BRATTON: REPORT HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR MORE COPS.

Byline: BETH BARRETT Staff Writer

A report released this week that urges sweeping changes within the LAPD to erase a ``thin blue line'' model of suppression policing underscores the need for more officers, Chief William Bratton said Thursday.

In his first public comments on the report issued seven years after the Rampart scandal rocked the LAPD, Bratton said the findings highlight the city's chronic understaffing of the agency and are in line with his plan to add 3,000 officers to the force.

He said guaranteed funding by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for 1,000 more cops over the next four years is the first step in creating a modern police force that uses a problem-solving approach to crimefighting.

``To address a lot of the issues that they've identified will take a much larger police force to reduce that warrior mentality, to deal with the style of policing we've had to adopt (at Rampart), and to give officers more time to spend face to face, not in an enforcement way, but in a reinforcement way,'' he said.

The report, released Wednesday by a committee led by civil-rights leader Connie Rice, takes a look at the LAPD and how it has changed since the 1999 scandal that grew out of cover-ups and crimes by former anti-gang officers at the Rampart Division.

Since then, the report said, the Rampart Division has become transformed into a model of modern policing.

But it also found that city leaders have failed to take critical steps to prevent future breakdowns and that the civic culture, which has resisted facing core social and policing problems for decades, remains the biggest obstacle to progress.

It also said the Los Angeles Police Department remains ``upside down,'' putting its least-experienced and lowest-paid staffers on the front lines, lacks adequate resources and still has a widespread culture of ``warrior policing.''

The police union also made its first public comments on the report Thursday with Police Protective League President Bob Baker issuing a statement.

``This is a detailed report and there is a lot we agree and disagree with,'' he said. ``We are gratified that the report acknowledges that the game of `gotcha' has to go and the department must learn (as the report says) to distinguish between mistakes and malfeasance (among its officers).''

Bratton said the department needs more officers so cops can get out of their patrol cars to engage community members, similar to the kind of policing used to turn around Rampart.

And he vowed not to let the fifth postmortem of the Rampart scandal ``sit on the shelf gathering dust.'' He promised to offer the first critique and recommendations on its implementation at next week's Police Commission meeting.

Commission President John Mack said the city needs to ``seize the moment'' with the leadership of Bratton and Villaraigosa -- who also said Thursday he intends to pursue the report's reform agenda.

``Do we have the will? That applies to all of us,'' Mack said, in promising the commission's attention to the recommended reforms, which include a task force of officers and others to work out specific fixes.

``This is a rallying call for the entire city. We don't want to be here two years later going down the same road.''

Villaraigosa told the commission he has ``unrelenting expectations,'' and would give it his active support.

``I think there is the will to continue on the reform track,'' he said.

Rice told the commission she undertook the review because she believed Bratton was the right leader to change LAPD culture. But any changes have to be institutional, she said.

``We have to make sure they can be sustained after the chief leaves,'' she said.

beth.barrett(at)dailynews.com

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