LAPPL Comments on Biased Policing

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 12/07/2010 @ 12:25 PM

The following commentary was presented by Directors Tyler Izen and Kristi Sandoval to the Police Commission on behalf of the Los Angeles Police Protective League:

The LAPPL is concerned about the tone of the Inspector General's report, comments by Commissioners on biased policing and, the impact they will have on our membership.

The Chief, the Department and our members are committed to Constitutional Policing, strong civilian oversight provided by the OIG and the Police Commission, enhancing the overall quality of biased policing investigations, and reducing the number of biased policing complaints. The Inspector General acknowledged the Department’s progress and effectively endorsed their biased policing investigative process by only making training recommendations for additional improvement.

Unfortunately, the focus of the discussion has turned to the ever controversial adjudication of these exhaustive investigations. Our members are not guilty of biased policing and want to be told that the investigations have supported their assertions. On the other hand, complainants and others believe that biased policing occurs and will be no more satisfied with a “not resolved” finding than an “unfounded” finding.

Biased policing cases account for just four to five percent of external complaints made annually. Even after exhaustive investigations, the Inspector General was only able to recommend that one in ten biased policing complaints should be unfounded. In all other cases, the Inspector General recommended that the allegations not be resolved. Yet, nearly all of the cases simply involved a police officer stopping someone for a traffic violation and giving them a ticket. Case Number 9 is perfect example of where the Inspector General lost its compass.

That case simply involved a motorcycle officer who wrote an African-American woman a ticket for crossing against a crosswalk. She claimed she was given a ticket because she was Black while white violators were let go. Yet, this motorcycle officer was proven to have written thousands of tickets per year with only about 5% being issued to African Americans. Yet, the Inspector General cannot recommend that the claim of racial bias was unfounded?

The Department is spending millions of dollars a year on investigating claims of racial bias. Even with the extraordinary resources and commitment expended on these extensive investigations, not one allegation has been sustained. The Commission spends more time concerning itself with biased policing than it does with the murder rate or terrorist threats in the City. Our members are convinced that the Commission seeks a sustained allegation of biased policing. This is the environment in which Los Angeles police officers police the City.

Let me tell you what occurs when a police officer is accused of writing a ticket due to someone’s race. They are sat down in an interrogation room and read their Miranda rights like a common criminal. Then they are interrogated, often for several hours, on what they did when they simply wrote someone a ticket. It appears that Internal Affairs investigators, directed by the Commission and the Inspector General, will now make the officers defend themselves as to why they are not racists. This is the environment in which Los Angeles Police officers find themselves today.

While we support added training for Sergeants for the intake of complaints, we believe that the real solutions are found in preventing the biased policing complaints and addressing the divide between those who believe that biased policing occurs and our members who are serving the people of this city to the best of their abilities without any concern as to race, sexual preference, ethnicity, or gender.

We believe that one tool to support that goal is the concept of mediation. The LAPPL participated in talks with the Department and many community representatives on the concept of mediation of some of these complaints. Incredibly, the DOJ has said they do not support this concept. Why? Considering there has never been a sustained complaint in the Department or even in other jurisdictions with hundreds of biased policing complaints, mediation is the best alternative. We have a plan that is supported by the LAPD and even the ACLU. Only because of DOJ interference has the plan to handle racial bias complaints not been enacted. We call on the Commission to proceed with the concept.

That is the environment we would like Los Angeles police officers to work in.

We are at about 300 murders a year – too many yes – but considerably lower than in any time in recent history. That is in part because LAPD officers engage in proactive police work. The surest way to discourage proactive police work is to create a climate where police officers believe that bogus complaints, including complaints of racial profiling, will be sustained because political pressure demands some heads on a platter. The commission appears to be getting so desperate for a conviction that even not allowing the officers to refresh their memories by reviewing their own documents before being interrogated is being contemplated.

Mark my words – drive and wave – will happen if a climate is created by some on the Commission that leads officers to believe they will not get a fair hearing when a complaint is made. This is NOT in the best interest of the City.

