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The Los Angeles County

Sheriff's Department

Eleventh Semiannual Report

of Special Counsel Merrick J. Bobb & Staff


October 1999

INTRODUCTION

This is the Eleventh Semiannual Report of Special Counsel Merrick Bobb and staff discussing the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD). These reports are prepared at the direction of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors pursuant to its appointment of Special Counsel to conduct ongoing monitoring and critical review of the LASD's performance. Concerns about police misconduct and its high cost to the County, both in terms of frayed community relationships and the financial burden to taxpayers, led to the Kolts Report and the decision of the Supervisors to order full implementation of the Kolts recommendations.

When the Kolts Report was published, there was criticism that the report had not recommended a civilian review board which would take over the LASD's power to investigate and discipline police misconduct. Unwilling to take so far-reaching a step, but wishing to respond to a need for active, ongoing monitoring and oversight, the Supervisors, with the concurrence of the Sheriff, created a continuing role for Special Counsel. Rather than disbanding the Kolts staff, the Supervisors requested that Special Counsel retain such staff as was feasible, and the Board set aside an annual budget to defray the expenses of Special Counsel and staff incurred in monitoring the LASD and preparing the semiannual reports. At the Board's direction, Special Counsel disseminates data about the LASD and comments on its significance. At the request of the Board and the Sheriff, Special Counsel has also participated in the formulation and implementation of risk and liability management strategies with the LASD.

This Eleventh Semiannual Report contains five special reports.

1. In our chapter on sexual harassment, we report the results of our detailed investigation whether the LASD is strenuously and effectively enforcing its sexual harassment policies. We reviewed in detail eleven different lawsuits alleging sexual harassment brought by women in the LASD. Between 1995 and mid-1999, the County paid nearly $3 million to settle these lawsuits. We found examples in these settled cases of LASD investigators who had little apparent motivation to eliminate sexual harassment and moved forward sluggishly and unimaginatively in their investigations. There were instances where the LASD charged perpetrators with lesser misconduct than sexual harassment, even though a harassment charge was appropriate. Conversely, we found cases where apparently meritorious charges of harassment were not sustained. Yet even when charges were founded, in some instances only mild discipline was recommended, followed by settlements with the perpetrators that further reduced punishment.

When we turned to examine current practice, however, we found that the LASD in the last few years has started to emerge from the practices described above and has deepened its commitment to eliminate sexual harassment and any tolerance of it. The serious questions that remain are whether the LASD will commit resources in promised quantity. The LASD will have to find substantial funds and redeploy personnel to support new programs, including significant fiscal and human resources for the new bureau headed by Commander Nancy Malone which has responsibility for all gender equity issues.

2. In our chapter on retention of data and the LASD's tracking system for employee performance, called the PPI, we set forth concerns that the LASD, in the face of pressure from opponents of strong internal oversight and accountability, is contemplating weakening key elements of the PPI. We discuss on the status of two key Kolts recommendations which were accepted by the LASD following negotiation with Judge Kolts and which were then ordered implemented by the Board of Supervisors:

A. It was agreed and ordered that all investigative files in Internal Affairs would be retained indefinitely and the practice of routinely destroying records of such investigations would stop.

B. The LASD would construct a computerized tracking system on a relational database to record and report data on its employees' use of force, citizen's complaints, administrative investigations, lawsuits, and disciplinary history. The tracking system -- known as the Personnel Performance Index or PPI -- became fully operational in March 1997.

The PPI, without question, is the most carefully constructed and powerful management tool for control of police misconduct currently available in the United States. Its database can be queried to produce deep and insightful analyses not only of an individual's performance but the comparative performance of units and groups of individuals, patrol stations, and jail facilities. It permits the tracking and measurement of LASD performance in a broad array of categories, and, when used to its fullest, provides LASD executives with a depth and breadth of information about the Department that, to our knowledge, no other major law enforcement agency has to the same degree or in as easily retrievable a form. Police and Sheriff's Departments from around the country have approached the LASD about purchasing or licensing the PPI, and the Department is seriously exploring how it can be made available to others.

Used imaginatively, the PPI is a repository of powerful data for purposes of research and development, risk management, trend analysis, and career development. Used properly, it gives warning about the individuals and circumstances that pose risk. It allows a retrospective review of an officer's entire career to discover why and how problems arose. It permits retrospective comparisons of various officers' careers and experiences to determine how they were shaped by different experiences and training. It allows a retrospective examination of any force incident or shooting to figure out what elements are subject to control, to better training, to better strategy, to different tactics, and the like. It allows for comparison of events to determine common elements and disparate ones.

It permits station captains to have data at the ready to manage the station. A captain may wish to know whether and why deputies on one shift generate fewer citizen's complaints that deputies patrolling the same neighborhood on a different shift. The PPI can tell him. A captain may want to find out each lawsuit involving her station that alleges excessive force. The PPI can tell her. A captain may want to analyze the trend in officer involved shootings at the station over the last 15 years. The PPI can tell him.

We are concerned and alarmed, however, because the LASD is currently considering eroding and backtracking on the PPI and the key Kolts commitments described above. Without a strong basis in fact or compelling rationale, the LASD appears to have accepted as true a myth that the PPI has been misused by lazy managers to deprive deputies of deserved promotions or other opportunities. Unwittingly playing into the hands of those who are uncomfortable with greater internal oversight and accountability, the LASD is proposing to take data off a key PPI report and make data about performance more difficult to access and use. Its as if the PPI were to be given a lobotomy -- lowering its IQ, as it were, by cutting circuits that provide data speedily and in highly useable form, squirreling away data in less accessible corners, and leaving managers essentially in the dark about historical performance -- good and bad.

It would be ironic and tragic if the LASD, having been far ahead of the rest of law enforcement in embracing modern technology and computers for risk management, capitulated to pressures from persons who fear greater accountability and drained its own version of the PPI of some of its power and usefulness, retreating from its position as the nation's leader in police accountability and good management practice. Other law enforcement agencies may license the PPI, picking it up and running with it; it would be sad if the LASD took its own brainchild from an ability to do college work and put it back to the second grade level. So too if the LASD resumed routine destruction of administrative files beyond the statutory retention period.

We guess that Sheriff Baca is too well-versed in the merits of accountability and risk management to let this happen. Indeed, as Chief Baca, he was a vigorous and convincing advocate for accountability both within the LASD and in numerous conversations with Judge Kolts and his staff. He knows that there are ways to address the deputies' fears without hurting the PPI, and we will watch to see if he wisely moves in that direction.

3. Our chapter on training discusses a far-reaching reorganization of the LASD's Training Bureau. Among other things, the reorganization calls for dispersal to different assignments of many of the members of the Force Training Unit, a group of individuals who have been responsible for some of the most innovative and comprehensive use of force training in law enforcement today. We hope that this step does not presage a decline in the comprehensiveness, uniformity, and teaching excellent on use of force that has been the hallmark of the Force Training Unit. We also discuss the current performance of the Field Officers Training Unit. It, too, has done a fine job and the challenge will be to maintain these high standards during the reorganization of the Training Bureau. More pressing, however, is to implement and institutionalize centralized selection of FTOs pursuant to uniform high standards of performance after thorough background checks.

4. Our chapter on the LASD's canine program concludes that the Canine Services Detail continues to be a well-managed and carefully supervised program that consistently achieves a high number of apprehensions using police dogs with a low number of bites to suspects. During 1999 through June, 1l.6 percent of apprehensions using dogs resulted in a bite. Although higher than the ratio of 8.6 percent achieved in 1997 and 8.3 percent for 1998, we are not overly concerned given the relatively low number of bites overall in each of those years -- ten in 1997, seven in 1998, and five in the first half of 1999. We will follow with interest whether policy changes initiated in April 1999, permitting use of dogs in situations where for the past few years they had been banned, will produce any untoward consequences.

