Consolidating City’s Officers Shouldn’t Be a Budget Trick

Four years ago, then-Chief Willie L. Williams proposed to increase the size of the Los Angeles Police Department by 3,000 sworn officers over four years. The “Police Public Safety Plan,” as it was called, was poorly argued and its implementation plan vague. Not surprisingly, the department fell well short of achieving the plan’s goals.

To be fair, the chief was merely carrying through on a mayoral initiative. Williams and his staff had unsuccessfully tried to downsize expansion. The final report cogently illustrated the conflict between politics and professional ethics.

Last week, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks submitted to the City Council a report, “One City--One Police Department,” proposing that the LAPD absorb all police and security operations currently funded by the city. These include policing responsibilities in the Department of Airports, Harbor Department, City Housing Authority, Department of Recreation and Parks and Department of General Services. Regrettably, Parks arguments for police consolidation, and his implementation plan, suffer from the same kind of superficial reasoning and planning that marred Williams’ endeavor.

Williams’ plan to expand the department failed because it overreached. It tried to rapidly assimilate lots of new officers without making any adjustments in the training structure that turns them out. Parks’ report doesn’t recognize the complexities of what it proposes, particularly in light of the problems arising from the recent LAPD takeover of transit authority police.

The non-LAPD security operations are products of a decades-long trend toward specialization within huge, bureaucratic organizations. Specialization was undertaken in the name of increased effectiveness, efficiency and economy (the same objectives touted in Parks’ consolidation proposal). The city Department of Transportation, for example, was gradually spun off from the LAPD, resulting in a department whose functions duplicate many traditional police tasks.

With the possible exception of security services provided by the Department of General Services, each of the specialized police operations exists primarily to carry out the mission of their parent organization, whether it be transportation, shipping, housing or recreation. These security employees tend to possess the narrow, sometimes esoteric knowledge associated with specialized training and experience. Sometimes, special certifications is required to get the job.

Often, familiarity with general police practices and procedures, coupled with the imprimatur of limited police authority, enable these security personnel to perform their jobs according to relatively high standards. No monolithic outside police agency could hope to fulfill the requirements of staffing, training and supervising police or security employees under such circumstances. Furthermore, police officers, regardless of their job proficiency, could not be expected to be as effective in carrying out the highly specialized tasks of these other city departments.

The economics involved in absorbing specialized officers are even more problematic. In the past, the LAPD provided some services to these agencies as part of its general responsibility to police the city. Over the years, the cost of the assigned LAPD officers was charged to the budgets of the respective agencies. LAPD officers are very expensive. Their direct compensation and benefits must be high enough to attract qualified candidates. With some exceptions, the duties of specialized security personnel do not require the physical, mental and background standards demanded of LAPD officers. It’s the proverbial, “Why pay for a Cadillac when a Chevrolet will do?”

Admittedly, the economic issue is clouded somewhat by the fact that there has been a steady expansion in the scope of duties performed by these specialized officers. This is due to at least three factors: a historically understaffed LAPD; the officers’ pursuit of better working conditions and higher pay and benefits has been accompanied by a greater willingness to take on added duties, and the departments’ general acquiescence to these demands. Yet, the wages and benefits of LAPD officers still greatly exceed those of the specialized forces.

Why, then, is Parks echoing the misjudgments of his predecessor?

The answer may lie in Williams’ failure to achieve his expansion goals and in the economic realities facing the city. In the near future, it is highly unlikely that money will be found to further expand the department. (Mayor Richard Riordan has asked the Police Department to bring him a budget 6% below the current one.) It may even be difficult to maintain current staffing levels when the federal money used to hire additional officers runs out. Indeed, Parks recently complained to the City Council that a hiring freeze was denying his department critical civilian support.

Consolidating all the city-funded policing agencies under the LAPD umbrella would immediately add more than 600 officers to the department. It could also give the LAPD claims on the budgets of the city agencies losing their specialized police. In the case of the departments of Airports and Harbor, which administer their budgets independently of the council, and, to a lesser degree, the Housing Authority, the suddenly available money could be quite considerable.

Parks’ plan may, like Williams’, be a mayoral initiative. Richard Riordan has made no secret of his wish to augment public safety using money from the independent departments. But in the absence of more compelling arguments, tapping new revenue streams to pay for promised officers is not reason enough to revise long-standing city policy.