Finally, let me say, we are proud of the work our officers do each and every day. It is motivated by an abiding interest in preserving public safety, not to satisfy some racial bias. We ask you join us, by both your words and actions, in supporting these hard working officers. Thank you for your time and attention.

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Where are the police we paid for?

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 12/03/2010 @ 08:19 PM

The following editorial was published in the Los Angeles Times on December 2, 2010.

When the city council voted to raise trash fees in 2006, the action came with a promise to Angelinos that the money would be put toward expanding the Los Angeles police force to 10,000 officers. But even as we’ve moved closer to meeting that goal on paper, the number of officers on the street is being eroded.

Because of attrition, early-retirement incentives and mandatory furloughs, the number of police officers doing actual police work is gradually declining, and the problem is becoming more acute.

One huge reason is that the City is no longer paying officers for overtime. There is no way to avoid overtime in police work: an officer making an arrest, say, can’t simply let a suspect go because a work shift has ended. But now, rather than paying for that overtime, the department requires officers to “bank” the extra hours for future use in the form of time off. In order to avoid having to pay out overtime money, the LAPD has begun to force officers to use their banked time off as soon as they reach overtime balances of more than 250 hours. This overtime compensation change alone has meant that over the course of a month some 540 fewer officers are performing their regular duties.

Another huge problem is the use of sworn officers to do jobs that should be performed by civilians. With a city hiring freeze in effect, essential administrative jobs previously held by civilians can’t be filled and so are now being performed by police officers. Some 154 officers are now carrying out the work of civilians. Come February, things will get even worse as the LAPD implements its plan to pull nearly 90 officers off the streets to staff the new Metropolitan Detention Center in lieu of hiring civilian jailers.

In total, the LAPD will have removed more than 775 police officers from the streets come February.

City leaders very well know they could not have passed their plan in 2006 to charge higher trash fees without the promise to increase the size of the LAPD. What voters don’t realize today is that the promise has turned into a sham because of the huge number of officers being sent home or put to work in capacities other than protecting the community. No matter how one looks at it, reassigning police officers to non-law enforcement duties while touting an expansion of the police force is disingenuous and dishonest.

If the department continues enforcing its overtime policy, the number of officers forced to take time off will climb even higher, as the overtime balances of many more officers reach the 250-hour mark. In response, and in a graphic demonstration of their desire to serve the people of Los Angeles, a number of experienced and dedicated homicide detectives have donated some of their banked time off to a Catastrophic Leave Fund that benefits officers in need of time off for extreme family emergencies or illness. The detectives have done this for the sole purpose of lowering their overtime balances so they can stay at work and do their jobs. But police shouldn’t have to work for free.

Everyone agrees that the closure of the Parker Center jail is long overdue. But it is not prudent or fiscally responsible for sworn police officers to work as jailers at the new detention center. It isn’t the job they were hired to do. Moreover, it represents a poor return on the significant investment that city taxpayers have made in training the men and women of the LAPD.

So what can we do? It is time to end the shell game. City leaders must revisit their policy decisions that force Chief Beck to staff civilian assignments with sworn LAPD officers. The overtime policy, too, should be revisited. It’s time to consider temporarily halting the hiring of new officers in order to be able to afford to fill vital administrative jobs with civilians and allow LAPD officers to be deployed in their proper law enforcement roles.

The residents of Los Angeles placed their trust in City leaders to keep their word when they were told in 2006 that the higher trash fees they’d be paying would be used to expand police service. They also trusted their City officials to be good stewards of the general fund by using that money for what it was intended and by using City employees in accordance with their job classifications. That trust has been violated.

Having officers, detectives and specialized resources working on the street is particularly important today, given heightened terrorism concerns both locally and abroad. On top of that, a growing number of parolees are back out on the streets after being released as part of the state’s drive to save money. The department has done an excellent job of reducing crime in recent years, but maintaining those gains requires a full contingent of officers doing the work they’ve been trained to do.

