Danger in cutting corners on supervision

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 12/15/2011 @ 12:15 PM

The City’s approach to its current budget problems is hiring just enough replacements for LAPD officers lost through retirements and attrition. This approach, however, has been accompanied by an abandonment of the middle management positions needed for the Department to operate effectively.

With scant attention by outsiders, but growing alarm among those in the Department, there is a burgeoning number of vacancies for police officer III (288), sergeant (88), detective (122) and lieutenant (26). These are critical positions that need to be filled, as they are both the frontline supervisors and the Department leaders who make the day-to-day decisions most noticed by the public. Allowing these positions to go unfilled by failing to fund promotion opportunities for rank-and-file officers puts the Department and the City at risk of retreating to a bygone era.

This is not a theoretical concern – it is being felt Department-wide at an alarming rate. Too often in debriefing of incidents where mistakes were made, we find a lack of effective supervision was the primary reason why department policies and procedures were not followed. These leaderless breakdowns have unfortunately led to taxpayer-funded legal settlements. We believe that the failure to adequately fill frontline supervisor positions is leading to a lack of proper supervision and ineffective command and control that is infecting the entire Department. Do we need history to repeat? Have we not learned the lessons of the Rafael Perez/Nino Durden scandal, the Christopher Commission and the Consent Decree?

Supervisors direct, evaluate and monitor officer performance in the field. They respond to the scene of significant incidents; review reports, including arrest and booking reports; ensure the integrity of applications for warrants and the use of confidential informants; and they ensure the appropriate treatment of persons in custody. This is why supervisory positions need to be filled.

It’s not that promotions aren’t being granted. In fact, the Department has promoted 22 command officers. During this time, there have been only six promotions to the rank of detective, 16 to sergeant and 20 to lieutenant.

Funding command staff promotions while ignoring the needs of the day-to-day frontline supervision necessary to police our city is a recipe for disaster. It’s also a cause of frustration for qualified rank-and-file officers waiting on promotional lists established over the last year-and-a-half. The ensuing morale problem can undermine the LAPD’s effectiveness throughout the City.

We know that the large number of vacant positions at the rank of police officer III and above is already a concern to Department leaders; there’s no reason why it shouldn’t concern the Mayor and City Council, too. While City leaders can take satisfaction in seeing that the number of officers is not declining, they still need to understand the damage incurred to the core of the Department by the current hiring and promotion process. We cannot afford to return to the days of rising crime and violence that plagued our City when supervisory ranks were thin.

We call on the Mayor and the City Council to recognize the dangers of continuing to tolerate large numbers of unfilled supervisory positions within the LAPD and do something about it immediately. If City leaders don’t step up to this obvious problem, the decision to continue hiring officers will need to be reconsidered. It makes no sense to keep hiring police officers if we can’t be assured they’ll receive adequate training and supervision when they are patrolling our streets.

Leaving supervisory positions vacant may make short-term financial sense for the City, but could it lead to another leadership breakdown within the Department? Weigh in by leaving a comment below.

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Finest moment?

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 12/10/2011 @ 07:51 AM

On October 1, 2011, protesters encamped on City Hall’s front lawn and declared themselves part of the national Occupy movement protesting income inequality and corporate greed. City leaders promptly welcomed the Occupy L.A. protesters with open arms, with the City Council not only endorsing the movement but also inviting protesters to stay indefinitely.

The City leadership stated that the price of denying protesters’ First Amendment rights would be too great. So for nearly two months, LAPD officers policed the encampment, carefully balancing the Occupiers’ right to protest with the need to protect public safety and property. But as the costs of this policy started becoming apparent, the City slowly rescinded its support, and in perhaps the clearest example of its mismanagement of the situation, attempted to lure the movement off the City Hall lawn by offering them office space and other financial incentives. The protesters didn’t budge.

And so on November 30, long after encampments in other cities had been forcibly removed, our officers were finally given orders to disband the Occupy L.A. camp. The operation was efficient, orderly and involved a minimal use of force. The mayor lauded it as the LAPD’s “finest moment,” and indeed this was a job very well done, but to say that this was their finest moment did a disservice to our men and women in blue.

