LAPD Reforms Fall Far Short, Study Charges

In the five years since a blue-ribbon commission recommended sweeping reforms of the Los Angeles Police Department, the LAPD has made slow progress, but overall has failed to live up to its reform mandate, according to a landmark study that raises new questions about department management and the effectiveness of Police Chief Willie L. Williams.

The report, released Thursday afternoon, represents the most comprehensive analysis of the LAPD since the so-called Christopher Commission studied the department in the wake of the 1991 police beating of Rodney G. King. The new report’s conclusions are stark and supported by mountains of meticulously assembled research.

“Given the five years that have elapsed since the Christopher report was published, we conclude that the department has not undergone reform to the extent that was possible or required,� according to the report, prepared by respected Los Angeles lawyers Merrick J. Bobb and Mark H. Epstein and two of their colleagues at the request of the city’s civilian Police Commission. “For the most part, what reform there has been has been more attributable to the acts of dedicated individuals than a coordinated plan or effort.�

While crediting the LAPD with some progress, the report compares the department to a “ship in mid-passage, capable but not certain to reach port.� It commends the department for reducing complaints against officers and for leading the nation in diversifying the ranks, but it also identifies area after area in which the department has fallen short of the mark. According to the new study:

* The LAPD arrests far fewer suspects than it used to, but uses force in roughly the same percentage of those arrests. Officers, the study concluded, have all but abandoned the use of the baton, and instead rely much more heavily on pepper spray for subduing suspects.

* The department lacks a system for analyzing and managing the use of force by police officers and has neglected to track potential problem officers.

* Complaints against police officers are down, but police officials continue to punish excessive force too leniently, and lawsuits against the LAPD continue to cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year.

* Women and some minorities are better represented in the police force but continue to have difficulties ascending to its highest ranks.

* The LAPD is home to growing tensions between men and women and among officers of different races.

* The Police Department “does not currently have an overarching vision and plan that is adequate to perpetuate the LAPD’s reputation as the nation’s finest.�

The report tiptoes around assigning blame, but its conclusions add to the building pressure on Chief Williams, whose term ends next year and who was brought to Los Angeles to lead the department’s reform. With the progress of that mission under serious question, Williams’ effectiveness also is certain to come under renewed scrutiny.

Raymond Fisher, a member of the Police Commission who was instrumental in requesting the new study, said he hopes the chief and the LAPD will take its findings seriously and constructively. And though Fisher emphasized that the report did cite evidence of progress in some areas, he acknowledged that its conclusions also raise questions about the effectiveness of the LAPD’s top brass.

“You have to look at the leadership of the department and say: Has the leadership fully understood and prioritized these issues?� Fisher said. “I don’t think it has.�

Fisher added that he hopes the report will create a new sense of “mission and urgency� at the department. “Without that,� he said, “things get bogged down.�

Police Commission President Deirdre Hill agreed: “Now is not the time for complacency,� she said at a news conference introducing the report.

While she said the positive changes documented in the study offered “the beginning of a glimmer of hope,� Hill concluded her remarks with a bleak assessment. “Overall, the LAPD has not changed to the extent that was either possible or required,� she said. “And the progress to date remains fragile.�

But Williams said he viewed the document as an overdue recognition that the department has made strides in some areas such as diversity, even though it operates in a state and national political arena that has fostered movements opposing affirmative action.

Williams also called attention to another document released Thursday, a Police Commission staff analysis of the LAPD that found significant progress toward implementing community policing and small gains in other areas.

“We haven’t gone as far as we could,� the chief acknowledged, but he stressed that some delays, including the long wait for an anti-discrimination unit, have been the fault of department outsiders.

“I share some of the credit for the progress and some of the blame,� Williams said, “but not all of it either way.�

Mayor Richard Riordan said Thursday that he agreed with the report’s findings, and sees a lack of accountability as the biggest obstacle toward reforming the LAPD.

“It’s a totally disorganized department,� Riordan said in a meeting with Times editors and reporters. “There’s no accountability up and down.�

The mayor primarily blamed the City Council for repeatedly “undercutting� the power of the civilian Police Commission, such as by overturning the commission’s reprimand of Williams for allegedly lying to the board about his trips to Las Vegas. Riordan refused to point the finger at Williams.

The Bobb report also does not single out Williams for blame, and Police Commission members stressed Thursday that they were not interested in conducting a review of individuals. But the study’s conclusions suggest that progress toward reforming the department has gotten bogged down time and again, sometimes by technological deficiencies or budget shortfalls but other times by a lack of initiative and focus on the part of top LAPD officials.

In the area of police use of force against citizens, for instance, the new study offers a mixed report card for the LAPD. According to the authors, officers have not, as some feared, developed a fear of using justifiable force--but they arrest far fewer people than they once did.

Although hampered by the LAPD’s sloppy and inadequate records, the report’s authors concluded that police officers last year used force 2,187 times, compared with 3,403 in 1990, the year before the King beating. But the decline was paralleled by a sharp decrease in overall arrests, which plummeted from 312,870 in 1990 to 189,191 last year.

That finding mirrors a recent report in The Times chronicling the decline in arrests, which prompted Riordan to request a study of the issue.

With arrests and use of force declining in absolute numbers, officers still use force in about 1% of all arrests.

They have markedly changed the type of force used, however. The baton once was used hundreds of times a year; now widely derided among the rank-and-file as the “indictment stick,� the baton was employed only 43 times last year. Meanwhile, pepper spray, whose use was authorized by the Police Commission after a pilot program, was used 650 times by officers last year, compared with 21 times in 1990.

