Hahn-Parks Clash Based on Divergent Philosophies

The conflict between Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and Police Chief Bernard C. Parks is stark in its political dimensions, but the issues Hahn has wielded to find fault with Park’s leadership are murkier than their public clash would suggest.

Hahn, in opposing a second term for the chief, has criticized Parks on three specific fronts: his department’s level of compliance with a federal consent decree, his approach to community policing, and the LAPD’s inability to recruit and retain more officers.

An examination of the issues shows that the divide is more over philosophy than over specific failings by the chief, who is seeking a second five-year term from the city Police Commission.

Hahn and Parks also differ in their assessment of the difficulties that lie in the Los Angeles Police Department’s path. Hahn insists on high standards and says they can be met in such areas as police reform and recruiting without unacceptable costs. Parks contends that such issues are complicated by conflicting policy aims, and that tough choices must be made between, for example, high standards for recruits and increased hiring.

In his statements last week, Hahn said he was “unhappy with the progress” on compliance with the federal consent decree, and gave the example of delayed reporting of excessive-force investigations to the Police Commission.

But several of the key players involved in implementing the decree have argued that the LAPD’s compliance record under Parks is, if not flawless, pretty good.

The federal consent decree in force over the LAPD consists of an agreement the city of Los Angeles entered into with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2000 under the threat of a federal lawsuit.

The decree, which Parks opposed before its signing, spells out guidelines for reforming the LAPD to protect the civil rights of Los Angeles residents who come in contact with the police.

The highly detailed agreement sets out a variety of requirements the LAPD must meet in coming months. The decree’s laundry list of requirements ranges from collection of racial profiling data to development of a computer system to track problem officers electronically.

Although none of the major players argues that compliance has been perfect, and problems have been acknowledged on all sides, there seems little evidence of serious rifts to date over the department’s cooperation.

The federal judge handling the decree has so far issued no sanctions for noncompliance. And an independent monitor assigned to keep tabs on compliance progress has cited problems, but also issued a compliment in November, saying that the city and the LAPD had “cooperated fully” and “expended great efforts” to comply. A more up-to-date report is expected as soon as today.

The Police Commission, which is appointed by the mayor and will decide Parks’ fate, “has not taken any position that indicates [compliance] is not satisfactory,” said Joe Gunn, commission executive director. And Chief Legislative Analyst Ronald Deaton told the City Council Wednesday that the LAPD is basically on track.

Given this, some parties to the agreement have objected to Hahn’s contention that problems with compliance reflect a lack of commitment to reform.

“Complying with the consent decree is a very complex and demanding responsibility,” said Terree Bowers, chief deputy under City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, who supports Parks.

Despite that, Bowers said, “progress has been reasonable, and at times, excellent.”

City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who heads the council’s Public Safety Committee, calls the LAPD’s efforts “fairly heroic.”

“That doesn’t mean there is not room for improvement,” she said. “But we have made a sea change.”

Hahn’s aides explained that the mayor does not think the LAPD and city have failed to meet their legal obligations to comply with the consent decree. Instead, they drew a distinction between what they say is a level of compliance that merely meets legal requirements, versus what they termed a higher level of compliance sought by the mayor.

Hahn considers the consent decree, “a baseline,” said Tim McOsker, the mayor’s chief of staff. “He has always said, these provisions are not a ceiling but a floor.”

Hahn promises that he will push a reform agenda that goes beyond the consent decree. A proposal for civilian oversight of LAPD discipline is such a reform.

Parks defends his record on reform by pointing out that portions of the final consent decree adopted changes he had already put in place in the department.

Because the consent decree has been interpreted with some flexibility by the parties involved, it is possible to argue the compliance question both ways.

Although in theory the city has agreed to comply with the decree in every detail, in practice the measure used has been whether the city and the LAPD have made reasonable progress toward meeting most deadlines, and been sincere about shaping up when compliance has fallen short.

‘Senior Lead Officers’ Among Main Issues

In the area of community policing, Hahn has faulted Parks for a continuing failure to strongly back an outreach program manned by “senior lead officers” that Parks had terminated shortly after his appointment as chief in 1997.

Such officers’ main duties are to meet with community groups and solve local crime and nuisance problems rather than patrol in black-and-white cruisers.

First assigned under former Chief Willie Williams, they offered a stable, familiar presence to community advocates. Senior leads had time to develop expertise in dealing with various city bureaucracies, and were popular because they were a familiar presence and were easy for residents to contact.

Parks tried to replace the program with a model similar to that used by a number of police departments across the country.

This model requires that, rather than assign a group of dedicated officers to community policing, the function should be integrated into regular patrol duties for all officers. The change was needed in Los Angeles, Parks argued, because critics had said that ordinary LAPD officers needed to be mindful of community concerns.

The Rampart Independent Review Panel, for example, said that, although senior leads forged strong bonds with residents, line officers sometimes seemed to take a dim view of community policing, to the detriment of the department.

But Parks’ solution, placing community policing in the hands of patrol officers, doesn’t work as well if officers don’t have much free time to perform their community policing duties, law enforcement experts say. Parks’ action also triggered sharp opposition from many neighborhood activists who feared that community policing would simply fall by the wayside.

Former Mayor Richard Riordan eventually told Parks to restore the program. The chief proceeded to negotiate an agreement with the police union that was approved by the City Council. It allows senior leads to work as much as four days a week on community policing, but requires them to return to patrol cars at least once a week. The agreement also gave commanders considerable latitude to pull them away from senior-lead duties at other times and deploy them according to local needs.

