-day press relations office.

Despite the importance that Williams and other LAPD leaders have attached to the strategic plan, the survey reveals deep internal dissatisfaction with it. The survey, prepared with the concurrence of Williams’ top aide, Assistant Chief Ronald C. Banks, polled 24 of the LAPD’s top 30 leaders.

Of those officials, all but one of the deputy or assistant chiefs has been promoted by Williams. Twelve of the department’s 17 commanders were promoted to those positions by Williams.

Among the specific complaints registered by those officials and reported by the survey:

* Most command staffers said the strategic plan was too broad and contained conflicting priorities. They also complained that the plan contained a number of suggestions that were beyond the Police Department’s control.

* Most top brass said they understood that community policing was the department’s top goal, but they believed that no definition of the idea has been established. “There is no vision of what the department should be in the future,” the report concluded.

* One “critical organizational concern,” the report said, is the sense that department resources are being misused and that police support functions are being cut too short to beef up patrol operations. “Many staff officers expressed deep concern about the organizational health of the department,” the report said.

* “Action teams” created to guide and report on the implementation of the strategic plan have done virtually nothing. According to the report, “a brief telephonic survey of 65 of the 67 Action Teams revealed that only three teams actually meet.” That did not stop the teams from preparing quarterly reports, however.

Those assessments are sharply at odds with Williams’ own estimation of the strategic plan. In his letter seeking reappointment to a second five-year term, the chief highlighted the development of the plan as evidence of his leadership.

“The plan is an action-oriented document which will guide the department into the future, while also providing a method for evaluating the department’s progress,” Williams wrote. “The plan’s 32 goals cover all aspects of police service, and when implemented, will make the LAPD America’s premier police department.”

According to the survey, Williams’ command staff agrees that the plan “provides a road map for the department.” But those top aides cast a far more negative view of the document overall.

“Most respondents agreed that the resulting document was too broad; contained priorities which were perceived as conflicting, strategic priorities which were inconsistent in their degree of specificity . . . and contained philosophical concepts, value statements and goals or priorities beyond the department’s control,” the survey report said.

Williams was not available Wednesday to discuss the report, but said through a spokesman that outside analysts have surveyed police officers in a number of stations and concluded that many officers have read and support the department’s strategic plan. According to Williams, more than 70% of Los Angeles police officers have read the plan, and of those who have read it, more than two-thirds agree with it.

As the Police Commission weighs the merits of reappointing Williams to a second term or seeking new leadership, it is using two dozen criteria to measure the chief’s performance. First among those is the question of whether Williams has shown the ability to “articulate a vision for the department and clear and consistent goals.”

Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher, who received a copy of the survey Wednesday, would not comment on its applicability to Williams’ quest for reappointment. Fisher did say that the findings of the survey raised questions about the effectiveness of the department’s strategic plan.

“I am encouraged at the critical self-analysis in this report,” said Fisher, who, along with other commissioners, occasionally has been troubled by Police Department reports that skirt criticism. “Still, I am concerned that we aren’t further along toward dealing with these problems.”

Police commissioners are scheduled to meet today and Friday to discuss Williams’ bid for a second term. A final vote on the matter is expected next week, after which the City Council could decide to review the commission’s action.

Although many council members say they are inclined to defer to the commission, Councilman Nate Holden, the chief’s strongest supporter on the council, has scheduled a news conference for today to announce that he hopes that the council will review the decision.

Possibly the most troubling area of comments uncovered by the command staff survey are those that reflect on the Police Department’s progress toward implementing community-based policing. That philosophy of law enforcement, one that emphasizes problem solving over traditional police methods, is widely embraced by police administrators today.

Williams is an enthusiastic advocate and has made the move toward community policing a hallmark of his LAPD administration.

“Whereas prior to my tenure, the department’s actions tended to divide the police from the public, I have initiated the implementation of community policing,” the chief wrote in his letter seeking a second term. In recent appearances, the chief has proclaimed that the LAPD has become the model for big-city police departments seeking to move to community policing.

According to the survey, however, the chief’s own top staff remains confused about what the department is trying to do.

“Most of the command staff focused on quality community policing as the department’s top priority,” the report says. “However, there was agreement that a definition of community-based, problem-oriented policing for Los Angeles has not yet been established.”

Some outside observers of the department agree, noting that it has been five years since the blue-ribbon reform group known as the Christopher Commission recommended that the department move toward community policing.

“At this juncture, five years after the Christopher Commission, it is astonishing that there has been such a lack of articulation as to what community policing is for the Los Angeles Police Department,” said Allan Parachini, public affairs director of the Southern California American Civil Liberties Union. “The LAPD has failed to do even the minimum to define what community policing is in Los Angeles.”

Banks, who transmitted the survey report to the commission, said its critique of community policing is misplaced.

“I don’t think that is a valid criticism,” he said. “There are a lot of our people who know where we’re going.”

Banks agreed that the survey uncovered some uneasiness among top LAPD officials about the organization’s strategic plan and the direction it proposed for the department. But Banks said he was not troubled by those comments.

“It was always the position of management that the plan was a living document,” Banks said. “I don’t have any undue concerns.”