Baca Vows to Fight Changes in Plan for Outside Oversight

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he cannot accept the Board of Supervisors’ decision this week to alter his plan for compensating the outside attorneys who will oversee internal department investigations.

Baca envisions the attorneys as full-time, salaried county employees; the supervisors voted to pay the lawyers hourly rates as independent contractors, essentially making them part-time workers.

The sheriff, who was out of town when the supervisors acted Tuesday, said he is baffled by the change in his proposal and that he will take whatever actions he can to ensure that the lawyers work full-time for the department.

County Counsel Lloyd W. Pellman sought the contracts for the attorneys, saying that they should be hired on hourly rates as independent contractors to preserve their independence from the county and the Sheriff’s Department.

Several civil rights’ attorneys, as well as Merrick Bobb, the special counsel to the supervisors on Sheriff’s Department issues, joined Baca in expressing concern about the overall effectiveness of the attorneys if they work part-time.

“I can’t account for the change and although it may be possible for these people to perform their jobs on a part-time basis, I’m skeptical,” said Bobb, who works on a contract with the board.

The alliance between civil rights attorneys, usually interested in police reform, and a sheriff, trying to create ongoing civilian oversight of his department, is but one of the unusual features of the proposal.

Baca has created an unconventional plan: placing outside attorneys at various levels of the department’s internal administrative and criminal units to oversee and help direct investigations involving sheriff’s employees. The plan is widely viewed as a novel way to address criticism that law enforcement agencies fail to adequately police themselves.

While members of the civil rights’ community have praised the sheriff’s proposal, they now are concerned that it will have far less impact than they anticipated.

“Part-time is a code word,” said Paula D. Pearlman, supervising attorney for the California Women’s Law Center, which along with other groups was asked by the sheriff to review the proposal. “It’s a reflection that they don’t want to deal with this issue seriously.”

But the sheriff, who appears deadly serious about it, says he believes the sheer number of investigations, coupled with high enough hourly rates, could require attorneys to work full time.

“How this can be construed as part-time is completely baffling to me,” Baca said. “I never once presented this proposal as a piecemeal, part-time office.

“The caseload is not the issue here,” the sheriff said. “The issue is a full-time oversight management body that will look at all of our cases as they are being investigated and when they are completed, to look at the recommendations” for discipline or prosecution.

The Sheriff’s Department has two tracks of internal investigations: One unit oversees administrative allegations and the other oversees potential criminal wrongdoing by deputies and other employees. Six attorneys will work in conjunction with those offices.

A chief attorney could earn hourly rates totaling $200,000 a year, according to Pellman, the county counsel. The attorneys in charge of the individual units could make $175,000 a year and the staff level attorneys could earn $150,000, Pellman said.

With those rates, coupled with the expertise of the two dozen lawyers and retired judges who already have expressed interest in the jobs, Pellman said fears over the plan should be allayed.

“I think it’s easier and better to start with the independence first and see if that system can work,” Pellman said. “Human nature is, if you’re so closely aligned in any fashion, then your objectivity may start to be blurred.”

Still, others suggested that county lawyers and others might be concerned that involving outsiders in internal investigations could result in more lawsuits and potential liability against the department. That, these observers say, is a misguided concern. Rather, they suggest that a better disciplinary process will lead to a reduction in lawsuits against the department.

Civil rights lawyers and others say the sheriff needs to change the culture of the department, a move that could be spurred by the involvement of outside attorneys.

“In order to change the culture, you have to address the existing problems,” Pearlman said.