LAPD Needs Ongoing Training for Officers

While arresting a 42-year-old man who was behaving erratically, Los Angeles police officers restrained his hands and feet and laid him on his side, violating department policy. The man died of asphyxiation; his family sued the city.

Acting on a tip, officers arrested a man with a suitcase full of heroin apparently intended for sale. When he was jailed, the heroin was booked into evidence but not the suitcase or the man’s wallet, which linked him to the drugs. After a long, unsuccessful prosecution, the man sued the city for false imprisonment.

Other officers, under court order not to enforce a beach vending ban, nonetheless dispersed artists selling paintings on Venice Beach. The artists sued the city for violating the injunction.

What two facts do these disparate cases share? First, the officers’ actions resulted in the city paying a judgment or settling a lawsuit. The amounts were hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in one case, well over a million dollars. Second, in each case individual officers were assigned additional training in department policies and, in some instances, directed to learn new policies and procedures.

These are only three of many such cases that result in judgments paid by the city. Their common thread is that officers needed better training. This need also appears in recent cases in which mentally ill people have died in tragic altercations with officers who were unprepared to interact with them. Overall, these instances harken back to the Christopher Commission reform recommendations, where a major thrust was the issue of training.

The City Council has grudgingly paid settlements for years, based on the advice of the city attorney that they might be substantially higher if the cases were lost. But we were always left with the question of how we could prevent such lawsuits in the future.

Because my City Council committee assignments--budget and finance and chair of public safety--have brought these issues into focus, I have pursued them.

I have reached the inescapable conclusion that although our police officers are basically well-trained, their ongoing application of training needs examination and updating.

Passage of time after academy graduation can dim the memory of training. Further, changes in our society place demands on officers that they were never well-equipped or meant to handle.

Whatever the cause, I believe the department needs to consider proactive, ongoing training for its officers based on real-life situations, including those that have prompted successful lawsuits against the city.

In today’s workplace, the need for continuing training is clear. Physicians, attorneys, Realtors and teachers are professionals required to receive updated education on developments in their fields to make them more effective at work. Our police officers deserve no less.

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The department does conduct training beyond the Police Academy in two forms. First, officers receive 24 hours of professional education biennially. Second, the department gives 45 minutes of roll call training daily, taught by unit commanders.

The flaw is that no evaluation is made of what officers learn. No matter how good the curriculum is, there’s no way to measure what they absorb.

Because of the continuing drain these cases make on city funds, the recent growth of the police force, the need for more experienced training officers and because current training appears inadequate, I have asked LAPD Chief Bernard Parks to report to the Public Safety Committee on how we can improve department training, identifying deficiencies and indicating how we can adopt successes in other cities.

Recently, the Public Safety Committee recommended a $500,000 annual increase in the department’s revolving training fund for use on additional education. Some of this money should be focused on how to deal with the mentally ill and the homeless on our streets.

I have also conferred recently with senior police training officers and believe they are willing to work to improve overall training. Representatives of the police union have also voiced their support for such efforts. But we can and should do more.

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When faced with a need to improve its handling of domestic violence cases, the department worked with experts in related fields and developed comprehensive programs that are the model for police agencies nationwide.

Los Angeles has spent millions on state-of-the-art equipment for its police, and they deserve it. Shouldn’t our officers and citizens be able to expect the training to be as good as their equipment?