Rethink It, Mr. Delgadillo

To meet part of his promise to slash the city’s sky-high liability costs, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo wants to dispatch a lawyer and perhaps others from his office to the scenes of incidents in which the city might face liability. His strategy, still very much in the planning stage, may help minimize the six-figure checks that taxpayers too often must write after accidents caused by buckled sidewalks or faulty brakes on city trucks. But in situations where city employees may face criminal charges for their misconduct or negligence--such as some police shootings--Delgadillo risks making his office look foolish or worse.

Delgadillo patterned his “rollout” team idea after the district attorney’s practice of sending investigators to the scenes of police officer-involved shootings. The district attorney’s team is charged with determining what happened, who fired and why, and whether criminal charges against officers should result.

Applying the team concept to the civil realm might make sense. Emergency workers at the scene of, say, a trash truck accident or a broken water main are, as Delgadillo notes, usually preoccupied with treating the injured or fixing what’s broken. Lawyers from the city attorney’s office could assess potential liability, thus expediting settlements and possibly preventing inflated damage claims. Delgadillo’s predecessors have used such in-house investigators on an ad hoc basis; Delgadillo wants to dispatch a team more often.

But in potential felony criminal cases, such as officer-involved shootings, Delgadillo’s investigators would at best be meddlesome and at worst be working at cross-purposes with the district attorney’s office. The city does not prosecute felonies; further, the city attorney’s job is to defend city employees, including police officers. That puts the city attorney in potential conflict with the county district attorney, who must assess whether criminal misconduct occurred. Delgadillo’s team could risk impeding, even undermining, that effort.

Criminal misconduct by police and other city employees is a big taxpayer burden. More than 130 Rampart-related claims alone have been filed against the city, already costing the treasury more than $31 million.

Delgadillo is not alone in wanting to lower the city’s costs for lawsuits. But when it comes to addressing the cost of misconduct by police officers, the answer is to put in place tough guidelines that govern behavior, like those embodied in the Police Department consent decree, and then to enforce them. Another rollout team would only compound the problem rather than be part of the solution.