LAPD Panel Divided on Duties of Overseer

In a spirited debate over an issue that refuses to go away, the Los Angeles Police Commission once again tried Tuesday to define the roles and duties of its civilian watchdog, but was unable to reach a consensus and decided to revisit the matter next week.

The main point of contention among commissioners is whether their inspector general should be required to provide the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division with “all material information” he gathers on potential misconduct, including the identity of complainants who want to remain anonymous.

Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash said he is afraid that such a requirement would discourage people from coming forward with complaints and turn his office into an agent of Los Angeles Police Department internal affairs.

The debate over the authority of the inspector general has occupied police officials and their civilian bosses almost from the time the position was created, and it emerged as one of many negotiating points in the recently completed talks with the U.S. Department of Justice over reform of the LAPD. Still, even after years of debate, the conflict has important implications for the city as officials try to strike a balance between the Police Department’s need to hold its officers accountable and the public’s right to have meaningful insight into the LAPD’s handling of police misconduct.

Torn between those objectives, the commission tried Tuesday to establish a set of work rules by which the inspector general is supposed to operate.

Eglash told the board the rules under consideration could be used by Police Department officials as further justification to deny him access to information. He said the LAPD’s top brass routinely frustrate his attempts to obtain information.

He also cautioned the board not to put too many restrictions on the way his office operates because those rules would end up “inhibiting or limiting your own access as well.”

Given the current political climate, Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said it was astonishing that the commission would propose rules that have the potential to undermine the inspector general’s effectiveness.

“It is well documented that the public wants a strong and independent inspector general and that the chief and Police Commission prefer a weaker I.G. model,” said Katherine Mader, who was the department’s first civilian watchdog.

As envisioned by the 1991 Christopher Commission, which proposed a number of police reforms in the wake of the beating of Rodney G. King, the inspector general was supposed to be the public’s representative in the LAPD, overseeing the department’s discipline system. The position was created in 1995 and strengthened last year when voters adopted a new City Charter.

At Tuesday’s commission meeting, the discussion centered on the ability of the inspector general to provide confidentiality to complainants.

Commissioner Raquelle de la Rocha, who drafted the proposed work rules, and Commissioner T. Warren Jackson said the inspector general should reveal to the department the identities of all complainants who are material witnesses to misconduct.

Commission President Gerald L. Chaleff and Commissioner Dean Hansell said they are reluctant to bind the inspector general by hard and fast rules spelling out when he is required to provide a complainant’s identity. A person’s identity should be revealed only when it is required by law or is absolutely necessary to investigate a complaint, they said.

Chaleff said the board should not “create rules that turn the inspector general into a conduit of information for internal affairs.”

The discussion among the four commissioners Tuesday seemed testy at times, with members talking over and at each other. Commissioner Herbert F. Boeckmann II, for the most part, was reserved in his public statements.

Another factor that complicates the debate is that the inspector general’s ability to grant confidentiality is defined in the federal consent decree that the city recently signed. The decree says, “The inspector general shall not disclose the identity of an individual without the consent of the employee from whom a complaint or information has been received, unless such disclosure is unavoidable in order to effectively investigate an allegation or is otherwise required by law or” the city attorney.