LAPD'S TROUBLES HOW CAN THEY PROTECT US IF THEY'RE BUSY COVERING THEIR OWN FLANKS?

Byline: James Prince and Jerrold Post

WHILE acknowledging the problem of morale within the Los Angeles Police Department, Chief Bernard C. Parks refuses to recognize the direct relationship between poor morale and poor service to the community.

Parks seems to believe that the way to improve productivity and protect against corruption is to institute more strident measures of accountability and oversight, such as revamping the personnel tracking system or instituting polygraph testing.

However, until the dysfunctional LAPD culture is corrected and officers regain a feeling of pride and professionalism, the well-publicized problems will continue to fester.

The morale problem may have preceded Parks, but the infection has worsened on his watch. And until he addresses it, there will be serious problems with attitude, behavior and productivity - which in turn provide a fertile breeding ground for corruption.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, on behalf of the Rampart Independent Review Panel, conducted the first anonymous survey of all sworn personnel. The survey corroborated previous studies clearly showing a dangerously high level of anger, frustration, cynicism, discouragement and disenfranchisement within the LAPD.

The survey's findings parallel that of the department's own Board of Inquiry, which found that nearly all employees pointed to the lack of leadership as contributing to the breakdown of integrity and the ethics within the department.

The report found that employees not only have doubts about the management's integrity and honesty, but also were concerned with a general lack of leadership on the part of their first-line supervisors.

That gulf between senior management and officers can only serve to degrade the needed loyalty to the department that professional big-city law enforcement demands.

The vast majority of police officers are hard-working professional public servants. Analysis of the survey revealed that overall respondents were proud of the department's past and their uniform.

The glory days, however, have slipped from excellence and professionalism to internal confusion and recrimination.

To restore public trust, the rank and file's concerns should take higher priority than tinkering with operational issues with a few accountability measures, which seems to be the approach of many city leaders.

To try to make the department more accountable without tackling the low morale head-on cannot cure the root problem.

There is a serious question not only whether the current leadership is up to the task but also whether it can command the needed respect and cooperation of the officer corps.

Low productivity and corruption are a consequence of underlying morale problems as well as the cause.

``I was proud of my badge when I was hired. Now, this is just a job,'' wrote one officer.

Such deep-seated sentiment directly corresponds to the decline in professionalism and the quality of service to the public. Many officers wrote about the resulting changes.

``I have been around only great, hard-working officers who do things the right way ... (now) those same officers don't look to go out of their way and be pro-active,'' wrote another officer.

So who suffers?

The community.

``When asked to list the causes of the dangerously low morale, a number of secondary issues emerged in addition to the primary issue of lack of confidence in the senior management. The lowering of hiring standards was cited by officers from all ranks who stated that the lower standards result in an increase in misconduct and seriously degrade the quality of service offered to the public.''

Officers also are concerned that management doesn't want to set up a hotline for officers to report corrupt peers. LAPD management has argued it would degrade the honor code binding each officer, but officers strongly disagreed. More than 70 percent said a whistle-blower line would be used.

There also is overwhelming evidence that the present discipline system is a major factor contributing to lower morale and the increasing lack of loyalty to the department.

The perception is that a discipline system exists that is dysfunctional and unfair at best, capricious and arbitrary at worst, which discourages officers from relying on the system at all.

The feelings of distrust, alienation and anger are symptomatic of the low morale rather than being the cause of it. Officers responding to the questionnaire felt that the current police leadership may not be able to remedy the internal problem.

What is clear is that improving the morale will be critically dependent upon a management that captures the respect of the rank and file. The top administration in the LAPD must accept the fact that dealing with the morale issue is vital and the culture of the LAPD must be evaluated as a major factor in the current problems in the department.

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Photo: (color) The LAPD morale problem may have preceded Chief Bernard C. Parks, but the infection has worsened on his watch.

David R. Crane/Staff Photographer