ROMERO URGES PANEL TO CHANGE ITS NEW POLICY WITHHOLDING NAMES OF COPS CALLED BLOW TO TRANSPARENCY.

Byline: Dan Laidman Staff Writer

A top California legislator urged the Los Angeles Police Commission on Monday to overturn its decision to withhold the names of officers who use serious force, calling the move a troubling blow to open government.

Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, questioned the legal advice that led to the commission's decision and offered to write a bill to allay any concerns.

``I stand ready with you to introduce legislation that will clarify that sunshine - and public accountability - is the way we gain confidence in policing,'' she said.

Romero spoke at the first of two special meetings the commission has scheduled to discuss its controversial decision, made behind closed doors in December and underscored with a public vote last week.

With two of five members absent, the panel voted Monday to waive attorney-client privilege with regard to a legal memo prepared by city lawyers on the topic. The full commission plans to discuss the substance of the matter on Wednesday.

While Commission President John Mack invited community residents and legal experts with opposing views to come speak, he and his colleagues forcefully defended their action.

``We're trying to achieve a balancing act here,'' Mack said. ``We're trying to provide as much information as we legally can to the public but at the same time respect the rights of officers.''

While the Los Angeles Police Department will continue to release the officers' names soon after shootings - as most agencies do - the panel will redact the officers' identities before releasing reports that the chief of police compiles after every shooting or other serious use of force.

Media and watchdog groups have long used the detailed reports to track misconduct and hold the police accountable, although Mack pointed out that very few members of the public except print media representatives have requested the documents.

Mack also lashed out at critics for emphasizing officers' names while downplaying the summaries of shooting incidents the commission has begun putting on the Internet.

The Police Protective League, which represents the LAPD's rank and file, had opposed the online postings and had threatened to sue over the release of the chief's reports, which the commission has made available through California Public Records Act requests for 25 years.

Ultimately, the panel decided to continue to release the chief's reports and to post its own use-of-force summaries online, but to do both without officers' names.

Mack said the trade-off is justified. He said there has been positive community feedback on the commission's report explaining its recent decision in the controversial Devin Brown shooting.

The legal memo prepared by city lawyers for the commission remains confidential until a City Council vote expected today. But a copy obtained by the Daily News shows that lawyers advised the panel that the law on releasing officers' names remains unsettled.

The memo cited numerous pending cases and said the commissioners had to choose between government transparency or officer privacy. While the chief's reports could be considered evaluations of general LAPD performance and policy, the memo said, its analysis of individual officers' actions could be problematic. Commissioners Andrea Ordin and Anthony Pacheco, both lawyers, said that was what drove the panel's decision.

``The problem is in the personnel records statute and the extent to which that statute makes it a crime for us to release personnel records,'' Ordin said.

As the California Supreme Court considers several related cases, police agencies across the state have varying policies on releasing officers' names, said Steve Krull, president of the California Police Chiefs Association.

San Diego releases the names of officers involved in shootings within 72 hours, but has no mechanism for automatically reviewing each serious use of force, a spokesman said. Internal-affairs probes based on complaints of excessive force are typically private.

Sacramento police release names of officers within 10 days after shootings under a deal with its officers union, a spokeswoman said. Documents from internal reviews of shootings would be kept private, she said, although the names of involved officers might be released.

San Francisco police maintain a detailed use-of-force log that is considered a public record.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently used such documents to show that relatively few cops - a small percentage of the total - were involved in a disproportionate number of violent incidents, provoking heated debate in the city.

Dan Laidman, [phone]

dan.laidman(at)dailynews.com