5. Our chapter on litigation describes continuing progress in reducing the number of excessive force cases and the amounts of judgments and settlements in those cases. We also report good progress in improving the LASD's record on over-detention of inmates. The promising results can be attributed to the efficacy of the Kolts recommendations, the fine work of County Counsel and private lawyers engaged by the County, and the performance of the LASD's risk management unit. The excellence of that unit, in turn, can be ascribed in substantial part to the LASD's commitment to the PPI and the use of data proactively to manage potential liability. If the PPI and the attendant accountability mechanisms are downgraded and the overall commitment to manage liability is weakened or made more difficult, these excellent results of recent years are seriously threatened.

In recent years, the excellent results of the risk management unit has been due in part to the dedication and skill of Tom Laing, who, before his recent promotion to Captain, was in charge of litigation for several years. We recall when his predecessor, Dennis Burns, was promoted to Captain and put in charge of Internal Affairs. Dennis had helped put the LASD's litigation house in order, and we admired his accomplishments. It is now time to acknowledge the fine job Tom Laing has done managing litigation.

Our discussion of litigation describes several cases that settled during fiscal 1998- 1999 for amounts in excess of $100,000 that raise wider risk management issues. We describe two officer-involved shooting cases from the Century Station that gave us concern. Indeed, of the $1.61 million paid last year by the County in officer-involved shootings, all but $20,000 was paid out in Century Station cases.

Concern about these cases is allayed to some degree by the drop in the number of Century shootings in the first half of 1999. Century had one hit shooting and no non-hit shootings between January and June 1999. On the other hand, we continue to receive troubling reports about internal strife at the Century Station, including racial tensions. There have been troublesome incidents involving use of force, including one which raises issues of cover-up, since we last reported on Century in June 1998. We are following with care as the possibility of criminal or administrative misconduct is evaluated.

Chief Spears, with whom we have had a productive working relationship for several years, assures us that the next six months will see significant change and improvement at Century. We will report whether his prediction proves correct.

The litigation chapter concludes with a somber recitation of several medical malpractice settlements. We are convinced that further deep reflection is necessary with respect to the performance of Medical Services, the doctors and nurses in the LASD's employ that provide medical care in the jails. We are aware that the LASD itself and other County departments have paid attention to the issues in recent years. We are puzzled why more has not happened. We intend to get more deeply involved in these issues.

1. Sexual Harassment

Introduction

Between 1995 and mid-1999, the County paid nearly $3 million to settle eleven different lawsuits alleging sexual harassment brought by women in the Sheriffís Department, as shown on Table One. The number and dollar amount of these settlements have led some observers to conclude that the LASD tolerated sexual harassment, mishandled employeeís complaints, and, even where misconduct was found, meted out inappropriately light discipline, if any at all. In the wake of these settlements, and in response to some harshly anti-female sentiments on a web site presumably posted by LASD deputies last spring, the Board of Supervisors expressed great concern and asked us to evaluate whether: (i) the LASD currently is ensuring that its sexual harassment policies are strenuously enforced and (ii) the LASD can reduce its exposure to civil liability. The Board also called upon the expertise and resources of Dennis Tafoya and the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance which he directs.

To examine these questions posed by the Board, we studied the eleven cases leading to the large payouts for sexual harassment (" Settled Cases"). Our study did not belie the beliefs of some observers that in the past, there had been tolerance of sexual harassment. These past cases involved various supervisors who could not recognize, or did not choose to recognize, sexual harassment.

We found examples in the Settled Cases of Internal Affairs investigators who had little apparent motivation to eliminate sexual harassment; who moved forward sluggishly and unimaginatively and failed to broaden investigations when additional allegations of sexual harassment came to light. There were several instances where the LASD charged perpetrators with lesser misconduct than sexual harassment, even though a harassment charge was appropriate. Conversely, we found cases where apparently meritorious charges of harassment were somehow not sustained for reasons we could not figure out. Yet even when charges were founded, in many instances only mild discipline was recommended, followed by "settlements" with the perpetrators that further reduced punishment for serious misconduct. Indifference to sexual harassment causes victims to be victimized over and over again, and there were cases where LASD investigations seemed more stigmatizing to the victims than to their harassers. Although the Department spoke of "zero tolerance," there was instead, in the eyes of many, substantial tolerance of sexual harassment.

Beginning under Sheriff Block and continuing under Sheriff Baca, the LASD has started to emerge from past practices found in the Settled Cases and has deepened its commitment, at least on paper, to eliminating sexual harassment and any tolerance of it. Sheriff Baca has clearly made it one of his highest priorities. The Block administration took a number of important steps generally to inculcate more rigorous standards of accountability and to centralize otherwise diffuse responsibility for identifying and dealing with at-risk employees. These steps laid a strong foundation upon which progress in attacking sexual harassment could be built. Recently, the Baca administration created a new bureau headed by Commander Nancy Malone to provide greater visibility and centralized responsibility for gender equity issues. Likewise, the LASD has instituted changes in the system for processing complaints of sexual harassment and, with the help of the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance, Special Counsel, and others, has begun to train LASD personnel more effectively in issues of sexual harassment.

We do not doubt a sincere desire for change by the Baca administration. But sincere words must be backed by sincere action. The serious questions that remain are whether resources will be committed in promised quantity and whether the new program will succeed. The LASD must be willing to commit substantial funds and redeploy personnel to support the new programs. In the heady days of every new administration, there are heartfelt but easily-given pledges of money and personnel to a variety of good ends that can be quickly canceled when grim fiscal reality sets in and individuals must compete for resources. If the LASD does not put its money, as well as its rhetoric, behind the effort to deal with gender equity issues in general and sexual harassment specifically, an uncomfortable status quo will likely persist. Indeed, even if the Department commits substantial resources to eradicating sexual harassment, it is easy to underestimate how difficult it is to change longstanding cultural attitudes in large bureaucracies.

Lessons To Be Learned from the Settled Cases

Departmental Culture

We were struck frequently in the Settled Cases by a tacit assumption by some LASD supervisors or investigators that the Complainant betrayed weakness by raising issues of harassment and should have been able to "just take it." We asked various LASD personnel if we were correct and, if so, why the assumption seemed to be made. In response, the speculation of the LASD personnel focused on ingrained law enforcement culture.

Throughout the United States, rookie officers, generally male, have always been subject to hazing and testing to see if they are tough enough and hence reliable under dangerous conditions. The rookies generally have acceded, fatalistically, to these tests to prove their toughness and trustworthiness in order to win acceptance from their peers and their seniors. We have strongly criticized such hazing in the LASD in the Kolts Report and in past Semiannual Reports because it inculcates the Code of Silence, is demeaning in the extreme, and perpetuates a culture of "we" versus "them," with "we" being line law enforcement personnel and "them" variously being department supervisors and managers or the community being policed, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and young people.

We speculate that the same culture that tests male rookies by hazing and calls for demonstration of macho behavior likewise expects female rookies (as well as openly gay rookies) to demonstrate their toughness by "just taking it" as regards sexual harassment or homophobic commentary. The underlying assumption seems to be that if the female is too sensitive to deal with sexual harassment, she will be unable to handle an abusive arrestee, or inmate, or the general rigors of the law enforcement job.

Although neither hazing nor harassment is in any way to be tolerated, it is important to recognize how sexual harassment is particularly insidious and stigmatizing: Hazing rituals test in a perverse way "Are you one of us? Do you share our values? Will you be loyal?" Harassment of female and gay law enforcement officers, however, tends to convey the opposite: "Donít you see you are not one of us? Donít you see youíll never belong? Donít you see that your being a female or gay means you can never be fully trusted or relied upon?"

In our review of the Settled Cases, it was apparent that, in several of the cases, the LASD supervisor fell into the trap of seeing the harassment as "mere" hazing and minimized the harassing conduct with the explanations like: "Thatís just the way [the harasser] is." In another instance, a male supervisor thanked a female employee for sharing her "concerns" and noted that she had handled the sexual harassment well by not blowing the complaint "out of proportion." The supervisor may have unwittingly trivialized the complaint or caused the Complainant to feel somewhat patronized; at least it would seem so in light of the ultimate $350,000 paid to settle the case.