That shift may have contributed to a positive trend in the reduction of injuries to suspects, the authors concluded. But the LAPD has failed to monitor force carefully, they said, and despite prodding by the Police Commission and others, still has not implemented a sophisticated tracking system for potential problem officers.

“If the LAPD had fully implemented the Christopher Commission recommendations, it would by now have had a sophisticated, incident-driven computerized database,� the report says. “The LAPD is nowhere near having such a database.�

After much delay, the LAPD has launched a computerized tracking system of officers, but it is a rudimentary effort that pales in comparison to a similar system being installed at the Sheriff’s Department. In pulling together internal documents for the study, Williams acknowledged, LAPD staff had to rely mainly on stacks of paper and cardboard boxes.

At the same time, the department has neglected to track officers who generate complaints in order to determine what, if anything, should be done about them. Although Williams last year announced that the department had compiled a list of potential problem officers, other top officials later were forced to concede that no such list existed.

“We have seen no evidence of a meaningful, institutionalized effort by the department to do work history reviews for officers generating an unusually high number of uses of force or force-related complaints,� the report says.

The report’s news is not all bleak, however. In analyzing the department’s efforts toward diversifying, the authors commended the LAPD for progress, particularly in attracting African Americans and women. Working conditions for gay and lesbian officers also seem to have improved since 1991, the analysts concluded.

But more remains to be done in those areas as well: Women, for instance, continue to struggle to break into coveted LAPD jobs such as the SWAT team and have yet to be represented in the LAPD’s highest ranks. The department’s highest-ranking female officer is a captain, meaning that Williams’ command staff is all male.

Likewise, the report warned that hiring and promotion of Asian officers is lagging, and it criticized the pace of cultural diversity training. Those failings are all the more critical, the authors concluded, because of “troublesome indications that racial, ethnic and gender tensions within the LAPD are growing.�

In part, the study’s authors hinted, the ferment could be bubbling to the surface for a good reason--because the department is finally opening up and encouraging officers to speak their minds.

“The LAPD has changed in the last five years from a tightly controlled, insular and monolithic organization, where open expression of dissent was a rarity, to a department where open expression of support and loyalty up and down the chain of command are a rarity,� the report says. “All things considered, it is better to hear the open griping and the dissonance of competing voices than the former monotone. Yet, the loss of morale among LAPD officers is a matter of substantial concern.�

In examining the LAPD in 1991, the Christopher Commission identified a host of problems with the department’s disciplinary process, ranging from officers who discouraged civilians from filing complaints to investigators who swept complaints under the rug. In many respects, that process has been improved, the new report found.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign for the department is that complaints of excessive force have dropped since 1991, and have fallen faster and further than the decline in arrests. In addition, the quality of investigations into such complaints has improved, the study finds.

But the authors expressed amazement that the LAPD continues not to track discipline using the computers available to it, instead relying on hand counts to generate statistics. The result was that the authors of the report were given inconsistent, irreconcilable data from the department about complaints--a handicap that has dogged the LAPD’s efforts to provide reliable information about arrests as well.

In the interview, Williams agreed that the lack of computerization has hampered the department but said that problem was a result of funding, not of LAPD inaction. Whatever the case, the authors of the study said it was stunning.

“Such an antiquated system is remarkable in light of the importance of this information,� according to the report. “The lack of information and tracking virtually ensures that the department will be unable to implement a consistent and proportionate policy on punishments, and instead will risk imposing arbitrary and disparate punishments.�

In addition, the new report highlighted a little-known provision for disposing of disciplinary cases that raises new questions about fairness. Known as the “miscellaneous memorandum,� it is intended to give high-ranking officers a tool to dismiss personnel complaints when the accused officer cannot be identified or when the alleged offense does not constitute a violation of LAPD policy.

Miscellaneous memos have become more common in recent years, and the report revealed that in some cases they have been used to end investigations of high-ranking police officers, some accused of sexual improprieties. That practice is unacceptable, the report’s authors said, and they recommended that it be abolished.

The report also identified lingering problems with the “code of silence,� which critics say deters officers from blowing the whistle on their partners or others who may have behaved improperly. The department “has not taken sufficient action� to discipline those who stay silent or to abolish the code of silence philosophy, the report concludes.

The authors also emphasized that city taxpayers are paying too much to defend lawsuits against out-of-control or violent officers.

They recommend creating a roll-out team that would investigate all incidents in which suspects suffered serious injuries at the hands of police officers. A similar program at the Sheriff’s Department has been credited with driving down lawsuits against the county and saving taxpayers money.

The report ends with a warning to political leaders: True reform must be led by the Police Commission, the study concludes, and other officials must do their best not to interfere. Already, the commission has taken important steps, just this week hiring its first inspector general, a development the report lauds.

“Much is still at stake,� Bobb concluded. “And much remains to be done. Overall, the LAPD is moving--slowly and painfully at times, but moving--in the right direction.�

Times staff writers Stephanie Simon and Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What the Numbers Show

A report on the status of reform at the LAPD shows that arrest have fallen. Use of force has also declined, but still occurs in about the same percentage of arrests.

Total arrests (in thousands)

1995: 189,191

****

Use of force totals

1995: 2,187

Indicates jump in the chart’s scale

Source: “Five Years Later: A Report to the Los Angeles Police Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department’s Implementation of Christopher Commission Recommendations,� by Merrick Bobb, Mark Epstein, Nicolas Miller and Manuel Abascal