Bratton to Tally His Forces

When William J. Bratton takes the helm at the Los Angeles Police Department, his first order of business will be some old-fashioned police work: conducting a dragnet.

The incoming chief plans a head count of all 8,944 sworn officers.

To do it, he said, he will ask the same questions he has been asking since his days as a Boston police sergeant and that he asked later as head of the departments in Boston and New York: “What are you doing? Where are you hiding? What are you supposed to be doing?”

The blunt-talking Bostonian faces significant labor obstacles -- both natural and man-made -- as he attempts to remake the department and get more officers on the streets, say crime experts, police officials and union leaders.

Among Bratton’s challenges: fighting a tight budget in economically lean times; maneuvering around the limits posed by the department’s three-day, 12-hour work schedule; and gaining the respect of rank-and-file officers and the Police Protective League, which represents most of the LAPD’s 9,000 officers.

The drumbeat of criticism by the league played a key role in the ouster of former Chief Bernard C. Parks after one five-year term. It was the union that demanded and received -- with the blessing of Mayor James K. Hahn -- the three-day work week.

Once he has finished the head count, Bratton said, he will re-engineer the department, replacing officers in administrative jobs with civilians and returning sworn officers to the streets, eliminating many specialized units and decentralizing the LAPD by turning divisions into semi-autonomous mini-police departments.

Bratton has promised, not only more officers, but also more efficient, cost-effective policing.

“There are 9,000 that are so inappropriately assigned at this moment that there’s phenomenal room for increased productivity, activity and creativity by a reorganization of the department,” Bratton said of the current staffing situation. “The issue here is that, with 9,000, I can do a lot more.”

That approach has been endorsed by Police Commission President Rick Caruso.

“You have to go to the low-hanging fruit, where you have sworn officers doing ministerial tasks,” said Caruso, citing what he said is an excess of sworn officers in divisions such as internal affairs, audit and consent decree compliance. “The priority has to be, if you have a sworn officer, that officer has to be on the street. You also need to get more sergeants in the field for a supervisory role.”

About 5,722 officers are assigned to patrol or uniformed functions, with an additional 1,630 in investigative jobs and 1,202 doing administrative duties. Backing them up are 3,181 civilian employees.

The challenge of getting more out of a police force that may not grow is similar to the one Bratton faced during his tenure as head of the New York City Transit Police.

Speaking of how Bratton handled that challenge, Al O’Leary, a spokesman for New York’s police union and an ex-transit official said: “When Bill Bratton arrived, the transit police had a serious morale problem.”

“It wasn’t viewed as desirable to be a transit officer.” O’Leary said. “The uniforms were tatty. Officers were bored to death.

“Bill convinced them that the fare evader was the same guy with the felony warrant. He gave officers 9-millimeters instead of .38s, and handed them commando sweaters. Soon the department was perceived as the Marines of New York.”

Paralleling that situation, morale within the LAPD hit, perhaps, its all-time low under Parks, with the Rampart scandal in 1999. As crime has climbed in the last few years, with incidents of serious crime rising 12%, arrests have declined. Police response time citywide has climbed from 7.5 minutes in 1998 to 9.8 minutes this year.

Bratton will need officers to make more arrests. His philosophy, tried and tested in New York, is built around enforcing “quality-of-life” laws such as those against loitering, graffiti and prostitution. Eliminating small-time offenses, he argues, reduces the likelihood of more serious crimes.

The City Charter gives Bratton virtually unfettered power to shift officers to the streets. But for the first time as a chief, he will have to work with a three-day, 12-hour-per-shift work schedule.

“You live with what you have, and try to modify it when you can,” Bratton said. “Three-12 actually has more pluses than minuses.”

The three-12 system does not require more officers, but Bratton will find it has other consequences, according to Pasadena Police Chief Bernard K. Melekian, who took over a department using the schedule.

Officers are more likely to make errors at the end of a long shift, and those who live far away can become disengaged from the community they are paid to police, Melekian said.

But Melekian said three-12 has provided a strong boost for morale. Once it is adopted, he warned, there is no turning back. Departments without the schedule are losing officers to those that have it.

Bratton will also try to squeeze out more resources by eliminating some specialized units.

“He recognizes that, in a department with resources stretched so thin, he needs more generalists and not someone sitting somewhere waiting for something to come down their alley,” said David Dotson, a former assistant chief.

Dotson said Bratton may be able to find 300 to 500 officers to return to the beat, with fewer specialists and more civilians. But Dotson said many of those on desk duties are there because of physical and, in some cases, mental problems.

Even before Bratton’s arrival, Parks had allowed vacancies in the specialized units to climb to avoid losses in patrol. At its peak in June 1998, the LAPD had 9,853 officers; as that number dropped, reductions extended to units such as narcotics.

As of the end of last year, there were about 350 vacancies in specialized departments. For instance, the LAPD’s Juvenile Division has 25 vacancies.

Bratton’s track record with police unions in New York and Boston involved some early tussles, then good relationships. So successful was Bratton in New York that when he applied for the LAPD job, the Big Apple’s police union president was among his references. In Boston, he fought off an early legal challenge by the union to his appointment as chief; in New York, he outmaneuvered the union when it tried to limit his flexibility by changing state law.

“He is a very charismatic, forceful leader, and he wants to make changes and when that occurs, there are struggles,” said Daniel Fagan, Boston Police Patrolmen’s Assn. treasurer.

Mitzi Grasso, who will step down as Los Angeles police union president at the end of the year, said change will not come easily. But she predicted that Bratton will succeed because he relates well to ordinary beat officers and knows what they need.

“Parks did not like and respect police officers, and he didn’t maintain a relationship with his employees,” Grasso said.

“If you contrast that with Bratton, he does like and respect police officers, and I believe he will establish and maintain those close relations.”

Grasso predicted that Bratton would change the complaint and disciplinary system, which she said has damaged morale by allowing frivolous claims on par with more serious corruption.

“You need an efficient, strong internal affairs group,” Grasso said. “Parks turned a huge inefficient group [into] a bigger inefficient group.”

Bratton’s commitment to patrol goes back to his Boston roots, where, as a sergeant, he broke with department tradition and hit the streets. He plans to use computer modeling of crime statistics -- the CompStat system, pioneered in New York and now used nationwide -- to deploy officers.

Bratton said, in New York, too many officers worked day shifts, though many crimes occurred at night. He said he suspects it may be the same in Los Angeles.

Shifting bodies can have limited effectiveness, said Joseph D. McNamara, former San Jose police chief, who also served with the New York Police Department and called Bratton a “savvy leader.”

“It’s a great idea to get cops out [on the street],” McNamara said. “But sometimes you cannot do it because they have real disabilities.

“And when they have been inside for 10 years, you can’t just pluck them back into a car,” he added. “They need training, and that costs money.”

Whatever quick action Bratton takes, his success will ultimately depend on finding more police officers.

Few departments have had a tougher time recruiting than the LAPD, which is still is losing more officers than it hires, a trend Hahn thinks Bratton can reverse.

In the most recent fiscal year, 449 officers left the department and 356 were hired. Overall, the department is short of its budgeted number of officers by 1,100.

Grasso said she expects Bratton to stem that exodus and meet his goal of an increase of 16% to 20% in arrests.

Whatever the result, McNamara thinks there is a lot to be said for Bratton’s experience.

“Anyone who can work for Rudy Giuliani,” he said, “can survive anything.”