Big Challenges for New Sheriff

The good news about the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is that there has been a substantial drop in excessive force lawsuits against deputies since 1992. That was the year that the Kolts Commission released a detailed report and an agenda for curtailing brutality by sheriff’s deputies. Litigation on other alleged abuses such as civil rights violations, unlawful search and seizure and false arrest claims are also down.

But officers at the department’s Century and Lennox stations stand out in sharp contrast, with large numbers of pending misconduct cases. This represents one of Sheriff-elect Lee Baca’s biggest challenges, given that he supervised those stations as Region II chief for more than four years.

Baca claimed in his campaign that he had tried to implement changes but had been overruled. He will soon be in charge and has already outlined some promising plans, saying, “I want to straighten this out as quickly as I can.” We’ll watch to see what he accomplishes.

Merrick Bobb, the special counsel appointed by the county Board of Supervisors to monitor the department’s progress toward Kolts Commission reforms, points out several problems. At the Century station, for example, the department has “put its least experienced deputies in its most violent and challenging territory with marginal supervision,” Bobb’s most recent report states. Moreover, it says, Century has been plagued with an “intolerably heavy training burden . . . with as many as 30 rookies at a time.” And there are few African American deputies, as well as an inadequate number of Spanish-speaking deputies.

Clearly, the supervisor of this region must be a strong commander and he must have Baca’s full support. One model for success might be the Los Angeles Police Department’s transfer, a few years back, of one of its most highly regarded leaders, Mark Kroeker, from the San Fernando Valley to South Los Angeles.

Two other areas also need Baca’s attention, the Bobb report says. Both deal with eliminating snafus in jail custody. It is vital that the department initiate long-term, permanent solutions to problems of mistaken releases, over-detentions, inmate tracking, classification and medical care, the report notes.

The creation of an automated link between the jail and the trial court information systems, for example, has been delayed. So too have been the automated warrant checks that Bobb says are “essential for quick processing of inmate releases and an essential safeguard against mistaken release of inmates wanted for serious crimes in other jurisdictions.”

Baca will have to press for action on those fronts too as soon as he takes office.