Our finest moments occur every day, every time LAPD officers prevent a crime, rescue people in danger, solve a crime or make an arrest. Our finest moments occur every time LAPD officers respond, capably, professionally and with appropriate restraint to the threats that arise organically in our society, not to problems fostered or even created by political calculation or attempts at political correctness.

This was a clear success for the LAPD and stood in contrast to operations in other cities, but many observers have recognized that there were serious and avoidable costs – far exceeding the price of repairing the City Hall lawn – resulting from the way the City handled this situation. Millions of scarce taxpayer dollars were squandered on over-accommodating protesters, some of whom abused the City’s goodwill by destroying public property and undermining respect for our laws. What kind of precedent has this set for future situations requiring the balancing of constitutional rights against public safety? The L.A. Times got it right in their editorial, “Handling the next occupation in L.A.”

We hope these costs will be fully considered should a similar situation arise in the future. LAPD officers, who must face considerable personal risk when carrying out orders to restore public order, deserve better. Taxpayers, many of whom are struggling with unemployment and reduced services, deserve better. Los Angeles deserves better.

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Fully funding the LAPD would save more lives

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 12/06/2011 @ 09:46 AM

More officers and better policing. That’s what a Los Angeles Times editorial stated recently as key reasons why L.A. is a much safer city today.

The editorial, “L.A.'s triumph over crime,” makes the irrefutable case for full funding of public safety. This article should be reviewed by every elected official at City Hall whenever budget priorities are being set.

Recalling the bad old days when L.A. recorded 1,000 murders a year, the Times stated that 800 families this Thanksgiving weekend enjoyed a holiday that would have been barren had they lost a loved one to a murder – “a social victory for which every resident of this city should be appreciative.”

Beyond saving lives, fighting crime with a fully-funded police department is the best investment the city government can make. As the editorial pointed out, for every crime there is a cost — property that is lost, medical bills to pay, workdays missed and the more difficult-to-measure effects of psychological damage to survivors. Using a methodology developed by researchers at Iowa State University, the Times calculates a savings of $1.36 billion annually for Los Angeles by eliminating 800 murders a year since the early 1990s.

While we give our thanks to the Times’ editorial board for reminding everyone of the importance of keeping public safety as our city’s No. 1 priority, we can’t help but wonder how many more people would be alive for the holidays if the city fully funded the LAPD. The Department estimates its budget is currently underfunded by $50 million and its cash overtime budget by $100 million.

We urge the residents of Los Angeles to join us and take the Public Safety First Pledge and oppose any reductions in the number of LAPD officers protecting our neighborhoods.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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How will public safety be affected if changes are not made to state’s realignment experiment?

By Peter Repovich on 11/29/2011 @ 11:14 AM

Most people I speak with are unaware of the prison realignment plans being implemented by the state of California that disregard the safety of Californians and warrant a prompt reevaluation.

In addition to cuts to local public safety, the state intends to terminate over 840 employees in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s parole division by September 2013. And according to published reports, the state has also drafted plans to close six prisons.

In a June statewide conference call, State Parole Director Robert Ambroselli told parole agents throughout California that state officials had created a plan to effectively end parole supervision in California by eliminating 80 percent of field staff. The closure of six prisons would come after completion of “parole redirection” and achieving compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s prison overcrowding ruling.

Some state officials may be using the Court’s order as a smoke screen for their plans, hoping the public will believe the closures and parole cuts are also part of the Court’s mandate. The ruling ordered a reduction in the inmate population, but it did not mandate that prisons be closed or that inmates be freed without supervision.

It is troubling indeed that state leaders would so readily risk hard-won gains in public safety by essentially eliminating supervision of released inmates and unnecessarily closing six state prisons.

Coupled with the relinquishment of responsibility for felons, the state is now dumping criminals on local law enforcement agencies. Take the case of Lloyd Anthony Holbrook, who had a long criminal history that included assaults, firearms possession and making criminal threats. Under the state’s new prison realignment law and parole programs, Mr. Holbrook was classified as a ‘low-level, non-violent’ offender not requiring parole supervision. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Blankstein documented Holbrook’s most recent encounter with law enforcement, an arrest by U.S. marshals who took him in for making terrorist threats after a half-day standoff with LAPD’s SWAT team.

