LAPD Not Making Reforms, Monitor Says

Los Angeles Police Department officials have failed to make changes mandated by the federal consent decree governing the LAPD and, in some instances, have belittled and undermined efforts to overhaul the agency, according to the latest report by the LAPD’s court-appointed monitor.

That report will be filed today with U.S. District Judge Gary Feess. He has the authority to punish officials for failing to comply with the decree, which the city entered into last year to head off a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, Michael Cherkasky and his monitors at Kroll Associates concluded that the LAPD has made progress in some areas, moving to construct a computerized system to track potential problem officers, for instance, and swiftly investigating use-of-force incidents involving police.

But Cherkasky also found that the LAPD has failed to implement major aspects of the consent decree, including tracking racial data on pedestrian and traffic stops.

The report faulted the LAPD for its handling of confidential informants and its efforts to track and thwart street gangs, among other things.

“The LAPD is non-compliant with a number of provisions of the consent decree,” according to the report.

“Of equal or greater seriousness is the presence of a vocal minority inside the LAPD that continue to fight to preserve the insular culture that led to the adoption of the decree.

“They believe there is no problem with the LAPD, the problem is with ‘outsiders.’

“These ‘outsiders’ are portrayed as uninformed, biased, politically motivated, greedy and/or incompetent interlopers,” the report said.

“These officers do an enormous disservice to the majority of the LAPD and the community and negatively impact an institution they purport to love--the LAPD-- and a cause they risk their lives for--public safety,” the report added.

“This must and will change.”

Although the report did not identify the officers involved, it stated that some are members of the LAPD’s Consent Decree Task Force, the group responsible for seeing that the Police Department implements the decree’s provisions.

Months ago, Mayor James K. Hahn said he would oppose Chief Bernard C. Parks’ bid for a second term because the mayor questioned whether the chief was doing enough to implement the decree. Expressing similar worries, the Police Commission voted 4 to 1 last month to deny Parks a second five-year term. Parks stepped down two weeks ago.

Warned of some of the monitor’s impending conclusions, Hahn in recent days has urged the commission and interim Chief Martin Pomeroy to immediately address the problems, according to some city officials.

The city entered into the consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice last June amid allegations that the LAPD for years engaged in a “pattern or practice” of civil rights violations.

With an interim chief now at the helm and the city seeking to fill Parks’ position, the issue of compliance with the decree is expected to play a central role in the search for a new chief. Hahn, who will select the nominee for chief from choices given to him by the Police Commission, has said that he is searching for candidates who will enthusiastically embrace the decree’s mandates.

Cherkasky--a former New York City prosecutor who took on John Gotti and the mob--has released two previous reports on the LAPD’s progress, generally giving the department a passing grade while raising specific concerns about its determination to embrace the decree.

This time around, Cherkasky struck a more critical tone, identifying a number of areas where he said that the LAPD and those responsible for overseeing it are falling behind on their legal obligations.

Some of his findings include:

* The data entry of information on the ethnicity of those involved in pedestrian and motor vehicle stops is critically and seriously backlogged, making it impossible for the department to determine whether racially based stops are being made.

* The department produced audits on excessive force and other topics that the monitor concluded were “seriously flawed and many substantive errors were made.”

* The LAPD’s database of police informants has mistakes and lists some informants who have died, raising “questions regarding the accuracy of the information maintained in this system.”

* Members of the LAPD are publicly denigrating the measures mandated by the decree, actions that the monitor concluded “represent a deliberate effort to create resistance to the consent decree.”

Of all the problems it cited, the team found the officers’ attitudes toward the decree most disturbing.

At one meeting, an officer attempted to distance the LAPD from the decree.

“This is not with the Police Department,” the report quotes the officer as saying. “This is with the feds and the city about the Police Department. We are not controlling this. It is coming out of the mayor’s office ....The LAPD is the biggest fish that the [Department of Justice] ever got on the line. They got us.”

Another officer said the reforms were “unnecessary and time-consuming,” Cherkasky wrote.

Cherkasky also documents a number of personal slights directed at him and his team.