Commission OKs Rules for Police Watchdog

Saying they want to empower their civilian watchdog, Los Angeles Police Commission members Tuesday approved a set of “work rules” by which their inspector general is supposed to operate.

The rules, a significantly revised version of those that the commissioners took under consideration last week, define the inspector general’s access to information and his ability to provide confidentiality to complainants, issues that have been hotly contested for three years.

Commissioners said they hope that their new rules will put an end to the controversy over those matters and improve the often troubled working relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and the inspector general.

Commissioner Raquelle de la Rocha, who drafted the rules, said it was a document of “compromises” that probably did not satisfy all the concerns of the LAPD or the inspector general.

Nonetheless, Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash said the rules “strike a good balance” between the competing interests. He said he was “quite pleased” with the controversy’s outcome.

The flap over the inspector general’s duties and roles has been an unending embarrassment for the commission and has been made worse in the wake of the Rampart corruption scandal as various studies on the LAPD recommend greater civilian control of the department.

In fact, a report sponsored by the civilian Police Commission recommended last week that the inspector general’s office be strengthened with more staff. The report blamed problems at the LAPD, in part, on a weak Police Commission, the strong-willed chief and a mayor who meddled too much in the department’s business, undermining his own commission.

Additionally, the report criticized Chief Bernard C. Parks and other LAPD officials for resisting requests for information by Eglash and his staff.

Eglash was concerned that the rules initially considered by the commission imposed too many restrictions on his activities and, in effect, turned his office into an agent of the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division.

The main problem, Eglash said, was a rule that would have required him to provide internal affairs with “all material information” that he gathered on potential police misconduct, including the identity of complainants who wanted to remain anonymous.

LAPD officials have said they need the identity of complainants to fully investigate alleged misconduct within the department.

Commissioners have spent months trying to draft rules that strike a balance between the Police Department’s need to hold its officers accountable and the inspector general’s desire to protect a complainant’s identity and provide effective oversight of the LAPD’s disciplinary system.

The five-member commission had been divided over precisely how to delineate the inspector general’s ability to provide confidentiality from his obligation to turn information over to the department.

After two lengthy debates on the issues in the past month, the board Tuesday fell back on language that was used in the recent federal consent decree between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice. That document stated that 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.

Kelly Martin, Mayor Richard Riordan’s chief of staff, said she was disappointed that the commission did not adopt the federal consent decree’s language on confidentiality in the first place.