An about-face on LAPD discipline
Los Angeles first gave civilians a say in disciplining police officers during a time of crisis.
The city was reeling from the grainy video showing the pummeling of Rodney King, the acquittals of the four officers who carried out the beating, and the riots that followed. Adding a civilian voice to the disciplinary process was proposed as an essential check against lenient decisions made in a department that often rejected complaints of excessive force.
Some LAPD officers bristled at the idea of outsiders judging them. But voters overwhelmingly chose to put a civilian on the three-person Board of Rights panels that decide the fate of officers facing termination or lengthy suspensions.
Twenty-five years later, Los Angeles voters on Tuesday approved an expansion of civilian influence over police discipline that was proposed under sharply different circumstances.
This time, it was the police officers union pushing for the change, believing more civilian involvement was better for officers than being judged by other cops.
Charter Amendment C allows officers to have their cases heard by all-civilian boards, an option long sought by the union representing the LAPD’s rank and file amid complaints that the chief could unfairly influence a panel’s sworn officers.
It’s a remarkable turnaround in the decades-old
debate over how to discipline L.A.’s police officers. In 1992, it was police reformers calling for more civilian oversight, believing outsiders would be more likely to hold cops accountable. But now, many department critics oppose the change, arguing that civilians have turned out to be more lenient in deciding discipline.
They pointed to a city report, prepared for lawmakers using LAPD data, that found that civilians on Boards of Rights were “consistently more lenient” than the sworn members. The numbers included 39 cases in which Police Chief Charlie Beck had suggested an officer be fired, but a board acquitted the officer instead. In all of those cases, the report said, the civilian voted to acquit.
Union officials countered that the cases were rarely decided by a divided vote. Out of 229 cases in which Beck recommended termination, just 7% involved decisions in which the civilian member was more lenient than at least one of his or her sworn counterparts.
There were no cases in which a civilian voted for a harsher outcome.
How officers are held accountable for their actions has become a focal point in the national debate about law enforcement, drawing extra scrutiny after highprofile police shootings. In L.A., the Police Commission is making a push to reduce shootings by officers and now takes into account whether officers did everything they could to avoid pulling the trigger when deciding whether a shooting was justified.
“The reason for more civilian oversight in 1992 was the belief that civilians were going to be tougher on officers,” said Richard Drooyan, a former Police Commission president who served as an attorney to the panel that investigated King’s beating and on another that reviewed the subsequent Rampart scandal. “More civilian oversight may swing the disciplinary pendulum in a different direction.”
Charter Amendment C marks the latest attempt to revamp a disciplinary system that has long been accused of being either too soft or unfairly harsh toward officers — and sometimes faced both accusations from different groups at the same time.
Reining in an era of police corruption
The 1933 election of Frank Shaw as the city’s mayor effectively left the Los Angeles Police Department under the control of his brother, who sold jobs and promotions while strengthening relationships with L.A.’s seedy underbelly. Vice officers offered prostitution and gambling rings advance warnings about raids, for a price. One madam notoriously kept chilled champagne and Russian caviar on hand for the officers when they arrived.
William Parker — a police lieutenant who later would become one of the most influential and controversial chiefs in the LAPD’s history — worried that city-endorsed corruption left officers vulnerable to being fired if they insisted on following the law.
Parker proposed a disciplinary system that resembled a military tribunal to better protect police jobs. The police chief could not fire an officer at will; instead, his attempt to do so would be reviewed by a panel of three high-ranking officers, who would come up with their own recommendation after hearing the evidence against an accused officer. The chief could reduce the panel’s proposed penalty but not increase it.
In 1934, voters narrowly passed an amendment to the City Charter creating the disciplinary boards.
King beating launches change
In 1991, the beating of King once again focused the city’s attention on how its Police Department handled misconduct.
A commission led by diplomat Warren Christopher found that the LAPD often ignored complaints about officers or frequently favored officers in investigations. Out of 2,152 allegations of excessive force made during a four-year period, only 42 were upheld.
“The current system of discipline does not work,” the commission concluded.
To address some of those concerns, the commission proposed expanding civilian oversight of discipline. For the most serious cases heard by a Board of Rights, the Christopher Commission suggested that making one of the three panelists a civilian would bring a “detached perspective” and a more rigorous review of the evidence.
Less than a year later, L.A. voters overwhelmingly passed Charter Amendment F, a police reform effort inspired by some of the Christopher Commission’s findings. Since then, the three-person Board of Rights panels have been made up of two high-ranking officers and one civilian.
Hired by the Police Commission and paid for their work, the civilians must have at least seven years of experience in arbitration-like work. Most are attorneys or professional arbitrators.
New scandal, focus on officer behavior
The Christopher Commission urged the LAPD to take minor misconduct seriously, listen to residents’ complaints about officers and better track accusations against cops.
Bernard C. Parks, appointed as chief in 1997, embraced the approach.
Parks reformed discipline to ensure that all complaints were documented and investigated, no matter how small. The number of complaints exploded. By 2002, nearly 6,000 complaint investigations were initiated annually in the 9,000-officer force, with penalties affecting, on average, almost 1 out of every 3 officers.
The changes coincided with another scandal that engulfed the department. Accusations that officers in the Rampart Division had beaten suspects, planted evidence, stolen drugs and lied under oath inspired a fresh look at how officers behaved.
But opponents said Parks’ system went too far, investigating officers for what they considered to be frivolous complaints, such as being discourteous or leaving a shift early.
Relatively few complaints rose to the level of a Board of Rights. In 2001, a year before Parks was denied a second term as chief, the board heard 226 cases out of thousands investigated; 32 officers were fired.
Still, when disciplinary cases did go before the boards, some officers accused Parks of trying to influence the outcome of the hearings, saying commanders on the boards could be intimidated by the chief.
The union’s suggestion? Add more civilians to the boards.
Complaints bring continued scrutiny
William J. Bratton’s tenure as L.A.’s police chief, which began in 2002, saw increased scrutiny of the Board of Rights process, particularly after high-profile cases in which the panels let officers accused of misconduct go unpunished.
Perhaps the most controversial came in 2003, when a disciplinary board determined that an LAPD officer was justified in shooting Margaret Mitchell, a mentally ill homeless woman who had brandished a screwdriver.
Because LAPD chiefs cannot increase a penalty suggested by a disciplinary board, Bratton’s hands were tied.
In 2013, under Beck, the LAPD began surveying officers about their views of the disciplinary system. The review was initiated after Christopher Dorner, a former LAPD officer, accused the department of unfairly firing him and went on a retaliatory rampage, killing four people and wounding several others.
Though Dorner’s actions were widely condemned — and an internal review later concluded the unanimous decision by a Board of Rights to fire him was just — his complaints about the disciplinary system resonated with many officers who also believed the process was not fair.
The department has tried to make some adjustments. Last year, for example, it adopted new guidelines that spelled out punishments officers could face for various offenses.
But for the union, the changes didn’t go far enough.