Drooyan

In the wake of the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King by LAPD officers in 1991, then-Mayor Tom Bradley appointed a blue-ribbon panel to fully investigate the Police Department. Known as the Christopher Commission, the panel produced a powerful indictment, unequivocally characterizing the Los Angeles Police Department as needlessly confrontational, aggressive and brutal on the street, isolated from a citizenry it often regarded as the enemy and unaccountable to civilian authority. The commission laid out a detailed reform agenda. In subsequent years, some of the reforms were enacted into law through ballot initiatives, while others were never implemented by the department.

Nine years later, Richard E. Drooyan, who was deputy general counsel with the Christopher Commission, was chosen to lead another panel investigating LAPD misconduct, this time, the Rampart corruption scandal.

Since former Officer Rafael A. Perez first disclosed the tale of beatings, frame-ups and shootings that he and his fellow officers committed as members of the anti-gang unit known as CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums), five officers have been indicted and three convicted. More than 70 others are facing possible indictment or disciplinary action, and as many as 3,000 convictions require review and may be overturned by the courts.

On March 1, the LAPD released its own Board of Inquiry report detailing what had gone wrong with Rampart CRASH. While exhaustive, the report focused primarily on managerial and operational problems within Rampart Division. No outside community input was solicited.

The Police Commission then announced it would conduct its own investigation, one that wouldn’t focus on Perez’s charges, but on “the broader issues raised by his allegations.” The Rampart Independent Review Panel, composed of more than 190 attorneys, investigators, retired judges and community and business leaders, was assembled, and Drooyan was tapped to lead it.

Trim, intensely focused and no-nonsense, Drooyan’s persona reflects the tough government prosecutor he was for 12 years. Before leaving the Justice Department in 1997, he was named chief assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. As chief of its criminal division, he supervised about 160 U.S. attorneys and their support staff. Since 1999, he has been a litigation partner at the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

A graduate of Claremont Men’s College and Harvard Law School, the 50-year-old Drooyan grew up in Woodland Hills, attending Taft High School. He is married to Superior Court Judge Anita Dymant. They have two children.

In an interview in his downtown law offices, Drooyan talked about his panel’s findings.

Question: Your report was reminiscent of the Christopher Commission’s. Many of that commission’s key reforms were never implemented. Why should the public believe that yours will be?

Answer: I look at the Christopher Commission report differently. Key reforms were implemented. For example, taking away the chief of police’s Civil Service protection, limiting his tenure to two five-year terms and creating the offices of executive director [of the Police Commission] and of inspector general--all were critical in creating a framework for more reforms.

Q: If the framework was there, how could we have had the Rampart scandal?

A: One of the things we observed was the weakness of civilian oversight. The Christopher Commission concluded that by increasing the Police Commission staff, by establishing an executive director [to oversee the staff] and an office of inspector general [to keep the commission independently informed], you could have effective civilian oversight. Our conclusion is that this is not enough. Truly effective civilian oversight requires a full-time president and vice president of the Police Commission, who can spent all their professional time thinking about the department, identifying issues, setting an agenda and then following through.

Q: Should they and the other commissioners still be appointed by the mayor?

A: Yes. There has to be accountability to the residents of Los Angeles. . . . If you’re going to have accountability, you have to have a chain of command, with the commission accountable to the mayor, and the chief accountable to the commis sion. If the commissioners are not doing their job, then it’s up to the mayor to replace them.

Q: But how do you ensure that full-time commissioners don’t get co-opted by the LAPD, which has been a traditional problem with the Police Commission?

A: You have to find people who are respected, professional, independent and who will resist any effort to be co-opted. I’ve been impressed by the people who have served on the commission. But given their part-time status, they wind up relying on the department for their information, and they don’t have the ability to independently analyze what they are given. Having a full-time president and vice president will correct the information imbalance and enhance the commission’s ability to assess what the department is doing.

Q: What about the problem of getting the information from the LAPD, a problem that both inspectors general have complained about?

A: This has been a significant problem. The department has tried to marginalize the inspector general’s office. It has resisted and ignored requests for information, and I don’t think the Police Commission has done a particularly good job of backing up the IG’s requests. They’ve issued broad proclamations about the right of the IG to have access to information, but I don’t think the situation has gotten significantly better. Recently, there was an attempt to put a limitation on the IG’s office that is inconsistent with the terms of the consent degree [that the city has reached with the Justice Department to reform the LAPD]. This happened at a time when many people think the powers of the inspector general should be expanded, not limited.

Q: You say the LAPD “has to be receptive” for reform to occur. But as you’ve pointed out, it has not been. So what can be done?

A: The chief of police has a five-year term. At the end of that term, he will be evaluated by the Police Commission. If the commission is dissatisfied with the job the chief is doing--including following its directives, resisting the inspector general and not being receptive to outside ideas--that will be a significant factor in whether or not he gets reappointed.

Q: How important is the mayor in reforming the department?

A: Very important. He has the ability to support the commissioners when they need him, and to ensure that the commissioners are accountable to him. But if he’s lukewarm about reform and doesn’t back the commission’s efforts to exercise oversight, it becomes difficult for the commission to do its job.

Q: Why has the city’s civilian leadership been so ineffective in reforming the LAPD?

