A matter of public record

WHAT CHANGED? That’s the key question for members of the Los Angeles Police Commission, who secretly reversed a 25-year-old policy of publicly disclosing the names of police officers involved in shootings. Though the commission finally discussed the issue at a public meeting Tuesday, two months after making the decision behind closed doors, commissioners didn’t adequately explain why a policy that has worked just fine for a quarter of a century is no longer viable. They need to.

That said, it’s going to be hard to come up with a justification. When police officers are involved in a shooting, their identities matter -- because without them, it’s impossible to know whether specific officers pose a problem. Using the names in police reports, The Times was able to determine in 2004 that a small group of officers was involved in a disproportionate number of shootings. Yes, police officers have a right to privacy, but details of shooting incidents should be a matter of public record.

For its part, the commission is suddenly concerned that disclosing officers’ names would violate their privacy and expose the city to lawsuits. Does that mean state law has changed recently to make a long-accepted practice unacceptably risky? Apparently not. Legal experts interviewed by The Times are unfamiliar with any new court decisions on the issue. A report by City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo’s office prompted the unanimous decision by the commission -- which functions like a board of directors for the Los Angeles Police Department -- to change the disclosure policy. There’s no knowing if the reasons are valid, though, because the report hasn’t been publicly released.

Commissioner Andrea Ordin made the befuddling assertion that the decision was tied to an effort to improve transparency. Last year, the commission discussed ways to make its rulings on use-of-force cases more publicly accessible, and one of the suggestions was to post them on the Internet. It asked the city attorney’s office to rule on privacy issues, and apparently the office concluded that not only would posting the names be a liability problem, the existing practice of releasing the names on reports compiled by the police chief was unacceptable as well.

The commission’s decision is even more troubling given the alleged actions of its executive director, Richard Tefank. Police union officials told The Times that Tefank urged them to threaten a lawsuit against the city in order to change the disclosure policy. That would be an outrageous move from a man overseeing a city commission, particularly one charged with overseeing the LAPD.

It’s all but impossible to come up with a persuasive rationale for the commission’s decision. But maybe, just maybe, this report from the city attorney’s office is a tour de force of legal reasoning akin to Marbury vs. Madison. If so, and given long-standing concerns about the accountability of the LAPD, all the more reason for the public to see it.