D.A. Rollout Program Never Worked, and Never Will

In response to more shocking revelations of LAPD brutality in the Rampart Division, an old idea that never worked is again being talked about: Operation Rollout.

The program, in which a deputy district attorney “rolled out” to conduct an immediate, parallel investigation of a fatal shooting by police to help decide if criminal laws had been broken, was instituted in 1979 and, with little fanfare, discontinued in 1996 by Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. Rollouts didn’t work to address so-called “bad” LAPD shootings, and they will not work now to cure LAPD’s brutality excesses.

Long forgotten now is the Police Foundation’s 1981 report on Operation Rollout. The report by the foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that researches police policies, pointed out that the LAPD initially only grudgingly went along with the program after then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates was “forced to do so because of a ruling from the Board of Police Commissioners.” But, the report said, “the attitude of the LAPD to Operation Rollout was uncooperative.” Further, it noted that the LAPD’s method of investigating police shootings was seriously flawed because the LAPD conducted group interviews of its officers and never tape-recorded the first interview, which allowed officers in group interviews to get their stories in sync.

According to the report, when deputy district attorneys came to LAPD shooting scenes, they were prevented from investigating or even from standing close enough to get unobstructed views. They were kept away from witnesses, who then were literally let out back doors by officers in charge so that the deputy D.A.’s could not talk to them. Sometimes officers simply refused to be interviewed by the deputies, with no official consequences.

The report concluded that “the number of controversial shootings by the LAPD . . . seems to warrant [an] additional grand jury.”

In fact, the LAPD simply refused to abide by Operation Rollout’s guidelines, and from the start the program never was permitted to work. Operation Rollout produced virtually no prosecutions for police shootings, and only flagged a shooting when it crossed the very high threshold set by the criminal law for prosecutions. Nor is there any reason to believe that the program would be effective now, no matter how many rules and regulations were to be imposed on police officers. Police will always be inclined to protect their own.

The demise of Operation Rollout was a good thing, because its continued existence created the illusion that there was, in fact, some oversight of and independent investigation into LAPD shootings, when there was not.

There is an alternative. The U.S. Constitution sets a much lower threshold for police uses of force, including shootings, than does the criminal law. To make a criminal case, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that police officers either intentionally and wrongfully used their guns or did so recklessly. On the other hand, for a police shooting to be unconstitutional, it need only be unreasonable.

It does not take a deputy district attorney to make a credible determination that a shooting is constitutionally unreasonable, nor are deputy D.A.’s currently trained or qualified to make that determination. Having a deputy D.A. roll out to the scene of an LAPD shooting would be a waste of time and resources for everyone, including the taxpayers.

What is needed is the investigation of LAPD shootings by observers who understand the constitutional reasonableness standard, because a police shooting can at once be not criminal and be unreasonable. What needs to be determined is whether a given shooting is unreasonable.

The person best positioned to oversee this function at this time is the LAPD’s new inspector general, Jeffrey Eglash. The Board of Police Commissioners should charge him with the task. He should assemble a group of people from outside the LAPD who can go to shooting scenes and report back to him on the constitutional reasonableness of the shootings.

Such a program would have a chance at working, while Operation Rollout never did and never will.