Monitor Tracks LAPD Efforts at Reform

A report card issued Friday cites numerous problems with the Los Angeles Police Department’s efforts to carry out a federal consent decree, but it says that the LAPD continues to move ahead briskly in its efforts.

Despite failures in a number of specific areas, overall the city and the department “continued to make significant progress on reform” during the last quarter of 2001, said the report by a federal court-appointed monitor.

The report, filed with U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess, was the second such evaluation of the LAPD’s reform efforts completed by independent monitor Michael Cherkasky.

The document raises the concern that some officers still display a “lack of commitment” to the reforms, and cites many instances in which deadlines have not been met.

Nonetheless, the report does not specifically accuse the LAPD of deliberately trying to impede overall progress on police reform. Rather, many problems cited in the report appear to be related to the department’s struggles to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time.

Compliance with the decree has been a contentious issue dividing Mayor James K. Hahn and Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, who faces an uncertain future as his first term ends.

Hahn has opposed another term for Parks, citing his disappointment at the LAPD’s compliance efforts as one reason. Parks maintains that the department has moved swiftly and successfully to bring about reforms.

Because the consent decree involves dozens of highly complex requirements and timelines, definitions of compliance vary.

Hahn’s aides say that in every detail the city should be in 100% compliance all the time; defenders of the chief call that a simplistic and impractical view.

The monitor’s report contains no conclusive ruling on compliance. It merely comments on areas in which progress has been made and highlights those in which difficulties have emerged.

Accordingly, people on both sides of the debate over the chief quickly seized on those aspects of the report that seemed to vindicate them.

Julie Wong, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said the document “supports what Hahn has been saying, which is that we are not in total compliance with the consent decree--particularly in crucial areas such as use-of-force investigations and tracking of internal investigations.”

But City Councilman Nate Holden, a Parks supporter, took the opposite tack. The report “really validates what the Police Department has been doing,” he said. It shows “all the misinformation that has been disseminated to the community by the mayor and mayor’s office that reform was not taking place--it’s not true.”

In one area in particular, Cherkasky expressed concern that things were moving too quickly. He said tight deadlines mean the city’s effort to create an integrated computer system to track officers has been rushed.

This project is a key reform that has been sought by LAPD critics as far back as the Christopher Commission in 1991. Its implementation is considered one of the most difficult requirements of the decree.

Among the other problems the monitor found during the quarter ending Dec. 31 were missed deadlines on investigations into the use of force by officers and a persistent backlog of complaint investigations. But the monitor also said the LAPD has instituted stricter oversight of the use of force and made changes to its procedures and reporting requirements that, in some instances, exceed minimum standards.