Panel Approves Reforms in Probes of Police Shootings

The Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday adopted several reforms aimed at improving the quality of the LAPD’s investigations of officer-involved shootings and other use-of-force incidents.

The commission’s action came in response to the LAPD’s ongoing corruption scandal and recommendations proposed last month by an independent panel that criticized the way the department handles and investigates such matters.

The LAPD’s handling of officer-involved shootings has long been an area of concern for many police reform activists. The issue came to the forefront last year after the shooting of a frail, mentally ill homeless woman who was armed with a screwdriver. Ex-officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez brought additional scrutiny to those investigations with his allegations that officers and their supervisors covered up unjustified shootings, including that of a former gang member who was recently awarded $15 million by the city.

Perez told detectives that he helped plant weapons on suspects and fabricated stories to ensure that shootings would be found “in policy.”

On Tuesday, the five-member civilian Police Commission spent several hours debating the merits of the Rampart Independent Review Panel’s recommendations on the issues. Of 21 recommendations dealing with officer-involved shootings and use-of-force issues, the commission approved four. The other reforms are scheduled to be considered next month.

The commission unanimously embraced a proposal that allows the civilian inspector general to sit in on the secret deliberations of LAPD shooting review boards, which determine whether a shooting is within department policy.

Richard Drooyan, who served as general counsel to the Rampart Independent Review Panel, told the commissioners that having the inspector general, or his staff, present at those closed-door hearings would improve the commission’s oversight of the department.

“It increases your ability to get information,” Drooyan said. “I don’t see a downside.”

The LAPD’s top brass opposed the proposal, saying that the presence of the inspector general could unduly influence the deliberations of the shooting review boards.

LAPD and commission officials noted that many recommendations from the panel are already underway at the department as a result of the recent federal consent decree reached in the wake corruption scandal.

Department officials, however, disagreed with some of the panel’s recommendations.

One key recommendation is that the department end its practice of ordering officers who have been involved in a shooting to provide department investigators with a detailed statement about the incident.

Since the officers are compelled to make the statement, it cannot be used against them in a criminal investigation, nor can any information derived from the statement. Critics say that prematurely compelling officers to make such statements hinders the possibility of future criminal prosecutions.

The panel recommended that officers should not be ordered to make statements until after a criminal investigation of the incident is complete. Compelled statements, they argue, should be used for administrative purposes only.

In a handout distributed at the commission meeting, LAPD officials defended their practice of ordering officers to talk.

“Current practices were designed to facilitate the thorough investigation of all officer-involved shootings,” the document stated. “Only an extremely small percentage of these incidents are determined to involve criminal actions.”

Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy predicted that if officers were treated as criminal suspects in a shooting, and told that they had the right not to talk, they would exercise that right.

Attorney Jan Lawrence Handzlik, a former federal prosecutor and a member of the Rampart Independent Review Panel, said he and his colleagues found that was not necessarily the case.

Handzlik said neither the New York City Police Department nor the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department routinely compels officers to make statements about shootings, but that officers routinely provide statements anyway.

“They want to talk,” he said.

Department officials were also opposed to a recommendation that investigators audiotape walk-throughs, in which the involved officer leads investigators on a tour of the shooting scene, explaining his or her version of events.

LAPD officials rejected this idea, stating that ambient noise at many shooting scenes would make recording difficult and that things witnessed at the scene and referred to on the tape would be meaningless to someone simply listening to the tape later.