Civilian Control of LAPD Is Elusive Despite Reforms

‘We know who the bad guys are. Reputations become well-known. . . . [But] the sergeants know that . . . officers who . . . generate the most complaints also make a lot of arrests and write a lot of tickets.” These are the words of the late Asst. Chief Jesse A. Brewer, as told to the Christopher Commission in 1991.

“The sergeant,” said the lieutenant, “was quarterbacking the whole thing . . . “Ambitious officers [were trying] to do the right thing . . . trying to impress supervisors . . . and stopping at nothing to do that.” These words have been used to characterize the unfolding scandal at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division.

The remarkable similarity in these descriptions of the LAPD’s worst moments in the 1990s raises a question: Why have the Christopher Commission’s reforms, most of which are now law, done so little to curb police misconduct? Three times over the past decade, the people of Los Angeles have voted for more civilian control and oversight of their police department precisely because of incidents like those alleged to have occurred at Rampart. Yet, they still don’t have it.

The Christopher Commission was convened by Mayor Tom Bradley following the brutal beating of motorist Rodney King by four LAPD officers. Its conclusions proved so devastating that Chief of Police Daryl F. Gates was forced to resign and a new reform-minded chief was brought in from outside the department. The LAPD’s hard-charging style of policing was condemned, and civilian oversight of the department was harshly criticized for being nonexistent. The next year, Los Angeles endured the worst big-city rioting in the 20th century, aimed directly at the LAPD. The time was ripe for what the entire city seemed to be demanding: strong civilian oversight and a philosophy of community policing that underscored the principle that society controls the police, not the other way around.

It would be premature to make a direct connection between the alleged frame-ups, shootings and beatings at Rampart Division and the ineffectiveness of the inspector general’s office, one of the Christopher Commission’s key recommendations for bringing the LAPD under greater civilian control. What can be said, however, is that the LAPD’s first two inspectors general were deliberately thwarted by Chief Bernard C. Parks in their attempts to monitor the department at a time when patterns of abuse in the Rampart Division may have been detected. So what can be done?

First, the Police Commission must use its power to set policy, broadly direct the affairs of the LAPD and impose direct civilian control and oversight over the department. Simultaneously, it must serve as a check and balance to the LAPD’s seemingly unquenchable desire to be accountable only to itself, not to the public it serves. How, after all, can men and women with the power to kill or destroy lives be permitted to hide behind a wall of secrecy and possess a monopoly on information about themselves?

Second, it should be acknowledged that an inspector general’s office is one of the weakest forms of civilian oversight in California. A station-house complaint doesn’t go to the inspector general; it goes to internal affairs, which only serves to perpetuate the problem of cops policing cops. A good inspector general can only look at systemic problems, not individual cases. Nevertheless, the inspector general’s office should be enlarged and allowed to function unimpeded until public support for something better can be mustered.

At least such an office would have the virtue of the system currently in place in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. In 1992, the Board of Supervisors hired special counsel Merrick Bobb to monitor the department, to which he was given complete access. Since then, Bobb has released semiannual--and frequently highly critical--reports on the department. Such a regular flow of information would allow the public to differentiate between a “rotten apple” incident, as Parks has described Rampart, and a true systemic breakdown.

Giving the inspector general the kind of power Bobb enjoys, however, would not address the heart of the problem: police officers investigating their fellow officers and sergeants and division captains discouraging the filing of complaints. What’s needed instead is a civilian-controlled system in which citizens, particularly poor, powerless ones, feel confident that when they file a complaint about an officer, they can expect to receive a semblance of truth and justice.

San Francisco, San Diego County, Oakland, Berkeley, Sacramento and San Jose all allow for at least some civilian role in the investigation or oversight of police-misconduct complaints that is stronger than an inspector general’s office. In contrast to an inspector general, for example, these municipalities have civilian bodies that establish the principle of direct accountability to the public either through direct investigation of police misconduct or as an investigative panel that resolves a civilian complaint during a public hearing. Even the weakest models--Sacramento and San Jose--have the authority to look over the shoulders of internal-affairs investigators and evaluate the job they’re doing in terms of fairness and accuracy.

The best example of an effective, impartial civilian investigative agency is San Francisco’s, which has been in existence since 1982. Like Los Angeles, San Francisco has a police commission to which its police chief reports. Every civilian-generated complaint must, by law, be investigated by an independent agency known as the Police Commission Office of Citizen Complaints (OCC).

The OCC investigates more than 1 thousand complaints a year. Its budget is locked into a city-charter requirement that there must be one full-time OCC investigator for every 150 sworn officers. The office, according to OCC director Mary C. Dunlap, has a staff of 30, including 15 investigators with backgrounds as non-SFPD cops, attorneys and other professionals experienced in fact-gathering. They are schooled in police science and other investigative skills, screened for bias and trained to keep their personalities and politics out of the investigations.

Once the OCC has completed an investigation, it sends its findings and recommendations to the San Francisco Police Department for final action. If there are any disputes between it and the SFPD over the findings, the police commission makes the final determination on what should be done.

According to San Francisco Police Chief Fred H. Lau, who has run the department since January 1996, the system is working. He characterizes his relationship with the OCC as good, adding that the office provides “a conduit for people to voice their concerns about policing,” as well as a “check and balance for the public.” The public, he says, “feels that the OCC is an institutional advocate for their concerns.”

Of the 1,043 complaints reviewed in 1998, 108 were sustained, meaning that more than 900 resulted in no action being taken against an officer. That is one factor, says Lau, that indicates his officers are getting a fair shake. Moreover, “everything OCC finds is subject to review by the police department’s internal-affairs investigators . . . before anybody is disciplined.” The officers’ union further protects their rights, serving as a defense attorney throughout an investigation. And, as everywhere in California, the officers are protected by the powerful Police Officers Bill of Rights. All this, Lau points out, serves as a check and balance ensuring that officers don’t get railroaded.

An additional benefit of the OCC system, according to Dunlap, is that it requires her office to point out policy failures that need to be corrected. “We made 12 policy-change suggestions last year, ranging from use of pepper spray to officers carrying business cards. If the department doesn’t follow through on them, we take it up with the police commission.”

The true measure of the OCC’s success, says Dunlap, is that her office is receiving “complaints from a wide range of people who are most impacted by police service and who have traditionally been fearful of stepping forward.”

The hard work here in Los Angeles is not in finding a good oversight system but in mustering and maintaining the political support for one. Lately in Los Angeles, the will to do so seems to be reviving. It’s about time we found a way. *