Inadequate Supervisor Responses to Complaints

In many of the Settled Cases, the failure of management to appropriately respond to the Complainantís grievances, even more than the underlying conduct, was the most significant factor motivating the Complainant to pursue litigation. Because of this key factor, one could readily conclude that the inadequacy of the initial supervisory response was the single most significant reason for the large size of some of the settlements.

Many of the Settled Cases were brought by female deputies who had been with the LASD for several years. Some had experienced discrimination or harassment as rookies or early in their careers but decided against complaining; perhaps because they were trying to show that they were able to "just take it." Thus, harassing conduct was not brought to the attention of the supervisor until the Complainantís resilience was depleted and the situation became unbearable. Often in the Settled Cases (and quite ironically) the incident that was the last straw was much less severe than prior instances that the Complainant had let go by. This unfortunate situation may, in some odd and again ironic way, account for the reaction of the supervisor: Unaware that the incident complained of was simply the last straw in a series of instances, the supervisor may have been perplexed by the vehemence of the Complainant in light of the apparent triviality of the incident complained of in isolation. Tragically, this may have leaded the supervisor to judge the Complainant as weak or inappropriately sensitive, thereby generating misplaced sympathy by the supervisor for the harasser.

Law enforcement managers therefore could benefit from an awareness that many Complainants will stifle themselves until they no longer can take it. So sensitized, they could then modulate their responses and, by responding appropriately, nip in the bud a significant number of cases. The quality of the supervisorís response will often determine whether the Complainant feels the Department is living up to its duty to protect her, or whether she feels the Department is deserting her.

At the time of initial complaints to supervisors, some Complainants in the Settled Cases said that their goal had been simply to have the harassing conduct end. They were reluctant to commence a formal Internal Affairs investigation or litigation because they were pursuing otherwise rewarding careers and did not want to be stigmatized or lose their careers. Indeed, a fear that filing litigation against the LASD would be the end of the employeeís career would not have been misplaced: All of the sworn personnel whose complaints were included in the Settled Cases wound up leaving the LASD. Thus, sadly, some Complainants may not file suit until the inadequacy of the Departmentís response leaves them feeling that they have no other options and nothing to lose ó in other words, that the LASD has deserted them. This is yet another reason why the initial supervisory response is crucial: Both as a matter of law and as a matter of good policy, an appropriate initial response may eliminate or minimize the Countyís liability and save the careers of valuable employees.

Lackadaisical Investigations

We observed instances in the Settled Cases where Internal Affairs investigators did not expand pending investigations beyond the specific misconduct by the specific individual alleged in the four corners of the initial complaint, even when they uncovered additional misconduct by the harasser or by others. Most troublesome were cases where the investigation revealed that supervisors had ignored complaints of sexual harassment. Internal Affairs investigators in such instances did not take the initiative to add these additional potential violations of LASD policy to the investigation. This behavior may simply be commonplace bureaucratic behavior: why create more work for oneself and risk alienating more people, particularly supervisors? Yet even if understandable from the bureaucratic perspective, the reluctance to expand investigations easily could cause Complainants to infer at best a tepid and grudging commitment to eliminate sexual harassment.

Of similar concern are instances where there was indefensible delay in examining claims of supervisorial misconduct. For example, in one Settled Case, at the outset of the Internal Affairs investigation, the Complainant mentioned to OCRC, and OCRC mentioned to Internal Affairs, that the she felt her supervisors had failed to respond appropriately to sexual harassment. These claims are well documented in OCRC's reports: Internal Affairs was informed of this potential supervisorial misconduct in August 1995, before any litigation was commenced. Despite this, Internal Affairs did not start an investigation of the supervisorsí conduct until late in the litigation, in June 1998. When the litigation settled in December 1998, the investigation of the supervisors was still not complete, and discipline was not imposed until April 1999. Indeed, the Corrective Action Report erroneously stated that the information about the supervisorsí misconduct did not come to light until the litigation.

On the other hand, there are laudable instances in the Settled Cases where Internal Affairs moved swiftly to pursue evidence of additional wrongdoing. One investigation commenced in 1997 was rapidly expanded to include an investigation of the supervisor after interviews revealed that the supervisor may have failed to respond appropriately to the alleged harassment. This investigation is particularly noteworthy because the investigators asked probing questions calculated to reveal any additional wrongdoing, if it existed. This occurred in one of the last of the Settled Cases, leading us to note, as mentioned earlier, that improvement had begun during the latter Block years.

Undercharging

In some instances, the Settled Cases revealed that LASD personnel at times failed to acknowledge that certain conduct in fact constituted sexual harassment or tended in other ways to minimize it. For example, some supervisors and Internal Affairs investigators in the Settled Cases expressed the view that sexual harassment requires conduct that is "sexual" and that mere harassment because of a personís gender, without sexual overtones, is not actionable. Besides being legally incorrect under state and federal law which includes conduct that is not "sexual in nature," this erroneous view directly contravenes the LASDís written sexual harassment policy which provides that harassment based on gender "is a form of sexual harassment" and need not necessarily be "sexual in nature." The policy points out explicitly that such "gender harassment" may include "practical jokes . . . because of gender." (Policy Manual 3-01/030.72 @ p. 4-5.)

During the period covered by the Settled Cases, once Internal Affairs completed its investigation, the file was sent to the LASD Advocacy Unit which in turn created a Disposition Worksheet theoretically encompassing all potential violations of LASD policy raised by the facts uncovered in the investigation. We nonetheless observed in some of the Settled Cases that the individual charged with wrongdoing (the "Subject") was charged with violating the less serious policy regarding "conduct toward others" rather than the sexual harassment policy. "Conduct toward others" is a milder offense than violation of the LASDís sexual harassment policy because the LASDís Guidelines For Discipline recommends lesser minimum discipline for its violation than for sexual harassment: The minimum discipline for a violation of the policy governing conduct toward others is a written reprimand, whereas minimum recommended discipline for sexual harassment is a suspension for 15 days.

In addition to possible reluctance to take sexual harassment adequately seriously, there are at least three other explanations for this apparent preference for milder discipline. First, LASD personnel may have been trained inadequately and thus did not recognize sexual harassment in some of its less obvious forms. Second, to the extent that the Subjects or possible Subjects were supervisory personnel of higher rank, there may have been a bureaucratís reluctance to investigate persons who may someday become the bureaucratís own supervisors. Third, as is discussed in detail below, there may be have been an incentive to undercharge because the County Civil Service Commission more readily affirmed violation of the milder "conduct toward others" policy than sexual harassment.

Curiously, the Settled Cases revealed that an incomplete understanding of sexual harassment was particularly acute for the ranks of captain and above. Before the LASD adopted its current sexual harassment policy, it trained the upper ranks in a very generic way about sexual harassment. After adoption of current policy, the LASD has provided more comprehensive and specific training that includes numerous useful examples. Although this revised training has been given to many sworn personnel, it still has not been systematically provided to captains and the other higher ranks, leading to the result that subordinates are more knowledgeable about sexual harassment than their superiors. In theory, a lieutenant who had the more comprehensive training may come upon a situation paralleling one of the examples given in the training only to find that the captain is behind the learning curve and responds inappropriately, saying, as in an example cited earlier, that a Subjectís conduct was excusable because "thatís just the way he is." Obviously, such statements by high-ranking personnel about sexual harassment are extremely destructive, leading subordinates who hear such things to conclude that the brass is not really interested in eliminating sexual harassment and the written policies are mere window dressing.

Reluctance to make Credibility Determinations

In the Settled Cases, disinclination by unit commanders to make credibility determinations compounded the difficulty of establishing a sexual harassment charge. Sexual harassment generally occurs without witnesses other than the Subject and the Complainant, thereby pitting the Complainantís uncorroborated word against the Subjectís uncorroborated word.

