The Chief Isn’t the Best One to Police the Police

Once more, the city is debating how the system for disciplining police officers should be structured. Some community leaders are urging that the police chief be given more power to punish officers. Although well intentioned, this proposal is the wrong approach to ensuring a disciplinary system that is fair and just. An independent panel that hears the evidence against an officer should continue to make the decision as to whether discipline is appropriate.

The current system for disciplining officers is the product of the Christopher Commission, which examined the Los Angeles Police Department after the beating of Rodney King. The commission’s recommendation, adopted by voters as part of City Charter reform, provides that an officer accused of misconduct be entitled to a hearing before a board of rights made up of two officers with the rank of captain or above and one civilian who is not a member of the department.

Over the last decade, there have been many criticisms of this approach. During Bernard Parks’ tenure as police chief, many officers and the Police Protective League complained that the board of rights was not sufficiently independent. Some felt that the police chief was attempting to influence the outcome of hearings by communicating to the officers on the board how he wanted cases decided. In fact, the Police Protective League proposed moving to a system of binding arbitration or a civilian-only review board to lessen the influence of the chief. The decision was made to stay with the current structure because it ensured that there would be both experienced officers familiar with policing and a civilian to reflect the views of the community and bring an outsider’s perspective. In addition, safeguards to ensure the board’s independence, such as the requirement to base its decision solely on the evidence, were deemed adequate.

Now some citizen groups are concerned that board of rights panels are too lax and often fail to impose discipline when it is warranted. They urge that the City Charter be changed to allow the police chief to impose punishment even when the board of rights finds that the officer did nothing wrong. But this wouldn’t constitute due process. It would be unfair to officers to have an independent panel hear the evidence and render a verdict, and then to allow the chief, who hasn’t heard the evidence, to disregard that verdict.

When doing a report on the LAPD Rampart scandal several years ago, I examined the system for disciplining officers and whether it could be improved. Some cities have civilian-only review boards. The idea is that stronger discipline will be imposed by individuals who are not imbued in the culture of the police department and who have no incentive to protect fellow officers. But the record of civilian review boards has been mixed; in some cities they are much less inclined to discipline officers than panels made up of members of the police department.

The charter reform commissions reviewed the records of boards of rights made up of two police officers and one civilian. The statistics indicated that in a high percentage of cases, officers who were brought before these boards were disciplined.

Without a doubt, the current disciplinary system can be improved. The independent monitor, who evaluates the city’s compliance with the federal consent decree to reform the LAPD, reports that there still is an inadequate system for receiving citizen complaints and that often complaints are turned away. And only in the last few years, after the Rampart scandal, has the city begun to develop guidelines to ensure that punishments consistently match the offense.

The current proposal to increase the power of the police chief isn’t an answer to these problems. It is based on community confidence in Chief William Bratton. But the City Charter’s provisions concerning police discipline should not be based on one chief. There’s still a great deal to fix in the LAPD, but increasing the chief’s power over discipline is a bad solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.