BRATTON: EMPOWER COPS NEW STRATEGY FOLLOWS HIGHLY CRITICAL UCLA-USC STUDY.

Byline: James Nash Staff Writer

Police Chief William Bratton embraced a vision for the Los Angeles Police Department on Friday that cuts red tape and empowers local commanders and patrol officers to fight crime aggressively.

Sometimes a cheerleader, sometimes a scolding parent, Bratton told 100 top LAPD officials at their annual retreat that he is shaking up the whole management system to empower rank-and-file officers and their commanders.

Part of that strategy will be to shift authority for dealing with citizen complaints from the chief's office to police captains so less time and energy is spent investigating officers and more on investigating criminals.

``I don't want to get numbers on the board,'' Bratton told commanders at the conference at the Burbank Hilton. ``The numbers I'm interested in is reducing crime and reducing the number of victims in this city.''

Historically, the LAPD has followed a militaristic, top-down management based on command-and-control - a policy that came under intense criticism in a joint USC-UCLA study of the LAPD that was released at the retreat.

Bratton wants to change the LAPD culture quickly by giving more authority to captains and mid-level police managers, and expecting officers under their supervision to be bolder and make more arrests, although he wasn't setting quotas.

``We have a long way to go,'' Bratton said. ``My sense is, after these 60 days we can accelerate fairly quickly, pick up traction and achieve what may seem like an impossible goal.''

The academic report on the LAPD found the department suffers from autocratic management, an overzealous disciplinary process and a lack of cooperation among department leaders, rank-and-file officers and the police union.

The report was the product of eight years of research by a team from the the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California.

The authors of the UCLA/USC report - titled ``To Serve, To Protect ... and To Listen'' - said the LAPD was beset by poor communication within the department and with the public and a sense of being under constant siege because of scandals such as Rampart, the Rodney King beating, and the constant turnover of police chiefs.

The researchers laid some of the blame at the feet of former Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, who headed the department from 1997 to 2002.

``What became very clear is this department had virtually no feedback up and down the chain of command and certainly with the broader community,'' said Wellford ``Buzz'' Wilms, a UCLA professor of education and policy studies.

The researchers said many LAPD officers avoid situations that might lead to complaints against them because they fear they will be unfairly disciplined. Eighty percent of officers surveyed in the study said they worried about being punished for making an honest mistake.

Bratton said that while the LAPD has sped up the hiring of new police and morale appears to be rebounding, the ultimate goal - making Los Angeles the safest big city in America - remains elusive.

Bratton said he plans to devolve decision-making authority from his office to police commanders, add detectives on night and weekend shifts, and create positions for homeland security and implementing the provisions of the federal consent decree ordered in the wake of the Rampart scandal.

Bratton's speech energized many of the commanders in the room.

``It's a great time of change,'' said Jerilyn Weinstein, who recently was promoted to patrol captain at the LAPD's West Valley station. ``We're in a completely new era.''