Under previous practice (the procedure currently followed is discussed below), after Internal Affairs completed its investigation and the Advocacy Unit outlined the potential charges, the file was sent to the unit commander for findings. The unit commanderís decision therefore was made based on the Internal Affairs record of its investigation, which included a summary of the investigation and transcripts of all interviews taken during the course of the investigation. Although audiotapes of the interviews were available, few, if any, unit commanders would request the tapes in the normal course and thus did not actually hear the Complainant or Subject giving their versions of the facts.

Internal Affairs normally did not render opinions on the credibility of the various witnesses, the idea being that Internal Affairs should neutrally lay out the case and not usurp the unit commanderís prerogative to decide the case. In practice, this made little sense. The Internal Affairs investigators had interviewed the witnesses and saw them live. Like a jury in a jury trial or like the judge in a court trial, they were in the best position to judge credibility. The unit commander did not see live testimony, generally did not request the audiotapes, and, having only the cold record to review, was poorly equipped to assess credibility in a "he said/she said" situation. It is therefore perhaps understandable that in such situations, the unit commandersí usual approach was either to find the matter could not be resolved one way or the other or that the complaint was unfounded. It was extremely rare for a unit commander to uphold an uncorroborated sexual harassment claim. This state of affairs thus likely added to the disincentive for Complainants to come forward out of fear that making an "unresolved" complaint would be a poor career move.

A system that effectively eliminates determinations of credibility in sexual harassment cases is out of touch with reality and with common practice. For instance, EEOC materials distributed by County Counsel to LASD personnel emphasize the critical role that credibility determinations play in sexual harassment cases. In the EEOC document entitled Enforcement Guidance: Vicarious Employer Liability for Unlawful Sexual Harassment by Supervisors (6-18-99) available at http://www.aele.org/, the EEOC recognizes that employers must weigh credibility in sexual harassment cases:

In some of the Settled Cases, the reluctance to make credibility determinations led to apparent abdications of responsibility: Saying that a complaint was unresolved was an easy out for unit commanders who, as discussed above, had not received the best contemporary training in the first place on what constitutes sexual harassment policy. Thus, we observed the somewhat ironic pattern in the Settled Cases where the same charges that were unresolved or unfounded at the administrative level led to hefty settlements after litigation. But even where unit commanders might have ultimately sustained a complaint, delays in investigation and adjudication rendered their decisions virtually meaningless in some of the Settled Cases, as we next discuss.

Delays in Investigation and Adjudication of Complaints

Many of the investigations in the Settled Cases were not completed in a timely manner. Department policy has required for many years that investigations be completed in 90 days. While some sexual harassment investigations were completed within that time frame, it was not uncommon for them to take double that amount of time: Some took nearly a year to complete; and two took more than a year and half. The LASD has conceded publicly that it took on average between 9 and 18 months to complete a sexual harassment investigation.

Further substantial delays occurred post-investigation while waiting for the Advocacy Unit to complete its review listing the potential charges on the Disposition Worksheet. In one instance, Advocacy took more than four months to write up the charges. Further time passed while the unit commander was making findings. In the event charges were founded, more time slipped by before the unit commander ultimately issued the initial letter of intent to impose discipline. In the Settled Cases, the time ranged from one to 12 months (averaging 5 months) between the completion of the investigation and the unit commanderís issuance of an initial letter of intent to impose discipline.

These delays left the Complainant in limbo, not knowing if the LASD intended to take her claim seriously. This led to frustration, and Complainants decided they had to hire lawyers to initiate litigation in order to find out if the LASD was listening to the allegations of harassment and responding to them.

The delays left the Subject in limbo as well. In some instances, transfers and promotions were postponed for almost two years pending resolution of investigations, leading to patent prejudice to Subjects who were later exonerated. On the other hand, Subjects of "founded" investigations went unpunished for months or years. Prompt punishment is the most effective to change behavior. Moreover, the deterrent effect on would-be Subjects is watered down substantially without prompt punishment for the guilty: In the absence of speedy punishment, there is no deterrent or, worse yet, would-be Subjects might even conclude that the Department did not intend to punish the Subject at all.

The delays also increased County exposure in the Settled Cases. As noted above, a prompt, thorough and impartial investigation followed by an appropriate response is a defense in litigation. The delays made the Countyís lawyersí ability to defend the LASD harder, if not impossible.

The drawn-out process gave plaintiffs in the Settled Cases additional arguments to make to the jury that they otherwise would not have had. A plaintiff could argue that the LASD was not taking sexual harassment claims seriously when its own policy required that an investigation be completed within 90 days but the actual investigation took months or years. Table Two sets for the long delays in the eleven Settled Cases.

Lenient Discipline

We traced the discipline ultimately meted out in the Settled Cases, which, in the main was lenient. To be sure, there was one case in which several officers were discharged and another where an officer served a 30-day suspension. There were other cases where individuals appeared to retire in lieu of discharge or where investigations did not come to a conclusion (intentionally on the part of the LASD or not) before a Subject officer was able to retire. Otherwise, little meaningful discipline was imposed, even in cases where County taxpayers expended hundreds of thousands of dollars. Discipline in the eleven Settled Cases was as follows:

In many of the Settled Cases, unit commanders exercised their broad discretion in a way that resulted in lenient discipline based upon the less serious charges of "conduct toward others" rather than sexual harassment. After unit commanders determined that charges were founded, they recommended the amount and kind of discipline to be imposed and sent the Subject a letter of intent to impose discipline. In cases where the unit commander recommended substantial discipline, generally a suspension of more than 15 days, the recommendation had to be accepted by senior management in a process entitled Case Review before the Subject received a letter of intent.

Once informed of the intent to impose discipline, the Subject has several avenues to argue against the discipline and, if the Subject loses, to appeal the findings and discipline. If a discharge or a suspension of more than five days is recommended, the Subject can have a "Skelly" hearing, at which a hearing officer, almost always an LASD Division Chief, decides the case and discipline, if any. The Skelly hearing officer has wide discretion to affirm or reverse the intended discipline set by the unit commander or to settle the matter in exchange for reduced discipline or different findings or both. Alternatively, the Subject may waive a Skelly hearing and grieve the discipline to his supervisor, his captain, and then to his Division Chief. In practice, Subjects in grievances generally waive the hearing before the supervisor but avail themselves of the hearings before the captain and Chief. As in a Skelly hearing, the captain and Chief can reverse the findings and discipline or settle the case to avoid an appeal of the grievance. If the matter does not settle, the Subject can appeal denial of the grievance or the result of the Skelly hearing. Depending upon the severity of the discipline, the Subject takes the appeal either to Countyís employee relations grievance committee, ERCOM, or to the County Civil Service Commission.

At any stage of the appeals process, the LASD may settle the matter with an agreement by the Subject to end his appeal in exchange for a lesser discipline. Pursuant to agreements with the union in place during the time of the Settled Cases, there were no limits on how far discipline could be reduced to achieve a "settlement." Thus, despite minimum LASD guidelines for appropriate discipline, when settling with an employee, there is unlimited freedom to reduce the discipline far below the recommended minimum suspensions.

The LASD rationalized these settlements by complaining that Civil Service hearing officers too often and too capriciously overturned or reduced discipline imposed by the LASD, a topic we take up later in this Chapter. Hence, if the LASD wanted any discipline imposed at all, it argued that it had to wheel and deal with Subjects. Indeed, the LASD was quite successful in avoiding appeals to Civil Service: Only one of the Settled Cases appears to have been appealed. That is hardly an enviable result, however. The LASD had obviously so watered down discipline with what are arguably sweetheart deals that a Subject had no reason to appeal.

These "settlements" not only resulted in lenient discipline, but also in tardy imposition of the discipline because of the passage of lengthy time between the initial complaint and the settlement of the matter. Ironically, the delay in itself increased the likelihood that the discipline would be made even more lenient. As time passes, the desire to exact an appropriate penalty wanes. In other instances, the Subject may have acted irreproachably in the interim, leading a seemingly compassionate unit commander to conclude the Subject has learned his lesson and discipline is unnecessary. Whether or not such a determination is a just result in a given case, the failure to impose timely and appropriate discipline vitiates any effort to deter others, to make an example, or to show Complainants that sexual harassment will not go unpunished.