Paul M. Weber is president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League

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When it comes to social media, you never know who might be watching

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 11/23/2010 @ 02:50 PM

As police officers, we’ve known for a while now that some of the best places to catch criminals bragging about their illegal activities are social media networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. There have been hundreds of cases across the country in which postings have helped solve crimes, break up drug rings, identify gang members and even catch rampaging teens abusing the homeless. As Todd Wright of NBC Miami put it, “The Internet is quickly becoming a police officer's best friend.”

But common criminals aren’t the only ones getting tripped up by their online indiscretions. According to a recent report in USA Today, police agencies across the country are now reviewing content posted on social networks to screen potential police recruits. And these law enforcement agencies are not alone. A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 79 percent of hiring managers and job recruiters in the United States review online information posted on social networking sites and blogs to screen job candidates, and 70 percent have rejected an applicant based on the information they found. The surveyed professionals believe that the use of this information for screening purposes will “significantly increase over the next five years.”

Over the last few years, a number of law enforcement agencies have fired police officers over inappropriate postings on social media sites. One of the most notorious cases involved a Washington State Patrol cadet who was given the option of either resigning or being fired after officials received a complaint about content on his Facebook page. And the scrutiny is sometimes not limited to Internet content. A few months ago, the nation’s highest court issued a decision in a case dating back to 2003 affirming the City of Ontario’s right to review text messages sent by Sergeant Jeff Quon on city-issued pagers.

The bottom line is that we should all exercise caution and good judgment about what we share online. It’s important to remember that anything we post on a MySpace or Facebook account, or any video we upload to YouTube, could be readily accessed by people we wouldn’t normally share things with – no matter how uninteresting or insignificant we think the posting might be. Many criminals have firsthand knowledge of social media sites. These individuals are sophisticated and proficient in locating people through internet websites.We urge our members to make any and all of their social networking accounts private and accessible only to your most trusted associates. Be extra careful, and don't post anything that you wouldn’t want a criminal or prospective employer (or your mom!) to see.

Below are links to the Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter privacy policies, as well as explanations on how to change privacy settings. The last is a general guide on how to protect your online reputation.

• http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
• http://www.myspace.com/Modules/ContentManagement/Pages/page.aspx?placement=privacy_settings
• http://www.youtube.com/t/privacy_at_youtube
• http://twitter.com/privacy
• http://www.microsoft.com/protect/parents/cyberethics/reputation.aspx

You can’t be too safe.

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The state’s paroling policies continue to reward criminals and endanger citizens

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 11/20/2010 @ 02:47 PM

Winnfred Wright

A new report out of Marin County Wednesday has us wondering just how far the State of California will go – and what degree of danger it will deem acceptable – to address a budget crisis of its own making. A San Francisco Chronicle news story revealed the impending release of yet another felon who, despite his deplorable crimes against children, has been designated a “non-violent offender” and will walk out of jail early, unencumbered by the supervision of a parole agent.

If all goes according to the state’s plan, Monday will bring the early release of Winnfred Wright, who in 2003 was sentenced to 16 years in state prison for the death-by-starvation of his 19-month old son and the physical abuse of his 12 other children. Wright’s abuses against his children, whose ages ranged from 19 months to 16 years, included binding and whipping, and even taping their mouths shut for things like “stealing” food and making noise. The Chronicle reports that Ndigo Campisi-Nyah, the toddler who was starved to death, “…suffered a skull fracture, other broken bones, malformed legs, a concave chest and a humped back. He also was found to have symptoms of rickets brought on by starvation.” Despite the sickening nature of his crimes, Wright will soon be out early and unsupervised simply because, according to the state and CDCR’s policy, he is a “non-violent offender.” The Marin County District Attorney has, quite commendably, not let up in its efforts to have the CDCR reconsider its decision to assign Wright no supervision. But as the story reports, it’s unclear what will actually happen, since as of late Tuesday a CDCR spokesperson said that “…the inmate's status was still being assessed and that no decision had been made as to whether his parole will be supervised or unsupervised.”

