A LOOK AHEAD * With a study finding that the vast majority of misconduct cases involve male officers . . .

As the Los Angeles City Council deliberates over reforming the Police Department, a new study to be released today shows huge disparities in the cost of misconduct cases involving male and female officers.

Male police officers, who make up the vast majority of the Los Angeles Police Department, cost the city $63.4 million from 1990 to 1999 in payouts for lawsuits involving excessive force, sexual assault and domestic violence. During the same period, women accounted for $2.8 million in excessive force lawsuits, and not one woman was named as a defendant in a sexual assault or domestic violence case.

The study, conducted by the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Center for Women & Policing, examined lawsuit settlements and judgments over $100,000 paid out by the city during those years.

The study was conducted in response to the unfolding Rampart corruption scandal, in which officers in an anti-gang unit were found to have, among other things, shot suspects, perjured themselves and planted evidence. About 100 criminal convictions have been overturned because of misconduct by officers associated with the Rampart scandal.

Under the threat of a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice alleging a pattern or practice of civil rights violations by LAPD officers, city officials have been attempting to negotiate a settlement that would be overseen by an independent monitor.

The study’s authors hope the city and Justice Department officials will include gender balance hiring requirements in any potential consent decree.

“The single most fundamental reform that the LAPD could make would be to gender balance its police force,” said Kathy Spillar, national coordinator of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “It would totally change the culture within the department . . . and it would dramatically reduce the amount of lawsuits.”

The number of women in the LAPD hovers at about 18%, a percentage that department officials believe is good considering their low overall recruitment numbers.

Law enforcement agencies across the country have faced a similar situation, blamed largely on a good economy that allows potential police officers to turn to careers in industries with better pay.

Women make up about 14.3% of police officers nationwide, Spillar said.

“We’re very proud of the progress we’ve made over the last 20 years,” said Deputy Chief Dave Kalish. “We’ve gone from less than 2% to nearly 20% in 10 years--that’s phenomenal.”

Kalish took issue, however, with the study’s findings, saying it is “too simplistic to say this group saved more than this group so women are better officers.”

“I’d be extremely hesitant to conclude that one type of person is more or less inclined to be problematic based on their gender, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation,” Kalish said.

But some research, along with the new study, has found that women rely less on physical force and more on communication skills to resolve tense situations than their male counterparts.

As a result, the theory goes, women are less likely to become involved in excessive force cases and are more likely to defuse potentially violent confrontations.

“This goes back to Rodney King,” said Penny Harrington, director of the National Center for Women and Policing and a former police chief in Portland, Ore. “There was a woman officer there [from the California Highway Patrol when LAPD officers beat King] and she was trying to stop it. They pushed her aside and told her to get out of the way.”

Department officials say recruiting and retaining women in the department has been an ongoing effort. The Christopher Commission, formed after the Rodney King beating, recommended that the department hire more women as one possible way of reducing police misconduct.

The City Council has gone on record numerous times over the years to urge the department to boost its hiring of women.

The LAPD operates under a decades-old consent decree that requires its hiring to include 25% women, 20% of whom the department must retain. Since the LAPD falls just a couple percentage points below, attorneys say it is not enough to force the police department back to court.

But Allison Thomas, the president of the board of directors of the California Women’s Law Center, said her group is attempting to encourage city officials to increase those hiring and retention goals in negotiations with the Justice Department.

If that effort fails, Thomas said they will examine other options “including litigation” to force the department to make something close to 50% of the women it hires.

“Research shows you need over 25% women to really have an impact on the culture of a department,” Thomas said. “At that point, women aren’t isolated and made to sit in corners. They become part of the department.”

In examining 127 police-abuse cases, the study found that male officers disproportionately accounted for the excessive force lawsuit payouts involving killings, assault and battery. Payouts for killings by male officers, for example, exceeded those for slayings by women officers by a ratio of 43 to 1.

Spillar and Harrington say closer attention should also be paid to what they referred to as an extremely troubling aspect of their study: The LAPD incurred $10.4 million in judgments and settlements in a cases involving male officers sued for sexual assault, sexual abuse, molestation and domestic violence. No women officers were named as defendants in those eight cases.

“I was particularly shocked by the amount of sexual misconduct payouts,” Harrington said. “I don’t remember reading or hearing about those. I was pretty surprised by that.”

The largest of those settlements, according to the study, was $6.3 million. That case involved a male officer who was accused of sexually battering a 13-year-old girl in her home during the course of responding to a radio call.

In the excessive force cases, the study shows that the highest payouts included $10.7 million to a man who alleged he was shot by an off-duty policeman in case that is on appeal. Another man, who alleged he was shot, wrongly held and battered by police officers, received $5.5 million, and Rodney King received $3.8 million.

Kalish refused to discuss the payouts without seeing the report but cautioned against examining cases in a broad-brush fashion.

“Obviously we don’t like paying out anything,” Kalish said. “I’d imagine it would be more meaningful to look at every single individual case.”

But the study’s authors say their report only confirmed their beliefs.

“Until this department is under a court order to gender balance its ranks, it will continue to do business as usual,” Spillar said. “There is foot-dragging here that is costing the citizens and taxpayers of Los Angeles. The underrepresentation of women is coming home to roost.”