This doesn’t sit well with community groups, which remain dissatisfied, and Hahn faults Parks for not pushing to ensure that senior leads spend the maximum possible time on community policing. Parks counters that the program is being carried out as agreed.

As a practical matter, however, this issue is closely related to another that separates Hahn and Parks--recruitment and retention of officers.

Put simply, LAPD is so short-handed that the senior leads are sometimes needed to cover threadbare shifts, LAPD officials say. For example, Senior Lead Officer John Pedroza of the Hollenbeck Division is unhappy that community policing doesn’t get more support, and says that the senior leads are spending too much time in patrol. At the same time, he said, he has returned to his patrol car without complaint lately because his station is stretched so thin, and “my first job is to be a police officer.”

That tension is present throughout the LAPD. Although they defend the department’s record on restoring the program, Parks and other LAPD commanders contend that tough choices must be made between community policing and responding to emergencies.

“If you don’t have anyone to answer radio calls, all the community policing in the world won’t make those people happy,” said Deputy Chief Ron Bergmann, citing response times in the San Fernando Valley that have dragged out to as long as nine minutes lately.

Hahn agrees that 911 calls must be answered, but “we shouldn’t have to sacrifice an effective community policing tool,” he said Thursday.

Hahn Faults Parks on Recruitment

The mayor contends that LAPD staffing problems have been exacerbated by what he terms Parks’ failures in the recruitment and retention of officers.

Historically under-policed relative to other large cities, Los Angeles makes do with 8,910 officers to cover 466 square miles--far fewer officers than police in other major cities and considerably below the department’s peak strength of 9,852, which it hit in 1998.

In recent years the department has shrunk because more officers are leaving than entering. The LAPD has more officers today than it did in the mid-’90s, but lags far below the number it has been authorized to hire--10,196, more than at any other point in its history.

The LAPD’s officer shortage is probably at least in part a reflection of trends nationwide.

Recruiting is “a significant issue throughout law enforcement,” said Gilbert Moore, spokesman for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the Department of Justice.

Whether the LAPD’s recruiting difficulties are worse than anyone else’s is arguable. Statistics suggest that, when growth in authorized positions is taken into account, the LAPD is somewhat worse off than, say, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department--which draws from a similar pool--but the difference is not that much.

The Sheriff’s Department is short about 415 deputies, making it about 5% below its authorized allotment of officers. Similarly, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department is short 170 deputies, about 7% of its authorized number.

The LAPD’s problem appears larger, since its force is about 12% short of its authorized number of officers.

But that is in part because the LAPD has tried to increase the size of its department so rapidly--expanding the number of budgeted sworn positions by about 20% over the past five years.

Had the LAPD been trying to grow at a rate closer to the 14% target set by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in the same period--LAPD vacancies today would be only about 8%, much closer to the sheriff’s shortfall and nearly the same as San Diego County’s.

Be that as it may, there remains considerable concern that the number of recruits entering the LAPD academy has fallen markedly, decreasing to just 197 entrants last year, from 1,151 in 1995.

Until recently, attrition also exceeded projections. Although resignations recently fell to their lowest level since Parks became chief, there are still a lot of officers leaving before retirement--250 officers last year.

Hahn and Parks differ sharply on their assessment of why officers are leaving while few are entering.

Hahn holds that the problem is strongly related to low morale on the police force, a persistent concern of the Police Protective League, the union representing LAPD officers that has sharply opposed Parks’ reappointment.

Rank and file officers are looking for a better leader, and boosting morale is Parks’ responsibility, Hahn argues.

Parks counters that there is a trade-off between holding recruits to higher standards, and keeping the bar low enough to allow many to qualify. Difficulty in hiring may be one price of a higher-quality work force, he suggests. For example, new lie detector tests for recruits have eliminated many candidates.

Parks Concedes Morale Has Suffered

Standards are an issue, Hahn concedes, but “it just means you have to work a lot harder.”

When pressed, Parks also concedes that morale on the force may have suffered as a result of changes he has made, particularly to the department’s discipline system. These have resulted in many more officers facing investigations. But he argues that the connection between such morale issues and retention has not been proved.

At the request of The Times, the LAPD evaluated reports from exit interviews of the 250 officers who resigned last year.

The top three reasons they cited for leaving were better pension plans at other departments, better salaries, and better work schedules, according to the department’s analysis.

Forty-one of the 250 officers who departed, however, cited Parks’ disciplinary policies as one reason they no longer wanted to work for the LAPD.

Parks and Hahn also differ in their view of how this might be addressed.

Again, Parks argues for a tough choice: He says that costs to morale, recruiting and retention may be the temporary price of better discipline that ensures that officers are held accountable for public complaints.

“When we balance officer morale against community morale, we will always decide community morale is more important,” he said.

Hahn counters that the disciplinary change need not affect the desire of officers to work for the LAPD--in essence that tougher discipline and morale need not conflict so much.

McOsker, Hahn’s chief of staff, said Parks could have done more to ensure that expansion of the discipline system did not drag down morale, for example, by speeding up investigations. Parks responds that he has acknowledged that problem and is trying to fix it.

But the mayor says it is time to make a change.

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Times staff writer Tina Daunt contributed to this report.