A quirk of County law in addition makes it difficult to impose substantial discipline because it forbids the LASD from suspending an employee for more than 30 days. If the LASD wants to punish further, it cannot impose longer suspensions but rather must either reduce the employee in rank or terminate him. (We note parenthetically that the City of Los Angeles has no such limitation on suspensions and that the LAPD in appropriate circumstances can and does imposes suspensions for more than 30 days.) Because of the County 30-day limit, the LASD Department de facto reserves a 30-day suspension for the worst violations. Because 30 days is therefore draconian, a 15-day suspension may seem to be a relatively major punishment. Yet in comparison with possible punishment for the same offense just over the City line, 15 days may seem very light indeed. Although there is much to be said for demotion or termination if the misconduct merits more than a 30-day suspension, perhaps the overall impact of the Countyís 30-day limitation on suspensions should be studied further.

The Civil Service Commission Appeal Process

As noted earlier, the LASD rationalized settlements of intended discipline in the Settled Cases on the grounds that the settlements were necessary to avoid the biases, vagaries, and reversals inherent in the Civil Service process. A brief overview of how that process works is helpful in understanding the situation. As mentioned above, after exhausting internal reviews and appeals, the Subject of intended discipline may, in certain situations, request a hearing before a Civil Service Commission hearing officer at which the Subject is normally represented by a union lawyer and the LASD is represented by a member of the Advocacy Unit, who may or may not be a lawyer.

There are approximately thirty Civil Service Commission hearing officers with varying views and levels of expertise. The names of three potential hearing officers are drawn at random. The Subject eliminates one name and the LASD eliminates another. Names are stricken by both sides based upon the past performance of the hearing officer. Thus, a hearing officer who rules frequently for the LASD is likely to be stricken by the Subject and the LASD is likely to strike hearing officers who often reverse its disciplinary determinations. The hearing officer is paid for presiding at hearings, creating in the mind of the LASD a financial incentive for hearing officers to "split the baby." Against this backdrop, the LASD thought it wiser to avoid the hearings altogether on the grounds that it was bad for morale to have discipline reduced or overturned by the Civil Service hearing officer in a large number of cases.

Fear of Civil Service hearings officers also influenced how policy violations in the Settled Cases were charged, particularly with respect to charging violations of the "conduct toward others" policy rather than as sexual harassment. The LASDís worries in that regard were not without basis. Indeed, in the Advocacy Overview for Calendar Year 1997, after describing a Civil Service Commission decision in which the Commission accepted the deputyís defense that one-time comments did not violate the Departmentís sexual harassment policy, it was noted that, "The Commission and arbitrators are very reluctant to uphold penalties for ëSexual Harassment.í Generally, charges relating to such allegations are better stated as violations of rules pertaining to ëConduct Towards Othersí or to ëPerformance to Standards.í"

It is easier to prove "conduct toward others" than to prove sexual harassment because there is no need in the case of "conduct toward others" to prove that gender was involved. In some of the Settled Cases, the LASD apparently thought that it was more important to obtain a finding that a complaint was founded, even if the finding had to be based on "conduct toward others," than to have the Civil Service Commission hearing officer reject a charge of sexual harassment because the hearing officer rightly or wrongly concluded that the burden of proof for sexual harassment had not be met. The Civil Service hearing process does not allow the hearing officer to reduce a charge from sexual harassment to a violation of the "conduct toward others" policy. Therefore, in defense of the LASDís disciplinary settlements, the LASD has argued that undercharging was a pragmatic if cynical way to assure at least some minimal discipline was imposed in lieu of a complete reversal in a Civil Service hearing or appeal.

But there are others ways to scale down the risk that the Civil Service hearing will go astray. One way might be for the LASD to bait a trap: The LASD could charge both harassment and conduct toward others and track which hearing examiners or Civil Service Commissioners invariably go for the lesser charge even when both are proven. As a last resort, the LASD could ask the Board of Supervisors to change of the system. The Los Angeles Police Department uses two high-ranking police officers and a civilian as a three-judge hearing panel, rather then using the one-judge Civil Service Commission format.

We cannot currently say whether the LASDís jaundiced views of the Civil Service Commission are accurate or not. We nonetheless disagree with LASDís strategy based on these views in the Settled Cases. Its better to fight the good fight and lose rather than be cowed into accepting watered down settlements that fail in any meaningful way to punish wrongdoing or create a deterrent. As we discuss later in the Chapter, further strengthening of the Advocacy Unit would be a wise step so that more cases can be successfully prosecuted to acceptable resolutions.

Current LASD Initiatives

The Settled Cases are now over and belong to the past. We turn now to assess whether current LASD performance on sexual harassment and gender issues has improved. Although there have been many changes for the better, some areas of concern remain.

Tension between Men and Women in the LASD

In recent years, the tension between men and women in the LASD has increased, and some men seem quicker to think themselves victims of reverse discrimination. The Bouman consent decree currently requires 25% of the assignments to "coveted positions" and 25% of sergeant promotions go to women. Yet women comprise just above 14% of all deputies. There are good arguments having to do with overcoming past discrimination and curing past ills in a reasonable time frame which demonstrate convincingly that the 25% figure makes sense. Nonetheless, those arguments do not assuage the sting felt by a man who rightly or wrongly perceives himself shunted aside for a desired assignment or a promotion to benefit whom he thinks is a less qualified woman. At the extreme, these feelings give rise to rage which gets expressed in virulent anti-female sentiments or acted out in sexual harassment. The web site comments referred to earlier in this Chapter may be evidence of such sentiment in the LASD. How widespread such sentiments are is currently unknown. For that reason, we strongly advocated before the Board of Supervisors that the LASD commission an independent expert to survey and probe the extent of such attitudes and sentiments. To our disappointment, there seems to be no measurable progress toward such a survey.

Commitment at the Executive Level

Against the backdrop of the tensions described above, the elimination of sexual harassment is a difficult undertaking. Building on our earlier discussion of the nexus between hazing and harassment, men may be acting out their rage at rules that seemingly favor less qualified women by generally harassing women sexually or by subjecting them to endless testing and humiliation. To counter such acting out, the LASD must at the same time address the anxieties and anger of males while making it absolutely clear that it will not tolerate expression of such anger in sexual harassment or other illegal and offensive conduct. For that reason, it is imperative that the LASD leadership not unwittingly validates the improper conduct by treating the prohibitions against sexual harassment as tantamount to unnecessary evils or "political correctness" foisted on the LASD by liberals and the courts to bedevil law enforcement. Persons at all ranks who are well-respected must get the word out that sexual harassment hurts the Department and everyone in it and will not be tolerated.

Sheriff Baca is doing so and expresses himself with energy on the topic of zero tolerance for discrimination and harassment. But his administration, on foundations laid by the prior administration ó through the risk management process, SCIF, and the strict enforcement of accountability policies ó to eradicate sexual harassment forcefully and quickly if it wishes to do so. The techniques used by the Block administration to reduce excessive force are available to attack sexual harassment. Those mechanisms, in our view, are currently seriously under-utilized. Nonetheless, there is clear progress to note.

A new bureau was created in summer 1999 under the leadership of Commander Nancy Malone. Commander Maloneís job is to promote gender equity and insure compliance with the Bouman consent decree. Consistent with our recommendations in several prior Semiannual Reports, this new bureau centralizes most of the Departmentís efforts to achieve gender equity and to eliminate sexual harassment. Commander Malone reports directly to the Undersheriff, an important symbolic step that at least suggests commitment at the highest levels of the LASD to gender equity. Also in summer 1999, the Sheriff began visibly to track the progress of sexual harassment investigations by Internal Affairs and posting the results in the Executive Planning Council conference room and on the LASD intranet. There has been measurable progress, as noted earlier, in reducing the backlog of Title VII investigations and in completing investigations in a more timely and thorough manner.

