An open book

WILLIAM J. BRATTON is well on his way to a second five-year term as Los Angeles’ chief of police because of progress against crime, yes, but also because of an important cultural shift he has brought to the Police Department. More than most of his predecessors, Bratton has championed the virtues of transparency.

The former New York chief knows that police who appear to work under a cloak of secrecy can never win the trust and respect of residents -- a lesson this city has learned the hard way. When the state Supreme Court ruled in August in Copley Press vs. Superior Court that opening the disciplinary file of a San Diego cop violated his rights, the Police Commission here reacted by locking the public out of disciplinary hearings. Bratton rightly called for legislation to reverse the ruling.

So it’s curious that the chief would flinch now, just before a hearing on the bill he asked for. Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa want to return to the pre-Copley disclosure system, but they won’t back portions of Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero’s (D-Los Angeles) bill that would give law enforcement agencies new discretion to release further details about police discipline.

Police unions oppose Romero’s bill because they don’t want any of their personnel files opened to scrutiny, and they like the fact that the court ruling reversed decades of open board of rights hearings at the LAPD.

But that shouldn’t lead Bratton to temper his support for transparency. When the now-secret discipline board earlier this year overturned the Police Commission’s finding that an officer was partly unjustified in shooting 13-year-old Devin Brown, Bratton complained that he wasn’t able to disclose the board’s reasoning. Under Romero’s bill, he could. If the bill is pared back the way the chief and the mayor want, disclosure would be narrower and would apply only to charter cities, such as Los Angeles, where transparency was department policy before the court ruling.

Recent polling has shown that, though Bratton remains popular, there’s a sharp drop-off in the public’s confidence in civilian oversight. He also enjoys far less support from nonwhites than whites. That’s important because of the long history of tension between the LAPD and minority residents, especially African Americans. To work on that trust, the chief needs to reinvigorate his enthusiasm for transparency.