The L.A. County Sheriff’s Race : * Why The Times Has Not Endorsed in This and Other Contests

In recent months The Times has reported extensively on two large problem areas in the 7,000-officer Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. One concerned major corruption in some special narcotics squads; the other focused on questionable or controversial instances of the use of excessive force against citizens in the course of arrests. The findings in these reports were troubling.

To his credit, Sheriff Sherman Block, who faces only token opposition in Tuesday’s primary and is sure to be reelected, has ordered an internal review of the department’s use of force and has worked hard to clean up the narcotics corruption mess. The measures he has taken are useful and valuable, but it will take months, perhaps longer, to determine whether they will prove truly responsive and effective.

The Sheriff’s Department is hardly the first police institution to suffer these kinds of problems and it surely won’t be the last. But the prior and well-publicized existence of similar problems in other U.S. police departments is one very good reason for wishing that these problems had been detected, monitored and corrected earlier on. So now the sheriff must play catch-up--trying to reduce the damage and review long-standing procedures--and for now the end result is uncertain. This is an unhappy situation for a proud and often excellent law-enforcement agency. In the absence of convincing, institutionally embedded reform in these two key areas, we consider it is inappropriate to endorse Block for reelection.

The Times, which will publish a summary of its candidate and ballot measure endorsements Sunday and Tuesday, rarely endorses candidates in partisan primaries and in fact does not endorse in every race. That explains, for instance, our non-endorsement in the important Democratic and Republican primaries for state insurance commissioner. The decision not to endorse in the nonpartisan sheriff’s election is a difficult but necessary means of expressing concern.