Chief’s Discipline Guidelines Praised by Police Panel

Despite criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday praised new departmental discipline guidelines drafted by Chief Bernard C. Parks.

The chief’s document replaces one approved by the commission last year. The five-member civilian panel backed away from its own guidelines after the chief told commissioners that they had overstepped their authority under the city’s charter and the city attorney backed him up.

Commissioner T. Warren Jackson said Parks’ guideline policy is “better and goes further” than the one originally approved by the board.

Parks’ manual is a sharp departure from one that a commission task force spent a year putting together. The commission’s document set specific ranges of punishments for misconduct. Additionally, the task force identified certain types of misconduct as more egregious than others.

The chief, on the other hand, mapped out his philosophy on punishment rather than establishing specific penalty ranges or prioritizing offenses. He said the commission’s guidelines were too inflexible and infringed on his authority as chief.

Parks’ manual focuses on helping managers figure out what factors to assess when handing down penalties. Discipline works, according to his manual, only when “fairness, consistency and clearly stated expectations” are built into the process.

But not everybody was impressed by the chief’s approach.

“We have some very serious concerns about Chief Parks’ discipline guidelines and are troubled by their radical departure from the commission guidelines,” said Heather Carrigan, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.

Carrigan, who acknowledged that the group had reviewed only a segment of the chief’s manual, said the commission task force “sought to address a strong perception that discipline was being handed out unevenly in the department, with low-ranking and minorities often receiving harsher punishment than others.”

Parks said his guidelines are intended to address the same concerns and give managers more discretion to mete out punishment fairly.

Commissioner Gerald Chaleff said he was impressed with the chief’s document, adding that he is against having rigid, set ranges for punishments. “Guidelines only lead to inequitable results,” he said.

Attorney Merrick Bobb, a consultant to the Police Commission, called the chief’s guidelines excellent.

However, Bobb said that giving department managers wide discretion in discipline matters heightens the board’s responsibility to provide effective oversight of the chief and his command staff.