The LASD was required in connection with the Bouman litigation to hire an outside consultant to review and revise the Departmentís sexual harassment policy and procedures. We have been told that this consultant will design new training to improve supervisor's responsiveness to complaints. The Countyís Office of Affirmative Action Compliance has also reviewed the Departmentís training program and made recommendations.

The LASD recently has stepped up its efforts to train certain key personnel. With the assistance and participation of Julio Thompson, a key member of our team, and Senior Deputy County Counsel Dalila Corral, a training was given in June to Internal Affairs investigators working on sexual harassment complaints, OCRC personnel, and several interested Commanders concerning the proper approach to investigating workplace harassment. On August 16, 1999, a continuation of the program was given as a mandatory training to all LASD Commanders. In addition, on July 22, 1999, Internal Affairs investigators and three Commanders were given an update concerning recent developments in the law.

This recent training has, in general, been excellent. Nonetheless, it remains the case, as described earlier, that captains and above have not all received the comprehensive training that their subordinates have. The LASD should make sure it happens quickly.

Supervisor Responses to Complaints

It is difficult to assess at this early stage whether supervisors have become more responsive to complaints of sexual harassment. Early evidence from current OCRC files we reviewed suggest that the supervisors are acting appropriately and are properly utilizing the resources of OCRC at an early stage. Our assessment cannot be complete, however, because it is too early to determine how many complaints of sexual harassment have arisen since the Settled Cases that might have been ignored by supervisors. That will not be known until the Complainants report them to OCRC or Internal Affairs or files a lawsuit. We will continue to audit the complaint files on a regular basis to monitor the Departmentís progress.

The Internal Affairs special team

Under Sheriff Block, a special Internal Affairs team dedicated to discrimination and harassment cases was created in October 1998. Headed by Lt. Willa Glover, the team has seven sergeants and one deputy. That team, as noted earlier, has done a very good job speeding up investigations and eliminating the backlog. Given the quality and dedication of this group of investigators, we are hopeful that this new team, which has received special training, will speedily cause the quality of the investigations to improve. It is too early to tell whether the new team will be more aggressive in expanding investigations to include Subjects and misconduct uncovered during the course of a pending investigation. We intend to continue to audit investigations to determine whether they are properly expanded when evidence of further misconduct comes to light.

Undercharging and Lenient Discipline

Our discussion of the Settled Cases pointed out serious problems of undercharging and lenient discipline in harassment cases. Recent reforms in how cases are adjudicated and reviewed may begin to address these concerns. As part of its overall program to tighten accountability and manage risk, Sheriff Blockís team, in 1997, reduced the plenary authority of unit commanders to decide whether charges were founded and what discipline should be imposed. An entity called the Executive Risk Review Committee was empowered to review investigations of sexual harassment and other misconduct and make findings.

The Executive Risk Review Committee consists of one commander who serves regularly, and two commanders who serve on a rotating basis. Once an Internal Affairs investigation is completed, the Committee receives and reviews the Internal Affairs file and schedules a hearing at which the Internal Affairs investigator describes the investigation and answers questions. Representatives of OCRC, the Advocacy Unit, and County Counsel are also present. The Complainant and Subject and their respective counsel are not present.

In March 1999, the procedures were amended to provide that the unit commander would attend the Executive Risk Review hearing and would determine in collaberation with the Executive Risk Review Committee what the intended level of discipline would be in founded cases. This change should have positive effects: first, it should lead to greater consistency in decision making and in the level of discipline and second, it should act as a restraint on unit commandersí setting inappropriately low levels of discipline and then later bargaining away even that in "settlements." It remains to be seen whether these positive effects will be realized.

The Executive Risk Review Committee has the additional power to change what it believes to be an undercharge. If the Committee believes that sexual harassment rather than "conduct toward others" should be charged, and the representative of the Advocacy Unit confirms that there is a proper and sustainable legal basis for it, the Committee can modify the Disposition Worksheet on the spot or send it back to Internal Affairs for rewriting. The Committee is also empowered to order an expanded or new investigation when evidence of fresh misconduct appears during the primary investigation. It is too early to say whether the Committee is exercising these powers with adequate vigor. Nor are we in a position at this early stage to evaluate whether the Advocacy Unit is being more appropriately aggressive in recommending more serious charges despite fears of Civil Service.

Further changes in the procedures of the Committee are planned. Starting in October 1999, Commander Nancy Malone will chair all sessions of the Executive Risk Review Committee. Rather than drawing from all the commanders in the LASD, a group of three to four commanders and alternates will be assigned to serve for fixed terms on the Committee. These changes are intended to increase consistency of adjudicatory and disciplinary decisions. We look forward to auditing the Committee and seeing whether salutary change is indeed occurring. We also note that these changes do not address the problems discussed earlier concerning a reluctance to make credibility determinations when there is uncorroborated opposing testimony from the Complainant and the Subject.

One solution to that latter problem would be to convert the Executive Risk Review Committee to a trial board which hears live testimony and the Complainant and Subject are present and represented by counsel. This would raise a host of other problems and we do not recommend it at this time. Another solution would be to ask Internal Affairs investigators, who did hear the live testimony, to openly opine as to the credibility of the witnesses, and we so recommend. At the same time, the members of the Executive Risk Review Committee must step up to its duty to decide credibility, difficult as that may be at times.

We also strongly recommend that the Committee be required to listen to the audiotapes of interviews in instances where the Committee is otherwise hesitant to make a credibility determination on the cold record, even when there is an Internal Affairs recommendation on credibility. Even better, Internal Affairs should videotape interviews so that the credibility of witnesses can be more carefully evaluated in close cases. The videotaping of depositions in court cases is now a commonplace practice to enhance the ability of a factfinder, be it judge or jury, to make credibility determinations. We recommend these steps as alternatives to more drastic changes to assure that proper credibility determinations are made. We will follow up to see if they are adopted and lead to more credibility determinations and fewer unresolved complaints of sexual harassment.

Bargaining Down Discipline

In our discussion of the Settled Cases, we noted with distaste that even lenient levels of discipline got watered down in "settlements." The LASD has not presented us with any program to eliminate inappropriate reductions in discipline. One place, in particular, where discipline tends to get reduced is during the Skelly or grievance hearings. It has been suggested that the responsibility for such hearings, for sexual harassment cases at minimum, should be centralized rather than automatically assigned them to the Chief in whose division the misconduct occurred. This may make sense and could bring about greater uniformity. But the burden on the Chief to whom all the hearings would be assigned would be a particularly heavy one.

Better yet would be to use already existing accountability policies and mechanisms to call onto the carpet any Chief who inappropriately bargains down discipline. Under Sheriff Block, the Advocacy Unit began keeping track of who bargained down discipline and by how much. Advocacy is continuing to do so, and those records should be used by LASD executives to bring Chiefs who are too lenient or too harsh into line. The Department has taken sensible steps to see to it that the adjudication of charges and initial imposition of discipline benefit from the guidance of the Executive Risk Review Committee to provide uniformity. These efforts should not be allowed to be dissipated by inappropriate "settlements" at later stages in the disciplinary process.

Finally, and no less importantly, we recommend further strengthening of the Advocacy Unit. We have been informed that County Counsel has promised three more attorneys for the unit, and we strongly support this excellent idea and will follow its implementation with interest. We also recommend curing an anomaly: Because the Advocacy Unit is headed by an attorney from the County Counselís Office, the head of the unit appropriately reports directly to the Undersheriff. The unit as an entity, however, reports up through the chain of command through a Commander, Chief, and Assistant Sheriff before getting to the Undersheriff. Because the Undersheriff, in conjunction with the County Counsel Attorney who heads the Advocacy Unit, are in the best position to oversee and assure uniformity and adequacy of discipline by the Chiefs, we recommend that the unit as a whole have a direct reporting relationship to the Undersheriff.

We also note that in the last year, there has been a rapid turnover of Chiefs. The new Chiefs urgently need training on Skelly in general and on the exercise of discretion with respect to discipline in particular. We recommend that Advocacy provide that training and do so quickly.