A: Mayor [Richard] Riordan’s focus has been on building up the Police Department and providing public safety, rather than on the implementation of reforms. That’s where he wanted to use his political influence.

Q: But could he not have done both?

A: In hindsight, he certainly should have done both.

Q: Many observers think the paramilitary culture of the LAPD is a big obstacle to change. How critical is it?

A: When you say OK, let’s change the culture of the LAPD, you have to consider that it is a relatively small department covering a very large area and population, and that, historically, it has not been a community-based police force. The Christopher Commission recommended that the department adopt a community-based policing model. Some of that has happened, but not enough. To the extent that the LAPD has undertaken community-based policing, the decisions are not collaborative with the community. For example, it was the department that decided unilaterally to put senior lead officers [who served as liaisons between the department and community] back in their cars without consulting the community.

Q: Why has that problem not been dealt with?

A: Because there remains an insularity to the department, an attitude that if a problem exists, it needs to be fixed with a solution that comes from the department. How you change that attitude is a much more complex question. You can try, but if the command staff doesn’t embrace it, it’s just not going to happen.

Q: How do you make it happen?

A: You start with a mayor committed to reform, and who will lead the commission in a reform effort. Those individuals need to be committed to changing the culture and attitude of the department. We’re going to have a new mayor and a new commission starting next July. They’ll have to work with this chief [Bernard C. Parks] and see if those kinds of changes occur. If, at the end the chief’s term, which is up in July 2002, they don’t believe that they have, then they have the option of replacing this chief.

Q: How important is the chief in making these kinds of reforms happen?

A: Absolutely critical. If you’re going to change the culture of the department, you have to have a chief of police who’s willing to do that.

Q: In light of that, should Parks resign?

A: No. Many of the department’s problems preceded his tenure, and he has demonstrated a willingness to make changes. Nevertheless, there are morale problems that the next Police Commission will have to consider in deciding whether or not to retain him as chief of police.

Q: What did you find out about the department’s training of officers?

A: The LAPD has made significant strides in its [officer] training. But we found it tends to stress adherence to rules more than the development of judgment on the part of officers. We also felt that the department has not embraced [the post of] director of police training and education [recommended by the Christopher Commission and filled by an outsider.] She does not have the resources or the influence to really be effective in improving the department’s training.

Q: Do you see a connection between all these outside recommendations and the way the department has received them?

A: There is a failure to fully embrace ideas that come from outside the department. If the idea comes from within the LAPD, the department will find the resources to support it--for example, the recommendations from its own Board of Inquiry report. But has it fully embraced the office of inspector general or the director of training and education, or implemented a tracking system [for problem officers[, all of which were recommended by the Christopher Commission--the answer is no. That’s why you need a strong Police Commission to see that these things do get implemented.

Q: You mentioned the LAPD has made some strides in training officers. But we continue to see questionable shootings of people: an elderly, homeless woman, a man shot in the back at a Halloween party and an woman perhaps permanently blinded by a nervous officer firing beanbags.

A: Tragedies happen in police departments. What I do think is that the history of the department, the culture of the department, certainly colors how people view these incidents. I don’t know if these three shootings are the product of the training of LAPD officers. But there is a fundamental mistrust of the Los Angeles Police Department. It’s based on a legacy that precedes this decade’s incidents--from the Rodney King beating to the civil unrest to the Rampart scandal--that have severely tarnished the department’s reputation. Mistakes are going to happen, but when mistakes happen in the LAPD, there is no reservoir of goodwill among the public for them to believe that [a shooting] was a mistake.

Q: Critics complain that it’s not just the way the LAPD deals with gang members that’s a problem. It’s also how it deals with ordinary citizens: If you have an encounter with an LAPD officer, it’s going to be an unpleasant experience. Do you agree?

A: In our interviews of community leaders, a lot of them commented on the attitude you describe: Confrontational and hostile, us versus them. This was the theme expressed at a number of community meetings.

Q: It’s clear that Rampart CRASH was a law and a unit unto itself. How could a situation like that have existed without the chief of police and his command staff knowing about it?

A: I don’t know what the chief of police knew. I don’t think that he or anybody else in the command staff knew the specifics of Rampart. The failings are not that the department knew about the specifics and did not do anything. The issue is that there was general knowledge that Rampart CRASH had developed its own culture, was not being supervised very well and was resisting supervision. Yet, nothing was done to tighten supervision and control that unit.

Q: Why was nothing done?

A: I think it was a very productive unit: Arrests were up and crime was down. So rather than look at management and supervision issues, the department looked at the statistical results.

Q: How useful is the consent decree the city has signed with the Justice Department?

A: It’s one of the building blocks of reform. But the federal monitor [who will oversee the decree] doesn’t have a mandate to reform the LAPD. Its emphasis is on the implementation of procedures and the collection of data. It doesn’t address the framework for real civilian control of the department, as our report does. So we can’t rely on the consent decree to reform the LAPD.

Q: What was the most surprising thing, for you personally, that you found in the course of your investigation?

A: The disconnect between the LAPD and the community, and the disconnect between the department and its officers. The department has one view of how it’s doing its job, the community has a completely different view of the department’s performance; and the relationship between LAPD management and the Police Protective League appeared at times to be nonexistent. It just surprised me how much anger there is in the community toward the department and how much animosity there is between the LAPD management and the Protective League. *