No need for secrecy

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton has every right to examine the operations of his department’s Special Weapons and Tactics unit. He has every right -- a responsibility, even -- to determine what happened in August 2005, when officers of that unit shot and killed Suzie Pena, a 19-month-old girl whose father used her as a shield during his fatal standoff with SWAT (Suzie Pena’s tragic death marked the first time in SWAT’s long and honorable history that it lost a hostage). What Bratton does not have the right to do is conduct that examination in secret. And yet that’s precisely what he has done, in the process undermining the officers of SWAT as well as the LAPD’s relationship with the public and its civilian Police Commission.

There are good reasons why some Police Department matters cannot be readily shared with press and public. Criminal investigations are sometimes best conducted, at least initially, outside close public scrutiny. Some personnel inquiries deserve protection, at least when they involve personal facts with no bearing on the public’s right to hold its police accountable. In the case of the SWAT report, it is conceivable that portions of the final draft should be kept private.

Still, the draft that first came to light in The Times’ Opinion section Sunday makes it abundantly clear that some of its conclusions are matters of public policy and require public debate. Take, for instance, the question of whether the SWAT unit’s negotiators and tactical officers should be separated, as they are in New York. Some argue that separating the teams might dissuade SWAT from turning to armed response too quickly, while others contend that SWAT’s exemplary record supports its current structure. In addition, SWAT’s reputation as a self-selecting unit, in which current members tap others to join them, has helped build tight camaraderie but at the price of openness. That too deserves debate.

By commissioning this report in private and denying its findings to policymakers and the public, Bratton has stifled the very conversation that he should be encouraging. The Police Commission needs this report, as does the public. Bratton should release it.