Judge Refuses to Halt Disbanding of Police Force

A Superior Court judge has turned aside a legal challenge to the city of Compton’s decision to disband its police force and hire sheriff’s deputies in its place.

Compton’s City Council, citing a wave of killings in the south Los Angeles County suburb, voted July 11 to make the change. But several citizens and police leaders asked the court earlier this month for an order blocking the city from signing a contract with the county sheriff. They argued that the Compton Police Department cannot be supplanted with a simple City Council vote because it was established by charter.

But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe declined to stop the replacement from going forward. In a five-page ruling delivered to lawyers in the case Monday, Yaffe said that while Compton’s original 1924 charter specifically included a police department, a more recent version--approved in 1983--did not.

“Because the charter does not establish a police department or assign any functions or duties to a police department,” wrote Yaffe, the law “does not forbid the City Council from transferring functions of the police department to the county sheriff by resolution.”

Richard J. Silber, an attorney for the other plaintiffs, criticized the ruling and called Yaffe’s decision to cancel a Monday hearing on the matter “extraordinary.” He said he will appeal the ruling.

The city has yet to sign a formal contract with the county sheriff to police Compton, but both county and city officials expect a deal to be finalized in the next few weeks. Mayor Omar Bradley, who has feuded with Compton police officers, has said that the sheriff can provide more street officers at a lower cost than the city’s own department.