Leadership, Morale Problems Plague LAPD, Review Says

The Los Angeles Police Department suffers from weak civilian oversight, a meddling mayor and a strong-willed chief who has undermined morale, according to a new independent panel report that explores the department in greater detail than any similar study in nearly a decade.

The department, beset for more than a year by a crippling corruption scandal, needs to fix serious flaws in the way it trains, disciplines and manages its officers to restore its badly tarnished reputation and guard against future police scandals, an advisory panel convened by the Police Commission found in a study released Thursday.

“We are at a unique crossroads now,” Richard Drooyan, the panel’s general counsel, said during a news conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Drooyan said the recently signed federal oversight agreement, Wednesday’s guilty verdicts against three officers and now the Rampart Independent Review Panel’s report all point to the need for change. A self-critical Board of Inquiry report by the LAPD earlier this year came to similar conclusions.

“I think the will is there and we’re going to have significant reform over the next six months,” Drooyan said.

The commission’s panel was formed in April in response to the LAPD’s unfolding corruption scandal. It was composed of nearly 200 volunteers, including retired judges, lawyers, law enforcement officials, business executives and educators. The 210-page report contains 72 findings and 86 recommendations.

The panel’s members, who spent more than 12,500 hours working on the report, formed eight separate subcommittees, each focusing on a different aspect of the department. Hundreds of people were interviewed by the subcommittees, including the chief, two of his predecessors, current and former police commissioners and other government and community leaders.

“The consequences of the Rampart scandal cannot be overstated. [It] has undermined the credibility of individual officers . . . [and] the entire criminal justice system in Los Angeles,” the report concluded. “Very few doubt that it will take years for the city and the department to recover from this scandal.”

Among the key recommendations:

* Make the presidency and vice presidency of the Los Angeles Police Commission full-time positions with salaries equal to the chief and a deputy chief.

* Enhance the staff of the inspector general’s office.

* Improve the way the LAPD investigates officer-involved shootings and other serious use-of-force incidents.

The Police Commission, which had not reviewed the contents of the report until it was released Thursday, is expected to consider the recommendations within weeks. The document is posted on the inspector general’s Web site: https://oiglapd.org.

“We’re going to start taking this up right away,” said commission President Gerald L. Chaleff.

Deputy Chief David J. Gascon sat in the back of the auditorium as Drooyan made his presentation, but declined to comment in detail on the report, saying he had just received a copy.

“We’ll have to evaluate what the recommendations are, and the basis for those recommendations,” Gascon said.

Chief Bernard C. Parks, however, is likely to dispute a number of the panel’s findings, which in some cases are critical of his leadership.

Councilman Mike Feuer said there is a “continuing urgency to accomplish police reform in this city. This document requires the council, the mayor and the Police Commission to work together to ensure that we take reform to the next level.”

Ben Austin, a spokesman for Mayor Richard Riordan, said he was still reviewing the document. He said the mayor planned to discuss it in more detail at a graduation ceremony today at the LAPD academy. He said Riordan is most focused on the question of: “Where do we go from here?”

As with previous studies of the LAPD, including the 1991 Christopher Commission report, which proposed reforms after the beating of Rodney G. King, the new report criticized the department’s internal culture--defined by its values, policies, training and unwritten rules. The LAPD is an insular organization that remains committed to “top-down management, rather than to collaborative problem solving,” the report said.

The panel concurred with the LAPD’s own critique of the Rampart corruption scandal that police crimes and misconduct went undetected for so long because LAPD managers ignored warning signs and failed to provide necessary leadership, oversight, management and supervision. It also agreed on some key recommendations for solving problems, such as expanding the Internal Affairs Division and implementing a tracking system to identify “problem officers.”

But the panel’s most significant work is revealed in its overall assessment of the department, its staff and the political and governmental environments in which it exists.

At the news conference Thursday, Drooyan was asked if he felt a sense of deja vu, having served as a lawyer for the Christopher Commission and seeing many of the same systemic problems that plagued the LAPD in the past. After pausing for a moment, he smiled broadly and said, “Rampart has identified new and different problems than were focused on by the Christopher Commission.”

According to the panel’s report, officers are poorly trained in dealing with ethical or integrity-related matters, field supervisors are ill-prepared to perform their duties and members of the top brass are not adequately held accountable for their commands.

The department’s relationship with the community it serves is severely strained, the report found, particularly among minorities, who told panel members that they view the LAPD “as excessively hostile and confrontational.”

Some of the findings in the report directly criticize Parks and several of the initiatives he has launched since he took office in 1997, including his revamping of the complaint process and his move to redeploy community policing officers back to patrol.

Community policing, which should be the foundation of the department’s overall operation, has yet to advance beyond a mere slogan, the report concluded. And, the report found, Parks seems to resist civilian oversight by not bringing important policy or operational matters to his five commission bosses and by making it difficult for the commission’s inspector general to do his job.

Gascon said that it is his job to make sure the department is cooperating with the inspector general and that, as far as he is concerned, it is.

“I’d like to hear directly from the inspector general if we are in some manner impeding his ability to do his job,” he said.

Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash has made such claims at several public meetings, even as recently as this week.

Under Parks, morale of the LAPD is abysmal, with many officers calling for the chief’s removal, the report found. Additionally, fear permeates the organization, with officers telling panel members they believe they would be retaliated against if they voiced criticism of the department.

The panel praised the department for making strides in some areas, even commending the supervision of some specialized units such as Metro and the Special Investigation Section, but said progress in many areas was occurring at too slow a pace.

In one case, Parks was both commended and attacked on the same issue. On the one hand, Drooyan said the chief deserves credit for revamping the discipline system and taking citizen complaints seriously, something the Christopher Commission found the department failed to do.

But at the same time, Drooyan said the current system is “too rigid,” resulting in plummeting officer morale. “It sort of grinds the department to a halt,” he said.

In addition to its comments about Parks, the panel was critical of Riordan for “undermining” the oversight powers of his own Police Commission.

“The current mayor’s representatives interviewed by this panel frankly acknowledged that the mayor and the chief talk frequently about important issues without involving the commission,” the report states. “The mayor and the chief are often seen as acting together, with the commission nowhere visible. . . . Whether real or apparent, this direct alliance between the chief and the mayor marginalizes the commission, usurps its authority and leaves it dealing with only those ‘leftovers’ with which the mayor does not want to bother.”

At other times, the report stated, the mayor’s staff micro-manages the commission, “attempting to dictate what items go on the agenda and what the commission’s policies and positions should be.”

“The next mayor should select commissioners who share his or her vision and then give them the independence they need to provide effective civilian oversight of the department,” the panel recommended.

Austin, spokesman for Riordan, agreed with the report’s observation that the mayor and Parks have a good relationship. But he said that was a strength, not a weakness.

“One of the major problems the Christopher Commission pointed out in the early ‘90s is that [then-Chief] Daryl Gates and Mayor [Tom] Bradley barely spoke,” Austin said. “It is imperative for the mayor and the chief to have a productive relationship, where they can regularly talk and solve problems. And I don’t think that should undermine the commission.”

On Thursday, some said the proposed changes weren’t enough.

“We agree with many of the findings of serious problems,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. But she said the panel should have gone even further in strengthening civilian oversight.

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Times staff writer Tina Daunt contributed to this story.

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RAMPART JURY COMPLAINT

An alternate juror in the Rampart corruption trial complained of possible jury misconduct. B1