Police Commission Chief Assails Community Panels

Los Angeles Police Commission President Edith Perez criticized one of the key elements of community-based policing Saturday, saying that the neighborhood councils meant to advise police have become “booster groups.”

Speaking to a gathering of South Los Angeles residents at USC, Perez said she is afraid that the concerns of some citizens are being overlooked by the councils, called Community-Police Advisory Boards.

The LAPD panel discussion was part of a daylong conference called by City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas for residents of his district. The annual meeting, called the Empowerment Congress, serves as a sort of nonvoting parliament for his constituents.

More than 500 people attended the Saturday conference, including presidential candidate and former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley. He called the gathering a model for fixing American democracy, which he said is broken.

“So many communities need an opportunity to show the world how good they are,” he said.

Members of the community police boards, formed in 1994, are appointed by division captains. That process has long upset LAPD critics, who favor a selection method that would result in more independent bodies. They say the boards do not fulfill their duty of being a conduit of community concerns to the department.

The boards are an essential part of community-based policing, whose premise is that officers should be partners with residents in fighting crime.

Police Commissioner T. Warren Jackson said he is trying to find ways to “get different groups represented. Youths, for instance, are not represented on the community boards, he said.

Several of those at the meeting, including some members of the boards, said they agree with Perez.

“I agree totally with what you said about it being a booster group,” commented Dorothy Fuller, a member of the advisory board for the Southwest Division.

She said the Police Commission should “inform the [boards] that they’re not doing what they ought to be doing. Instead, all we get are accolades.”

But Horace Penman, a member of the 77th Street Division community board, disagreed with Perez. “I’m no damn booster. I bang my shoe on the table like Khrushchev,” he said.

Perez said she wants other civic organizations, such as homeowners groups, to work with the boards.

Some community members were highly critical of a change Police Chief Bernard C. Parks made in community policing--the elimination of “senior lead officers,” veterans who were based in neighborhoods and became friendly with residents.

Marianne Muellerleile, another resident, said that a little more than a year ago, the senior lead officers, who attended monthly block club meetings, were reassigned to other duties.

With their removal, other officers were supposed to make routine contact with residents but have failed to do so, Muellerleile said.

“Now everyone is supposed to be accountable, but no one is accountable,” she said.

“When I have a problem, I now go to the deputy district attorney, the city councilman or the [Building and Safety Department] abatement officer,” she said.

Saturday’s panel focused on the progress of police reform since 1991, when the Christopher Commission on police abuse was formed after LAPD officers beat motorist Rodney G. King.

In assessing LAPD changes since then, Perez stepped into a department controversy: the high number of officers fired under Parks. Some officers have called the terminations heavy-handed.

But Perez cited the firings--54 in the last year--as a sign that the department will not tolerate misconduct. She said that only 13 officers were let go in 1990, and that Parks fired officers for violations including excessive force, sexual harassment and domestic violence.

The audience cheered Perez’s account of the firings, which prompted her to quip, “Tell the police union.” Asked what she thought of the high number, she replied, “I don’t know if with 54 he got them all.”

Civil rights lawyer Constance Rice, who also sat on the panel, praised the department for its reforms since the Christopher Commission, including the firings.

But she said the department still retaliates against officers who speak out against misconduct. “Discipline is often part of retaliation [against dissenters]. There are a few officers on that list [whose firing] I would question,” she said.

Rice added that police reforms also do not address the social problems underlying crime.

“Police officers I represent tell me, ‘They won’t give kids jobs, the kids join gangs, then they want us to put them in jail,’ ” she said.