February 16, 2010 – The Police Commission hears the new plan
The biased policing subject was the main issue of the Police Commission hearing on February 16, 2010, a subject that the President of the Commission had expressed personal concern over.
The Internal Affairs commander advised the Commission that a new unit had been formed to be called the Constitutional Policing Unit. He had handpicked three senior investigators. They would handle biased policing complaints citywide. Their goal was to finish an investigation in two months. All of the interviews would be transcribed for review (1st video below). Finally, Internal Affairs would be making the adjudication recommendations to the employee’s captains (2nd video below). The Commission president agreed that it was important that the adjudications be addressed to send a strong message (3rd video below).
No other personnel complaint adjudication had ever been handled this way. The accused officer’s commanding officer, who knew the employee best, had always made the adjudication recommendation to the chief of police. The deputy chief in charge of Internal Affairs believed that this method of adjudication of the complaints was the problem (1st video below). Internal Affairs would insert themselves in this process and adjudicate so logically that the captain would agree with the Internal Affairs recommendation. And if he or she did not, there would be a personal meeting with the chief of police. The chief agreed that this process would be good (2nd video below). It wasn’t good for everybody. The ACLU didn’t think it was enough (3rd video below).
The bottom line from the patrol officers point of view? A stacked deck. Beware! Will the success of the new program be measured by the number of sustained complaints? After all, failure was determined by the lack of sustained complaints.
Finally, 219 personnel complaints alleging biased policing when LAPD makes 169,000 arrests per year and writes 803,000 tickets per year means that .027 of 1 per cent of citizen law enforcement contacts result in even an allegation of biased policing. Add the hundreds of thousands of police contacts made by our officers that do not result in an arrest or a ticket and the percentage gets even tinier. One fourth of one percent of enforcement citizen contacts resulting in these type of allegations does not justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on interview transcription fees, specialized investigators, and special procedures. Nor does it call for the negative impact on morale that these investigations (that will be looked upon by officers as witch hunts) will engender.
Biased policing is bad. LAPD officers get it. The numbers (or, more accurately, the lack of numbers) bear this out. Let the officers do their jobs and back them up in attempting to accomplish the almost impossible task of policing the second largest city in the United States. Spend the money now being wasted on new police cars. The citizens of Los Angeles will be far better served.
February 2011
Force Science News highlights an article by an award winning journalist who examines the effect of the LAPD consent decree and biases policing. FORCE SCIENCE NEWS_ Transmission #170