Many were surprised that with a rap sheet like his, Holbrook was not being supervised. Parole agents were not tracking his movements or making sure he complied with his parole conditions. Holbrook is only the latest addition to the growing list of ‘low-level, non-violent’ offenders who, once paroled, turned out to be highly dangerous and harmful to society. Part of the reason this is happening all too often involves the list of 500 criminal code sections responsible for classifying an offender as ‘low-level, non-violent.’

According to the California District Attorneys Associations, more than 20 offenses that most people would consider serious or violent fall into the low-level, non-violent category. Among them are killing or injuring a police officer while resisting arrest, involuntary manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, participating in a lynching, possession of weapons of mass destruction, possessing explosives, threatening a witness or juror, and using arson or explosives to terrorize a health facility or church.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley summed up the situation when he said realignment casts too wide a net in defining low-level offenses. Sound judgment and common sense are clearly lacking. Virtually all law-abiding Californians would consider these types of crimes anything but trivial. We should expect individuals convicted of these crimes to serve their full terms in prison, not in a county jail. Moreover, most people would want parolees’ movements tracked upon their release and the assurance that authorities are enforcing parolees’ compliance with their parole conditions.

The criminal justice realignment governing incarceration and parole is a bold experiment that has many of us in law enforcement more than concerned about the potential consequences – unintended or otherwise – on public safety. Adjustments will undoubtedly need to be made as we learn from experience, but a good start would be eliminating from the list of criminal code sections those crimes that by no stretch of the imagination can be considered ‘low level, non-violent.’ And because this is a clear matter of the public’s safety, we suggest this be done as soon as possible.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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Decoding ‘prison realignment’

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 11/21/2011 @ 04:22 PM

Surprise, surprise. Some of the so-called “low-risk, nonviolent” inmates being sent to county jails are turning out to be far more dangerous than touted by advocates of prison realignment.

What went wrong? For starters, only the inmate’s most recent crime is being taken into consideration when determining eligibility for transfer. His or her latest crime may not be of a violent nature, but often, previous convictions have been for very serious crimes that suggest a potential for future dangerous behavior.

Because of jail overcrowding, an inmate’s path from arrival at the L.A. County Jail to release on unsupervised parole can be a short one.

L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich called attention to one prisoner set for transfer to L.A. County who previously served time at the maximum-security Folsom and Atascadero state prisons. In reviewing his rap sheet, county officials were shocked to find that he was a violent sexual predator convicted of rape with violence.

Antonovich says the gaping loophole in the realignment legislation puts the community in danger. It could also cost the county plenty because if an inmate attacks an employee or another inmate, “we assume 100 percent liability."

Antonovich fired off a letter to Gov. Brown calling for the loophole to be closed. The Board of Supervisors has authorized counsel to review possible legal actions to stop transfers of inmates with previous convictions for violent crimes.

This is a problem we’ve been warning the public and elected officials about for some time now. California’s hastily crafted prison realignment legislation was a bad budget cutting solution that transferred the state’s inmate problem to local governments.

We commend Supervisor Antonovich’s leadership in pushing back on Sacramento for playing politics with public safety.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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The perception of a double standard

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 11/10/2011 @ 11:57 AM

“I have a running joke,” attorney Gregory Smith told LA Daily News reporter C.J. Lin. “If I sue a supervisor, they’re going to get promoted within the next six months.” Smith should know. He’s filed dozens of lawsuits on behalf of LAPD officers against the Department.

It’s disheartening to the rank-and-file when managers are promoted or given coveted assignments after being found culpable by a jury. Adding to the morale problem is the perception of a double standard in which the rank-and-file receive unequal treatment in similar cases.

Now L.A. City Councilmember Dennis Zine, head of the Council’s Audits and Governmental Efficient Committee, is determined to understand why promotions or preferential treatment are given after lawsuit judgments or settlements. He has called on the City’s risk management task force to ensure LAPD is holding managers accountable for misconduct.

“The investigation will look at the discipline meted out for supervisors who were the focus of lawsuits in which the city had to pay out judgments or settlements, and whether those managers were promoted, demoted, fired or temporarily suspended,” according to the Daily News story.

