Los Angeles Police Protective League Offers 15 Recommendations for Improving DOJ Consent Decree; Meaningful Reforms Must Be Top Priority.

Business & News Editors

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 5, 2000

In response to the U.S. Department of Justice police reform consent decree approved by the Los Angeles City Council, the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) today submitted 15 additional recommendations for improving police practices within the City of Los Angeles.

The plan underscores the LAPPL's efforts to work with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) management, the City Council and the Department of Justice collaboratively to ensure that meaningful reforms are implemented as effectively as possible for Los Angeles residents.

The LAPPL board of directors recognizes that changes need to be made within the LAPD management. One of the LAPPL's strongest recommendations is to remove the investigation of police misconduct out of the LAPD management realm, and instead place this important checks-and-balances function under the jurisdiction of an investigative unit with civilian oversight.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant," said Mitzi Grasso, director of the LAPPL. "Civilian oversight combined with an outside auditor and an audit oversight panel will improve the quality and credibility of internal investigations.

"The questions that need to be answered are: `What precise reforms need to be made and how can they be made as effective as possible?'" Grasso said. "We are very concerned with the Justice Department's suggestions for reforming the LAPD, and we just feel that the consent decree does not goes far enough to resolve the problems within the management culture of the LAPD -- and the evidence shows it."

Grasso said that the reform recommendations contained in the Christopher Commission and Webster Commission reports have been reduced to little more than statistics, with little or no actual reform taking place. The LAPPL also is concerned that recent consent decrees in other U.S. cities have failed to accomplish their goals.

"In Pittsburgh, proactive policing has been discouraged," said Grasso. "The fact is that in the more than two years since the decree was signed in Pittsburgh, arrests have gone down while crime has gone up. It has certainly impacted the residents of Pittsburgh, but not in the way they hoped.

"It's been a very expensive failure," Grasso said. "A failure no one wants replicated in Los Angeles."

The LAPPL is urging the Los Angeles City Council to review and modify the consent decree proposed by the Justice Department. The LAPPL's policies and process recommendations, which will improve police management's accountability and restore true community confidence in the LAPD, must be adopted.

A full list of the LAPPL's proposals can be conveniently accessed on the Web site at www.lapd.com.

About the Los Angeles Police Protective League

Formed in 1922, the Los Angeles Police Protective League represents the nearly 10,000 dedicated and professional sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPPL's purpose is to establish, protect and improve its members' rights and benefits, including wages, hours and conditions of employment.

      THE LAPPL PROPOSED ADDITIONS TO THE CONSENT DECREE INCLUDE:

--  Recommendation No. 1: LAPD management must move from its present
    policing culture to one of fairness, openness, problem solving and
    community engagement. An expert group should be formed, including
    officers from every rank and civilians, to forge a culture
    transformation blueprint to achieve that change.

--  Recommendation No. 2: Community policing must be implemented as
    follows:

      a: Restoration of the Senior Lead Officers' program.
      b: Evaluation and promotion criteria for officers should include
         community-based policing activities.
      c: Officers should receive training on community policing
         activities from outside experts.
      d: Require that field supervisors spend the majority of their
         workdays out in the field providing supervision and training.
      e: Meetings with communities should be required of all patrol
         officers at least once each quarter of a calendar year.

--  Recommendation No. 3: Improve the system for screening personnel
    complaints against officers, including creating a review and
    evaluation supervisor in each division to screen complaints and
    determine which complaints are worthy of further investigation as
    a personnel complaint.

--  Recommendation No. 4: Improve the system for investigating
    personnel complaints. There must be substantial reforms of
    Internal Affairs Group, including creating civilian oversight.

--  Recommendation No. 5: Improve the system of adjudicating personnel
    complaints against officers by creating a civilian review board
    outside of the Police Department to replace the current Board of
    Rights' system.

--  Recommendation No. 6: Improve the disciplinary system through the
    adoption of a "uniform penalty guide" for disciplining officers as
    previously approved by the Police Commission. A binding
    administrative appeal procedure that satisfies due process of law,
    must be implemented.

--  Recommendation No. 7: Amend the Los Angeles City Charter to add
    responsibilities of the Police Commission in the area of police
    discipline.

--  Recommendation No. 8: Implement the TEAMS II system of tracking
    personnel complaints against officers as follows:

      a: Establish a system through collective bargaining of
         centralized reporting of all personnel complaints of police
         misconduct through the use of computerized equipment.
      b: Scientifically validated standards must be developed as to
         when and how information in the tracking system may be
         accessed and used consistent with all federal, state and
         local laws and appropriate memorandums of understandings.
      c: Accountability for the volume of personnel complaints must
         rest with the command staff (Captains, Commanders, Bureau
         Chiefs, Deputy Chiefs and the Chief of Police). This data
         should be used in consideration of command staff promotions,
         merit pay raises and assignments.

--  Recommendation No. 9: Continued and increased cooperation with
    state legislators regarding implementation of reforms to prevent
    the perception of racial bias and racial profiling.

--  Recommendation No. 10: Improvements in training for all officers
    of the rank of Lieutenant and below as follows:

      a: Identify areas in which training of officers is deficient in
         comparison to national and state standards and require
         immediate improvements in these areas.
      b: Mandate immediate training as to proper supervisory and
         leadership responsibilities and duties, including use of
         outside educators and experts.
      c: Mandate immediate training of officers as to ethics, civil
         rights and community-based policing, including use of outside
         experts.
      d: Training of officers to be witnesses must be immediately
         re-oriented to stress accuracy in all respects.

--  Recommendation No. 11: Reconsider criteria for civil service
    promotions and advanced paygrades within the Police Department to
    include recognition of the merit principle and the elimination of
    the use of Boards of Inquiry to assess promotions and advanced
    paygrades.

--  Recommendation No. 12: Require the District Attorney's Office to
    adopt a countywide policy defining and enforcing prosecutors'
    Brady responsibilities. Prohibit police management from expanding
    the District Attorney's adopted policy.

--  Recommendation No. 13: Aggressive efforts must be made to retain
    and recruit qualified officers as follows:

      a: A flexible work schedule shall be implemented for all patrol
         officers and detectives.
      b: Amend the Los Angeles City Charter to increase pension and
         disability benefits for all officers.

--  Recommendation No. 14: Institute improved screening of candidates
    for the Police Department to determine, in every respect, fitness
    for being an officer.

--  Recommendation No. 15: Create an independent commission to
    investigate LAPD management's handling of Rampart cases to
    determine what it might have done to better prevent, expose and
    deal with the Rafael Perez scandal and, more specifically, issues
    of management's misconduct, leading to and after the scandal.