Lawrence Joseph Brown

In another case, two days ago, child rapist Lawrence Joseph Brown was released and then quickly taken back into custody after violating the terms of his parole by being in a car with a female. His inability to follow the rules of his conditional release, however, should have come as a surprise to no one, since it had happened before. He was freed in April, but as an OC Weekly News story recounts, Brown “…quickly violated his parole by becoming transient and masking his GPS by failing to charge the battery to avoid being monitored. On May, 6, 2010, only 10 days after being released from prison, he was violated on his parole and sent back to state prison.”

Kevin Eugene Peterson

Many might also recall that soon after the state started releasing prisoners under its Non-Revocable Parole Program, Kevin Eugene Peterson, released 16 days early, wasted no time in committing four felonies: assault to commit rape, sodomy, and oral copulation; sexual battery; false imprisonment and the violation of the terms of his probation. The person he held captive and attempted to rape was a female counselor he was meeting with – 13 hours after he walked out of prison!

State officials must examine the process they use to decide which parolees will be supervised. Clearly, a better review of past offenses needs to take place, and perhaps a little more common sense should be brought to bear on the final determinations. The “non-violent offender” designation is being applied too narrowly. Determining a person’s non-violent status by only looking at the crime for which they are currently incarcerated, and whether it is deemed a “violent felony” by the Penal Code, versus examining their entire criminal history for violent behavior, is resulting in the dumping of violent prisoners into communities where little-to-no supervision leaves them too much leeway to commit new crimes. A tragic and painful reminder of this came earlier this month when Earl Ellis Green, out on parole from state prison with minimal supervision because he was deemed a “non-violent offender,” shot and killed Riverside police officer and Iraq War veteran Ryan P. Bonaminio. Green’s long criminal history included a conviction for domestic violence, and the behavior he exhibited had even prompted his family to seek a restraining order against him, but none of this changed the decision to release him with minimal supervision.

These parolees and their dangerous, repetitive, behavior are only a few examples of how the people of California are being placed in harm’s way to save a buck. As the number of prisoners who are rashly thrown out of jail with insufficient supervision climbs, so do the odds that the majority of them will commit new crimes against residents of this state. Californians deserve a lot better from their leaders than ill-conceived “solutions” that threaten their safety.

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Racial profiling: DOJ concerns based on scant evidence; Police commissioners all too eager to find LAPD officers guilty. A witch hunt?

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 11/16/2010 @ 04:45 PM

A recent Los Angeles Times front page story detailed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) warning to the LAPD over racial profiling and highlighted the reasons why the DOJ feels LAPD policies in this area are inadequate. In a letter to the Department that was leaked to the Times, the DOJ’s “concerns” over racial profiling cite such tenuous evidence as an inadvertent recording of two officers being dismissive of profiling complaints and an LAPD investigator’s failure to be as dogged in his questioning as Justice officials would’ve liked. We kid you not!

Of course, anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the Department’s efforts to investigate and address complaints of racial profiling has to shake their head in disbelief over the DOJ letter. Why the disbelief? Because the LAPD this year took decisive action by creating the Constitutional Policing Unit to beef up its ability to thoroughly and accurately investigate complaints of biased profiling. Indeed, all complaints made against an LAPD officer – even those that on the surface have no merit – are fully investigated. These complaints, which the Times story approximates at around 250 per year, accuse officers of targeting a person solely because of his or her race, ethnicity, religious garb or some other form of outward appearance.

These investigations are exhaustive and include a thorough, nearly 90-minute interview that begins with the officer being read his Miranda rights. At present, the Department has four LAPD officials assigned full time to grill officers accused of racial profiling. The annual taxpayer tab for these assignments is over $500,000 – not including the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to simply transcribe the interviews.

It’s no secret certain leaders are deeply disappointed that these extensive investigations have yet to produce any evidence of racial profiling. At a recent Police Commission meeting, for example, the disappointment in Commissioner Rob Saltzman’s voice was palpable. As he badgered Commander Richard Webb, who presented an outstanding report on Constitutional Policing and racial profiling, Commissioner Saltzman pressed for a “different result” in the future. Commissioner John Mack chimed in, wondering if perhaps some other piece of information could result in finding some officers in violation.