"You cost the city millions of dollars, and you're getting promoted? What the heck is that about?" Zine asked. "We want to support strong supervision, but we also have to be sensitive to those who have cost us millions in mismanagement. You don't want to reward misconduct."

We welcome Zine’s determination to get to the bottom of this long-standing issue and we support the LAPD’s move to hire a risk management specialist.

There needs to be a sense of urgency here. Los Angeles cannot afford to continue paying out six- and seven-figure judgments or settlements for internal harassment and discrimination suits. In the last three years alone, the payouts have totaled more than $40 million. That’s taxpayer money that can better be spent to maintain public safety services and keep residents safe.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

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Congratulations, Officer Buscaino!

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 11/09/2011 @ 04:22 PM

(Steve McCrank - Torrance Daily Breeze)

We are pleased and proud that LAPD Officer Joe Buscaino was the top vote-getting candidate in Tuesday’s election to fill Janice Hahn’s vacant City Council seat. Joe ran an impressive campaign in a crowded field. He will now face Assemblymember Warren Furutani, who came in second place, in the January 17 runoff election.

Torrance Daily Breeze reporter Donna Littlejohn summed up the secret to Joe’s success: “Buscaino managed to galvanize many in the community who came from opposite sides of the political spectrum in an upbeat campaign that stressed the candidate's hometown roots.”

The League enthusiastically endorsed Joe Buscaino in the primary. Joe is a fresh face, a favorite son of the community, and will undoubtedly be an outstanding addition to the L.A. City Council.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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Coming together for justice in the memory of Officer Ian Campbell

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 10/24/2011 @ 11:37 AM

The members of the Los Angeles Police Protective League are extremely gratified that the California Board of Parole Hearings recommended against granting a compassionate release from prison to Gregory Powell, the infamous "Onion Field" cop killer whose 1963 murder of LAPD Officer Ian Campbell was chronicled in the best-selling book. The decision ensures that Powell, now 78, will die behind bars.

Powell’s fate was sealed at this week’s parole board hearing through the collaboration and support of the many friends and supporters of law enforcement who joined with the League in mounting a campaign against his release from the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

We would be remiss if we did not take this opportunity to publicly thank the many who came together in the memory of Officer Campbell and in support of his family, friends and colleagues. We are grateful to the many community members who commented on our blog and sent letters to the parole board.

We are also grateful for the City Council resolution sponsored by Councilmember Mitch Englander and seconded by Councilmembers Dennis Zine and Eric Garcetti. It urged the members of the California Board of Parole Hearings to deny Powell’s parole and was passed unanimously. That sent a very strong message to Sacramento that our city was united in its determination to keep Powell locked up for the remainder of his life, just as his sentence called for.

LAPD Officer and current League Delegate Cliff Armas, a close friend of the Campbell family, attended the hearing and read a statement from Campbell's daughter. In the statement, Valerie Campbell Moniz, who was three when her father was killed, told of the family's devastation after Campbell's death: “I grew up without a father because of the act of a sociopath … Gregory Powell must spend the rest of his life in prison. To release him dishonors the memory of my father, law enforcement and the Los Angeles Police Department."

LAPPL Director Scott Rate reminded the parole board that Powell was initially sentenced to death, but that sentence was then reduced to life in prison with the possibility of parole when the courts struck down California’s death penalty in 1972.

“Given that, Powell’s life sentence is not a sentence of ‘imprisonment until a terminal illness develops,’” Rate said. “It should be expected that the inmate will stay and die in prison. It defeats the purpose of a life sentence if, at the end of life, cold-blooded murderers like Powell are let out so their last days can be spent in comfort. Part of the deserved punishment for his brutal crime is that he spend his last waking moments deprived of freedom. We urge you to keep this unconscionable criminal behind bars for the public safety of all Californians.”

Also opposing his release was Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. "To have released the man who kidnapped and callously executed Officer Ian Campbell would have been a travesty of justice," Cooley said in a statement.

In the face of a massive show of unity from the City government and the law enforcement community, the Board of Parole Hearings came to the right decision when it issued its recommendation. It found that "The conditions under which the prisoner would be released or receive treatment pose a threat to public safety.” So we also take this opportunity to thank the Board of Parole Hearings for listening and making the right decision.

We invite you to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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