Lose the Rubber Stamp

The Los Angeles Police Commission needs to break from its counterproductive tradition of rubber-stamping the agendas of the police chief, who is supposed to report to it and the mayor, who appoints its members. Commission President Rick Caruso, appointed last year by Mayor James K. Hahn, should be the one to make that happen.

The job of the part-time, unpaid commission is to provide independent civilian oversight of the LAPD, a complex and highly political behemoth with an annual budget of $1.2 billion. In most cases, however, commissioners know only what the police chief wants them to know, when he finally wants them to know it. This is in part because the commission’s inspector general faces hassles and delays in getting the information to which the Los Angeles City Charter entitles him.

But even if the inspector general had full and unencumbered access, it wouldn’t spur the systemic change that’s needed. And even if the information were flowing freely, it would do little good unless the commission grasped the implications. So Caruso was right to ask for his own top policy analysts, paid for by the city, who could penetrate what is essentially a closed organization with a strong code of silence and a penchant for penalizing officers who talk out of school.

What the board really needs is someone like the late Jesse Brewer, who spent nearly 40 years on the LAPD, rising to the number two position before retiring in 1991, then joining the commission at Mayor Tom Bradley’s request. If today’s commission can’t have a member with Brewer’s expertise, it can at least hire analysts with some semblance of the insight he brought to the job. Such savvy is needed by anyone hoping to dig up the facts and interpret them for commission members who may not know DNA evidence from doughnuts. Thus informed, the commission would finally be in a position to make real changes in the department.