LAPD’s Unlearned Lessons

The Los Angeles Police Commission and its staff face a task that would have been unimaginable as recently as a year ago--restoring credibility to a department that long rested on its reputation for incorruptibility, a reputation we now know to be hollow. The LAPD’s own internal inquiry makes it clear that a climate ripe for abuse has long existed in the department and continued to exist even after the 1991 Christopher Commission identified key shortcomings in LAPD hiring, training and supervision.

Much of what still ails the LAPD was laid out more than nine years ago by the Christopher Commission. That commission’s namesake, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, a man of spare words, can’t hide his own disappointment: “It’s troubling to find that there are matters of real importance that were discussed in our report of nine years ago that remain unaddressed or not fully resolved today.”

Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, seemingly unable to hear what his own investigative team has told him, declares that his department has surpassed the changes called for in 1991. Mayor Richard Riordan hasn’t helped, failing to use more than $163,000 in federal money for a computer tracking system that would help identify problem officers. The mayor has undermined the Police Commission as well, floating the idea of firing commission President Gerald Chaleff, apparently because he dared to think independently.

The LAPD’s own Board of Inquiry report reads in some ways like an addendum to the 1991 Christopher Commission investigation, though its suggestions for remedies are all internal department reforms rather than calls for external oversight. Still, it is clear that serious, long-identified problems remain unattended to.

* A system out of balance: Those are the LAPD’s own words about its system for evaluating future and current officers. The LAPD board reviewed 14 former Rampart Division anti-gang officers, including chief Rampart informant Rafael Perez, from preemployment screening onward. Its inquiry found that the personal history questionnaires used for hiring were sometimes illegible. Psychological employment interviews had been discarded. Four officers were hired despite some of the following: a criminal record, bad personal finances including bankruptcy, narcotics involvement and histories of violent behavior. Half of the 14 were hired from outside of California, without in-person interviews. The department and others in the city rejected what members of the Christopher Commission said were key recommendations, including giving officers in the field regular psychological tests.

The LAPD report described job evaluations as “inherently unreliable and seldom an accurate reflection of performance.” In 113 personnel packages pulled at random, the officers’ average score was 21.4 out of 24 performance objectives, the report said--the equivalent of making A-minus the average grade.

* Beyond Rampart: Rampart was, of course, examined most closely. In reviewing 11 former Rampart officers, investigators found forged supervisor signatures on arrest and booking documents; “unusual” or “remarkable” similarities in separate arrests of separate suspects in which the suspects were said to have uttered the very same phrases. All of this took place with no apparent fear of penalty. Anti-gang units citywide had similar patterns, including instances of so-called “boilerplate [police] report practices”--again, remarkably similar language used to describe arrests and probable cause for arrest. At Hollenbeck Division, investigators found “a general lack of clarity or articulation in reporting probable cause for detention and/or search.” At Devonshire Division’s CRASH unit, there was a case in which the arrest report, the booking and property reports and the analyzed evidence report all listed different quantities for the narcotics seized.

Disbanding the CRASH anti-gang units is hardly sufficient if officers and their supervisors take the same lax practices to their new assignments.

* Anonymous informants: The report noted what appeared to be a disturbing overuse of confidential (and therefore unidentified) informants to corroborate facts or observations that led to arrests. There were no guidelines for maintaining records on informants. As the board report said, there is a “dire need for greater control and training on use and management of informants” throughout the department.

The Christopher Commission pounded hard on these same themes: lack of supervision, management failures and poor record-keeping. How could anyone, much less Chief Parks, insist that the Christopher Commission’s recommendations are essentially all in place? The facts prove otherwise.

Other long-standing issues reidentified by the Board of Inquiry include poor treatment of civilians who dare to file a complaint. The board also found “recanted complaints” in which, despite even documented injuries, the complainant withdrew his original statement. Property and evidence control was a disaster waiting to happen, with “no fail-safe procedure to verify that an employee needs to withdraw items” from the evidence rooms. The situation “creates an opportunity for a dishonest employee to remove evidence, use it illicitly, and then cover up the transaction,” the board report said.

The board suggested fixes including encoded identification cards and supervisory approval for access to evidence items, but this is elementary stuff. Someone has to take a wider view, and that will have to begin--but need not end--with the Police Commission.

This is not a case in which the Police Commission can simply rule up or down on the LAPD board’s many recommendations. The commission must assure itself that significant change will occur and must regularly monitor the progress. That’s the huge challenge the civilian panel faces. The public must be assured that the commission will be free to do that and to bring in outside help as needed, without interference from the mayor or any other city or police official.