We are proud of Chief Beck’s response to the Times story. The Chief said the conversation of two officers is not indicative of widespread practices at the Department and that the Justice Department investigation is based on cases that predated strict investigative guidelines put into place last year. “It is a huge leap to paint the entire department with that brush,” Beck told the Times. “And it is just not true. It's not that type of department. We have a tough history that we must overcome and that takes time, but…the vast, vast majority of Los Angeles police officers today police in the right ways for the right reasons.”

Rather than being proud of the LAPD, some police commissioners are struggling to find ways of changing the standards to make it easier to find LAPD officers guilty of racial profiling. It’s troubling that folks with this biased mindset are charged with overseeing the LAPD.

The good news, however, is that the LAPD is not a department that racially profiles, but instead, does excellent police work every day. It is important to have a robust complaint process that ensures the discovery of officers who violate policy, but, as every American knows, an accusation does not automatically mean ‘guilty.’ Due process is a concept that one would reasonably expect a commissioner who previously headed a civil rights organization and a commissioner currently serving as dean of a law school, to understand and embrace.

Clearly, because of space limitations, what the Times was not able to do was detail for readers the LAPD’s extensive process of investigating racial profiling complaints. Instead, the story was yet another reminder that some people, be they police commissioners or ill-informed DOJ attorneys, will keep clinging to their outdated beliefs about the LAPD and racial profiling, facts and evidence be damned.

Police commissioners have an ethical responsibility to not manufacture circumstances that serve their personal views or political agendas. Unfortunately, their recent public comments have sent the wrong message to LAPD officers and the public – that the LAPD complaint system should meet ‘guilty’ quotas for every type of complaint, even in the absence of substantiating evidence.

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Latest civil suit verdict should be a wake-up call

By John R. Mumma on 11/12/2010 @ 04:42 PM

Another sunny day in Los Angeles, another multimillion dollar jury award to a former LAPD officer treated unfairly. This, of course, does not happen every day, but it does happen all too often for a city that is in such dire budget straits that it forces veteran cops to fill in for clerical workers at the stations and can’t afford to hire jailers.

Consider the latest case, which involved 18-year veteran officer Richard Romney. He was fired in February 2008 in retaliation for telling the truth in testimony against the Department in a labor dispute. A Los Angeles federal jury awarded him nearly $4 million on November 2. This brought the total awards to former LAPD officers and sergeants to more than $20 million since 2008. When will the City and LAPD command staff learn?

For those keeping score, here are the major awards in just the past three years:

• Officer Richard Romney -- $4 million (plus $1.6 million in anticipated additional legal fees)
• Sergeant Blaine Blackstone -- $2 million (including legal fees)
• Officer Paul Waymire -- $125,000
• Officer Malcolm Thomas -- $700,000
• Officer Melissa Borck -- $2.3 million
• Officer Patricia Fuller -- $2.5 million
• Officer Donald Bender -- $3.5 million
• Officer Robert Hill -- $3.1 million
• Sergeant Ya-May Christle -- $1 million

It gets worse. The awards above don’t include an additional $18 million paid to Officer Paul Harper, and Sergeants Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy, whose earlier verdicts were upheld by an appellate court in 2008 (and thus accrued an extra $3 million in interest). So in reality, Los Angeles taxpayers are liable for over $38,000,000 to LAPD officers in just the past three years thanks to persistent systemic abuses within the LAPD. But because not a single cent of that money came out of the LAPD budget, nothing, it seems, has changed.

If these outrageous totals haven’t been enough to get the attention of the Chief of Police, Police Commission, Mayor and City Council, and prompt them to reconsider their actions and decisions, perhaps realizing that there are still other pending cases with facts nearly identical to Romney’s will bring about the needed changes. Meanwhile, we can only continue to watch the tally grow and wonder when the madness will finally end.

