Number of complaints against LAPD employees rose last year

The number of Los Angeles Police Department employees who were fired, quit under pressure or were suspended increased last year as the agency saw a spike in personnel complaints that alleged misconduct by officers and civilian workers, officials said Tuesday.

The number of complaints filed increased 3% to 6,716 last year compared to the year before, according to an annual report to the Police Commission.

The number of LAPD employees facing complaint investigations who were fired, quit under pressure or suspended went from 421 in 2005 to 451 last year, leading some community leaders to voice concern about whether the department is improving its standards of conduct.

The report comes a month after the department was accused of using excessive force to break up an immigrants’ rights rally in MacArthur Park.

“The average citizen should be concerned that complaints against the police are up because it signals that something is wrong,” said Pete White of the Los Angeles Community Action Network.

His group filed a complaint Tuesday alleging that officers used excessive force on a woman in the skid row area.

LAPD officials said the increase in complaints can be explained, in part, by the fact that the police force has grown in size and that the department has taken steps to ensure that citizens are not discouraged from filing allegations against employees.

“We investigate, we pursue, every complaint that comes in,” said Sgt. Lee Sands, a department spokesman.

However, police commissioners said they were somewhat concerned about the increase as well as how the department was handling many allegations.

Commission President John Mack asked the department to report back with more information on the handling of complaints of “discourtesy,” saying that only 2.7% of the 2,822 complaints for that category last year were sustained.

Mack said the percentage of sustained complaints seemed low given that 21.2% of all complaints were sustained.

“We frequently hear from people in the community, especially people of color, that they are subject to discourteous treatment,” Mack said.

The commission president also questioned that only one of the 135 complaints of discrimination was sustained, “which is not a terribly high number. That, to me, is still problematic.”

The most frequent allegation made is “neglect of duty,” which the department sustained 16.3% of the time.

The report said the department investigated 391 complaints of preventable traffic collisions and sustained 95.7% of them.

Still, commissioners agreed Tuesday to exclude many unavoidable traffic accidents from the category of mistakes investigated for possible punitive action, saying that officers are asked to multi-task and should not necessarily be put in a disciplinary process if they mistakenly crash their patrol cars.

Instead, a point system would be used to determine when an officer’s use of police vehicles should be limited.

The new rules must be negotiated with the police union. But Commissioner Alan Skobin predicted that if the rules were approved, morale would increase.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com