Changes at OCRC

Our review of recent OCRC files confirms that it is providing a valuable resource to the Department. Supervisors are now relying on OCRC as their primary resource for guidance on LASD policies and their legal duties with regard to sexual harassment. OCRC consults with legal advisors from County Counsel only when it determines there is a particularly complex issue involved. This means that OCRC is, in effect, providing legal advice.

This places a great burden on OCRC staff to understand and remain up-to-date in a rapidly changing area of law. OCRC personnel have recently participated in several intensive advanced trainings on the law of sexual harassment. Nonetheless, the burden of advising supervisors on the law should not be placed on individuals with no formal legal training. The LASD and the County might be better served by assigning an attorney to advise supervisors in how to handle complaints involving sexual harassment (and probably all other forms of harassment as well). That attorney would have a full plate right away. Although attorneys from the office of County Counsel are available to fulfill this role, it is our sense that they are over-burdened and do not have sufficient time to devote to it.

Currently, OCRC is responsible for several important functions. In addition to providing intake and other services on complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination, it provides career counseling, responds to complaints filed with the EEOC and DFEH, receives reports from and participates in the Departmentís S.T.O.P. Family Violence Task Force, handles the Educational Reimbursement Program and handles other tasks as well. These diverse responsibilities may affect OCRCís ability to perform in accordance with its highest potential.

The LASD has announced plans to split OCRC into three components, the Ombudsperson function, the Career Resources Center, and the Affirmative Action Compliance function. All of these will be placed in the bureau headed by Commander Malone with additional support personnel. Certain functions that appear not to be essential to the purposes OCRC was designed to fulfill, and which may have drained OCRC resources in the past, will be eliminated from OCRCís scope of responsibility. The Affirmative Action Compliance portion of the new organization will receive advice from the Countyís Office of Affirmative Action Compliance, and the Career Resources portion of the new organization will be moved away from Department headquarters to avoid any intimidating effect that the current location may have. The Department hopes that these steps will help all of the three component organizations reach their fullest potential. We share that hope.

TABLE ONE

 

LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT

SETTLED SEXUAL HARASSMENT CLAIMS AND LAWSUITS

FISCAL YEARS 1995/1996 THROUGH 1998/1999

During fiscal years 1995/1996 through 198/1999, the Sheriff's Department settled eleven workplace sexual harassment lawsuits and claims. The following is a summary of these cases:

Fiscal Year 1995 ñ 1996

1. Lawsuit Received: October 1991

II. Retention of Data and the PPI

Introduction

The Kolts Report was highly critical of the LASD's failure to collect and maintain data on how its personnel had performed in the past. Blinded to information about officers who repeatedly generated citizen's complaints, administrative investigations, or lawsuits, or who repeatedly used unnecessary force, the LASD prior to Kolts did not gather the facts to avert risks of misconduct. Worse yet, the LASD routinely erased the paltry records that were kept on investigations, destroying investigative files more than five years old unless there was litigation pending over the incident in question. Once the files were destroyed, the LASD's information about a given incident was so cryptic that it was useless -- for all but founded investigations, all that was remained was a 3 x 5 index card indicating the general Policy Manual sections implicated. If founded, all that might be located was a letter in the officer's personnel file adverting to misconduct and imposing discipline. Even more mystifying, the LASD had a practice of "uncarding" officers -- throwing away the 3 x 5 cards, thereby entirely destroying any evidence that the officer was ever investigated or that a citizen's complaint had been made. Although the practice of "uncarding" was in theory limited to a small subset of meritless complaints, we found that in reality, the standards for "uncarding" were loose and the practice of "uncarding" was rife with abuse.

Accordingly, the Kolts Report made two key recommendations, both of which were accepted by the LASD following negotiation with Judge Kolts and then ordered implemented by the Board of Supervisors:

1. All investigative files would be retained indefinitely and the practice of "uncarding" would stop.

2. The LASD would construct a computerized tracking system on a relational database to record and report data regarding an officer's use of force, citizen's complaints, administrative investigations, lawsuits, and disciplinary history. The LASD committed to complete the system by 1993, but delays pushed it back to March 1997, when the tracking system -- now known as the Personnel Performance Index or PPI -- was fully operational.

As the balance of this Chapter will demonstrate, we are concerned that the LASD is considering eroding and backtracking on some of these bedrock Kolts commitments. It should be a sufficient response that the LASD has no power to do so: The LASD agreed to accept the Kolts recommendations after vigorous negotiation with Judge Kolts. In reliance on the promises and assurances the LASD made in the negotiations, the Board of Supervisors ordered that the negotiated resolution of each of the Kolts recommendations be implemented, and Special Counsel was appointed to monitor and report regularly on the pace and extent of implementation. Despite this clear history, it is nonetheless useful to review each of these areas to understand why the Kolts recommendation was made in the first place and whether it still is necessary.

Data Retention

Law enforcement in general, and the LASD in pre-Kolts years in particular, failed to identify and then to control individuals who had engaged in misconduct in the past or whose present conduct posed a risk of serious problems in the future. The Kolts Report focused on excessive force, corruption, discriminatory law enforcement, and prejudice against community residents or fellow officers based upon race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or other proscribed factors. Judge Kolts and his staff were struck that the LASD conducted no regular or meaningful analysis of lawsuits and administrative investigations in order to glean lessons from cases that had cost the County's taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in adverse judgments and out-of-court settlements. The concept of "risk management" was largely unknown and unpracticed in the LASD. Apart from whatever ad hoc community or political pressure was generated after a controversial shooting or force incident, the LASD had no financial or other incentive to scale down risk. Indeed, it was only after the Los Angeles Times focused on the cost and extensiveness of excessive force litigation, and four controversial shootings occurred during the post-Rodney King summer of 1991, that sufficient pressure built and the Supervisors commissioned the Kolts Report. Judge Kolts and his staff quickly discovered that the basic facts and information necessary for identification and management of risk was routinely destroyed.

In its defense, the LASD claimed that good captains knew, or could easily find out from lieutenants and sergeants, who the officers were in any given command who employed force unnecessarily and excessively. Hence, the argument went, there was no need to retain data or set up computerized systems to do the job. But as the Kolts Report convincingly demonstrated, captains, commanders, and chiefs did not have the grasp on all the relevant facts as they might have supposed. Often there were significant gaps, particularly with respect to the complete disciplinary history of officers, litigation involving officers, and claims made against officers. In truth, law enforcement managers and executives knew remarkably little about the officers and patterns of conduct that posed risk. Fewer still focused attention on risk and attempted to forestall it.

The LASD was not by any means unique: As every blue ribbon report in the last ten years on policing demonstrated -- from the Christopher Commission report on the LAPD to the Kolts Report on the LASD to the Mollen Commission report on the NYPD -- many large law enforcement agencies had the same failings. The recommendations in each of the blue ribbon reports were the same: There had to be a Department-wide commitment to hold persons at all levels of the organization accountable and responsible for management and control of individuals, circumstances, and risks of misconduct.

Necessarily, then, it was critical that complete and accurate data relevant to the task be maintained, put in an easily manipulated form, and utilized. This in turn led to recommendations that crucial data on officer performance be maintained indefinitely. Among the most important were files concerning internal investigations, whether prompted by citizen's complaints or by the Department itself. As noted above, the Kolts Report recommended that administrative files be retained indefinitely. The LASD negotiated the point with Judge Kolts and so agreed. Since that time, the LASD has carefully lived up to its commitments.

Nonetheless, the issue of whether some administrative files should be retained indefinitely has arisen recently as a result of an asserted lack of storage space. We do not mean to suggest that the LASD is proposing to destroy important files merely because storage space is tight: Rather, tightness of storage space has prompted reflection on whether it is necessary to keep administrative investigations past the statutory minimum of five years on officers who have left the LASD or retired. We were asked for our views, and learned that the LASD routinely retains all other personnel information on retired or resigned employees and considered it to be best management practice to do so. At least one outside consultant to the LASD on risk management practices concurred. Because of the continuing importance of the files to litigation and to risk management, we strongly recommended that such files be kept indefinitely.