Los Angeles Times reporter Joel Rubin, in a story on the Romney case, wrote: “The verdict, which stems from one of several similar lawsuits that thousands of disgruntled LAPD officers are pursuing against the department, underscores a long-running, internal rift between LAPD cops and the department’s command staff that could ultimately cost the city millions of dollars more.” Just how many millions is anyone’s guess.

Now would be a good time for LAPD command staff to take a hard look at how it’s been handling these cases and change its ways to avoid exposing the City to even higher liabilities. Certainly, by now everyone can agree that there is a systemic problem here that needs urgent attention from the top.

The month before he was fired, Romney had testified in a federal lawsuit brought by officers against the LAPD who accused the Department of violating a federal law that sets rules on when officers must be compensated for overtime work. He testified that the high volume of calls for help during a typical patrol shift in South L.A. meant he often did not take his 45-minute meal break and, instead, followed an unwritten department policy that barred officers from requesting pay for less than an hour of overtime.

Within days of his testimony, LAPD opened an investigation on Romney, outrageously claiming he had violated departmental overtime policy. Then-Chief Bratton rejected a recommendation that Romney be given a one-day suspension and instead prevailed on a disciplinary panel to fire him despite the League’s insistence that such action was unwarranted and a direct violation of federal law. When his firing was upheld through the City process, the only avenue left for Romney was to sue.

The City had ample opportunity to reverse course and do the right thing by Officer Romney before the case escalated into a multimillion dollar payout. Indeed, a League funded lawyer for Romney put the City on notice in April 2009 that if the firing of Romney were upheld, “a federal lawsuit for retaliation under (federal labor law) for testifying about FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) violations could potentially expose the City to multiple millions of dollars.” Alas, that is exactly what happened.

The League has been involved in all of these cases. The common thread running through them is that at the center of each were officers who simply wanted to be treated fairly, get their jobs back and not be the targets of retribution. We can only hope the jury’s verdict in the Romney case is the wakeup call our City leaders badly need to start acting responsibly, exercising sound judgment and following all applicable labor laws – including the protections from retribution and retaliation for whistle blowing. While the League has not funded any of these civil suits, we share the intent: Los Angeles Police Officers deserve to be treated with the same fairness and respect afforded to the citizens of L.A. If LAPD can’t treat its own properly, how can anyone expect the officers it employs to behave any differently? The League joins with the citizens of Los Angeles and expects our members to uphold the absolutely highest standards and treat all citizens fairly under the law; and we DEMAND that our members be treated the same way by the Department.

For more, make sure you read my December Blue Line article.

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Killings of a Riverside police officer and a five-year-old boy raise more questions about the adequacy of parole supervision

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 11/10/2010 @ 04:45 PM

As we mourn the shooting death of Riverside Police Officer Ryan P. Bonaminio, we are grateful an arrest has been made by police and FBI agents. The suspect, 44-year-old Earl Ellis Green of Rubidoux, was arrested at 8 p.m. on Tuesday at a Riverside Target store. He was booked for murder and a parole violation. He is being held at a Riverside detention center without bail and could face charges making him eligible for the death penalty.

Green’s apprehension is welcome news, but we are nevertheless very troubled by the strong possibility that a properly functioning state parole system might have prevented the tragic killing of a police officer. This has been our worst fear since state budget cuts prompted a dangerous relaxation of parole guidelines.

Green has a long criminal history spanning almost three decades that includes convictions for domestic violence, battery of a police officer, drug dealing and vehicle theft. In 2007, Green was found guilty of felony vandalism and sentenced to three years in state prison, but served fewer than 20 months. He was released as a low level, non-violent parolee with the next-to-lowest level of supervision. Hardly a non-violent person, even Green’s own family had recently sought a restraining order against him, according to a KNX report.

These facts raise two important questions for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) that warrant complete and honest answers.

1. Why was parolee Earl Ellis Green, who was on parole for domestic violence and who also had an extensive criminal arrest history, designated a low level, non-violent criminal and subsequently assigned to the next-to-lowest level of parole supervision?
2. Does the CDCR consider domestic violence to be a violent offense and if not, why not?

