Break Through the Unjustified Secrecy on Police Reform

The time is over for secret settlement negotiations between the U.S. Department of Justice and Los Angeles over the LAPD’s alleged “pattern and practice” of civil rights violations. The Justice Department should stop threatening to sue and simply file suit now against the city.

This would open the door to discovery proceedings, which surely would prove the extensive abusive practices by the Los Angeles Police Department. That’s when real settlement talks can begin about how to reform policing in Los Angeles.

At the very least, a lawsuit would end the secrecy that has surrounded the three months of negotiations. Although settlement negotiations in litigation usually occur in private, the secrecy in this instance is unnecessary and unacceptable. The negotiations are about what reforms to implement, including such matters as banning racial profiling, changing police training, revising the police discipline system and implementing community policing practices. While we have seen some news reports about the topics under discussion, we should be able to hear what our public officials at the bargaining table are actually saying on these important issues. Do the city’s negotiators--including the city attorney, the president of the Police Commission and the mayor’s chief of staff--favor aggressive reform or oppose it?

A key question is whether a settlement would take the form of a consent decree--a judicially enforceable order that must be complied with--or a far milder “memorandum of understanding.” We should know whether the city’s leaders are opposing a consent decree that would create external oversight of the LAPD under the supervision of a federal judge--a much more effective road to reform.

Secrecy is as unjustified here as it is when the City Council or any government is debating the contents of a bill. The negotiations involve trade-offs, with the city apparently saying that it will agree to some reforms in exchange for the Justice Department giving up its demands for other changes. Everyone in the city should be able to hear what’s said at the bargaining table and be able to express his or her views on the choices being made by government officials who, in the end, are responsible to us.

Everything that has been learned about the negotiations, and it’s not much, is that the Justice Department is requesting more extensive reforms than the city’s negotiators are willing to accept. Yet it is the secrecy itself that allows the city’s leaders to oppose and/or limit reform. If the negotiations were in the open, city officials would be less likely to fight proposed changes in the department. The traditional argument for secret negotiations--allowing participants to speak without being affected by public pressure--is particularly inappropriate here.

Equally inexplicable is why the Justice Department continues the negotiations at all. In May, the department announced that it was authorized to file suit against the city under federal law for the LAPD’s “pattern and practice” of police misconduct. There is virtually no chance that the Justice Department could lose such a suit; the police department’s own Board of Inquiry report documents such a “pattern and practice.”

But, mysteriously, the Justice Department has chosen the path of secret negotiations. And high-level city officials say that the city has every incentive to delay these negotiations as long as possible in the hope that George W. Bush wins the election in November and then drops the litigation or settles on terms that would be much more favorable to the LAPD.

All the more reason for the Justice Department to file suit now in federal court. Having done so, the Justice Department can gather evidence about the pattern and practice of abuse in Los Angeles. Such information would not only be invaluable in learning the full extent of the Rampart scandal, but it would also provide a further incentive for the city to settle, because the city knows that what the Justice Department learns in discovery could be used by victims of abuse in their suits against the LAPD.

The Justice Department’s suit against the city offers the best hope for rapid changes in the police department. Although it is understandable that Justice would prefer a settlement over the costs and tribulations of litigation, it should not agree to anything less than a consent decree mandating very substantial reforms of policing in Los Angeles. The best way for this to happen would be for the City Council to insist that all future negotiations occur in public and for the Justice Department to file suit immediately.