In a separate case that also calls into question the adequacy of current parole supervision, retired parole agent Caroline Aguirre, blogging for RonKayeLA.com, says that on the date and time of the Halloween murder of five-year-old Aaron Shannon Jr., “…one of his accused killers, Leonard Hall, was on Active Parole Supervision for Possession of Controlled Substance and Disregard for Safety.” Like Earl Ellis Green, Hall, too, “…was being supervised at next to the lowest level of parole.” Aguirre also adds that, “Hall, 21, had a special condition of parole that forbid [sic] him to associate with known [gang] members like Marcus Denson, 18, his alleged accomplice in the murder of this innocent child.”

According to the Ron Kaye blog, a march and rally will be held in El Sereno from 1974 N. Marianna Ave. to the 1800 block of Landsdowne Ave. at 1:30 p.m. this Saturday to demand an investigation of the Division of Adult Parole Operations and that those responsible for the breakdown in parole supervision be held accountable. Attorney Robin Sax, a former county prosecutor and expert on rape and child molestation issues, will be the featured speaker.

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The MDC staffing decision: LA residents deserve better
The further hollowing of the LAPD

By LAPPL Board of Directors on 10/28/2010 @ 04:01 PM

In 2002, Los Angeles voters approved Proposition Q, a citywide public safety bond measure to fund the construction of 11 new police facilities and the renovation of 12 police stations. One of the facilities, constructed at a cost of $74 million, is the five-floor, 172,000-square-foot Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC). Voters who approved Prop Q had a reasonable expectation that upon completion, this state-of-the-art jail would be fully utilized for its intended purpose.

Four years later, the City enacted higher trash fees in order to add 1,000 officers to the LAPD and bring the force’s numbers to 10,000. Again, residents had a reasonable expectation that the money would go toward its intended purpose, the hiring of police officers to provide increased community protection.

So in 2010, where do we stand? The $74 million MDC sits vacant—unused because there simply aren’t enough civilian detention officers in the ranks to staff it. In the meantime, to avoid overtime pay, hundreds of police officers are placed on forced days off instead of filling vacancies in patrols. This happens on a daily basis. At the same time, a drastic reduction in the civilian workforce has resulted in hundreds of sworn officers being taken off the streets and put into offices where they perform administrative and support functions at nearly twice the cost of a civilian employee.

As we said in April, the LAPD is becoming a “hollow” police force.

For every 100 officers who get pulled from field work to backfill vacant civilian positions, we lose the equivalent of about 30 police cars citywide, which dramatically and detrimentally impacts our ability to respond to calls and keep crime down. We are receiving daily reports from our officers telling us that they are spending increasing amounts of time in the station performing administrative tasks instead of fighting crime on the streets. This threatens to reverse the LAPD's historic rates of crime reduction in recent years.

Now we’ve learned that 87 more LAPD officers will be pulled off the streets and put to work running the Metropolitan Detention Center. LAPD officials say the reassignments will allow the jail to open by early February, ending months of debate on how to operate the MDC and finally shutter the rundown detention center at Parker Center.

Although we agree that the closure of the Parker Center facility is long overdue, we don’t agree that it is prudent or fiscally responsible for sworn police officers to work as jailers. It isn’t the job they were hired to do. Moreover, it represents a poor return on the significant investment that city taxpayers have made in training the men and women of the LAPD.

LAPD officials and City leaders need to rethink how they are deploying the precious resource they have in LAPD officers. The residents of Los Angeles placed their trust in City leaders to do the right thing when they agreed to pay higher trash fees in return for expanded police service. They also trusted their City officials to be good stewards of the general fund by using City employees in accordance with the job classifications they were hired for.

It takes a long time to build trust. Keeping it requires a commitment to do what’s promised and make the right choices when faced with dilemmas. If LAPD officials and City leaders don’t revisit the jail staffing decision and find a better solution, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to regain the trust of Los Angeles voters.

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