Among other uses, these records are a goldmine of extremely valuable information about officer performance in general. When used with other relevant records, they facilitate a review of careers to determine why, when, and how problems arose. They permit longitudinal and comparative studies of the long-term impact of differing selection criteria, training, assignments, and work histories. They permit retrospective examination of any force incident or shooting or instance of corrupt behavior to determine which elements are subject to control, to better training, to better strategy, to different tactics, and the like. The files permit a sophisticated examination of why and how things go awry, thereby facilitating efforts to prevent future repetitions. Accordingly, these files must not and should not be destroyed.

If storage is a problem, the files could be microfilmed or stored electronically and the bulky hard files destroyed. Even audio and videotapes in the files could be stored electronically if their quality has not seriously degraded over the years. Although the issue has not been resolved, we are hopeful that the LASD will continue to abide by its agreements with Judge Kolts and the Board of Supervisors and continue the policy that has been in effect since 1992 not to destroy administrative files. We nonetheless will continue to watch this area carefully.

The PPI

Once it is determined that data will be retained, it must be stored in a way that facilitates risk management, internal and external oversight, and assessment of employee performance. Again, the blue ribbon reports -- Christopher, Kolts, and Mollen -- all recommended construction of relational databases. In 1992, the LASD agreed to create what has become the most sophisticated computer tracking system of its kind. The LASD said that it would be operational in 1993, but the date kept slipping.

As part of the settlement of Darren Thomas v. County of Los Angeles, and as a strong incentive to the LASD to push the PPI to completion, the County agreed to pay an additional $500,000 in settlement if the PPI was not "fully operating" by March 31, 1997. As March 1997 approached, the question arose how to determine if the PPI was indeed fully operational. The County and the Darren Thomas plaintiffs agreed that we would serve as neutral arbitrators to make that determination. We asked for and were given unlimited access to the PPI and adequate time to test whether the LASD had "complete[d] and fully implement[ed] an early warning and tracking system that records, integrates, and reports data regarding use of force, citizen's complaints, administrative investigations, criminal investigations or prosecutions, civil claims, civil lawsuits, and disciplinary history."

Following our testing, we declared that the PPI was fully operational. Our determination was based, in relevant part, upon the following observations and conclusions:

1. The dispositions of all administrative investigations -- whether founded, unfounded, unresolved, or exonerated -- were readily available and accessible on any given officer's profile report, among other ways to gain access to the information. The data reached back as far as it was reasonably available at the time and was maintained indefinitely. No data had been purged or removed from any officer's profile report or from the database. No hard copies or electronic copies of the key source documentation had been or would be destroyed.

2. All reportable uses of force -- lethal or non-lethal, in policy or out of policy -- were readily available and accessible on any given officer's profile report, among other ways to access the data. The information was loaded onto PPI from as far back as it was reasonable at the time and was maintained indefinitely. No data had been purged or removed from any officer's profile report or from the database. No hard copies or electronic copies of the key source documentation had been or would be destroyed.

3. All citizen's complaints alleging misconduct -- whether deemed credible or not and whether or not resolved by mutual consent -- were readily available and accessible on any given officer's profile report, among other ways to access the data. The data was loaded onto the PPI from as far back as it was reasonably available at the time and was maintained indefinitely. No data had been purged or removed from any officer's profile report or from the database. No hard copies or electronic copies of key source documentation had been or would be destroyed.

In the fall of 1998, Sheriff Sherman Block appointed a PPI Review Committee headed by former Assistant Sheriff Richard Foreman to gather input from across the LASD about the operation of the PPI with the goal of perfecting the PPI and correcting any serious problems that had arisen. We were asked to become part of the PPI Review Committee. The Committee had substantially completed its research by November 1998, having held hearings throughout the Department on different dates to permit any Department member who so desired to express views on the PPI. Following the election of Sheriff Lee Baca, Assistant Sheriff Larry Waldie replaced Richard Foreman as chair of the Committee.

The new Assistant Sheriff made recommended changes in the operation of the PPI to the Sheriff in March 1999. There were recommended changes with which we disagreed. The most crucial had to do with administrative investigations. Whereas prior practice required that all investigations -- founded or not -- be reflected on the officer's profile report, it was recommended that administrative investigations leading to unfounded and exonerated dispositions be removed. The rationale was that supervisors would not take the time to distinguish between founded and unfounded investigations and would look only to the number of investigations shown, to the prejudice of deputies who amassed substantial numbers of unfounded investigations.

We suggested by way of compromise that the unfounded and exonerated investigations be displayed separately from the others so that the supervisor would not be misled and necessarily would have to distinguish between investigations that led to positive or negative results. The compromise was rejected.

Currently, procedures are being drafted to remove unfounded and exonerated investigations from current profile reports and not to so record them in the future. Although the underlying data will not be purged entirely from the database and will remain available through specific query mechanisms if desired, it to be an open question whether this change is consistent with our prior determinations that the PPI is fully operational. We look forward to opportunities to discuss this issue further with the Department before drafts of procedures are finalized.

There is, however, an even more worrisome issue. Although the issue was not raised and resolved when we took part in the PPI Review Committee, the LASD is currently considering a general limitation that would restrict the PPI profile sheet to data accumulated within the last five years. On a yearly basis, older data would be removed from the profile sheet, although the underlying information will presumably remain indefinitely in the database. Whether the PPI would remain fully operational if such a step were taken is, again, an open question.

It is a step that need not and should not be taken. Sensible rules and procedures can be devised that would protect against misuse of irrelevant and stale data but would permit crucial data to be maintained indefinitely on the profile report. In any event, evidence pointing to a lack of integrity or misuse of force must never be taken off the profile report. We are confident that the Sheriff understands these issue well. We will follow the matter carefully and look forward to discussing the matter further with the LASD.

The pressure to change the PPI is based in substantial part on misconceptions and superstitions. It is ironic and frustrating that in the seven years since the PPI was first announced, the LASD has done so poor a job in quelling confusion and fear among deputies concerning how the information on the PPI is used. In October 1993, in our First Semiannual Report at page 31-2, we reported that we had found "widespread ignorance among deputies about the basic concepts behind the PPI as well as fear that the PPI will invariably be used punitively whenever a deputy crosses an unspecified threshold of force reports, citizen complaints, or lawsuits. Supervisors and managers also had little understanding of what the Department expected them to do with the PPI." We then described how Special Counsel and the LASD's top executives had agreed that the PPI was primarily "a tool for inquiry, investigation, and, if necessary, for intervention; not for punishment per se, although patterns of abusive conduct should influence selection for coveted assignments, promotion, personnel evaluation, and augmentation of discipline in appropriate circumstances." LASD management is largely leaving unaddressed and unchallenged the forebodings among deputies about the misuse of the PPI.

Over the last seven years, we have observed how the PPI was being used and have commented on its merits and its occasional failings. The last time we commented at length on the PPI was in the June 1998 Ninth Semiannual Report. Our investigation of the Century Station demonstrated that the PPI was still being demonized by many deputies there to such a degree that it was "being used as a bogeyman of sorts." The biggest fear was still that deputies would lose out on promotion or transfer opportunities because the captain deciding their fate would simply count the "tick marks" on the PPI without regard either for the legitimacy of the complaints or the circumstances under which they were accumulated. It boiled down to an abiding distrust by deputies of their supervisors; an expectation that their superiors would not be conscientious and look behind the raw numbers. In our investigation, we ran to ground every instance cited to us of a deputy who had been wronged by misuse of the PPI. We found in each such case that the problem was not the PPI but rather such reasons as the glacial speed of the disciplinary process.

We nonetheless expressed concern that some captains did not routinely review the backup documentation that supported and explained the various PPI entries for a particular deputy. We believed, however, that the problem would be alleviated as more backup information was inputted in to the PPI itself so that captains would be able to review it at their desks with a click of the mouse. In order to allay the rampant fears about the PPI, we proposed an audit to determine whether supervisors were complying with Sheriff's Manual Section 3092/085.30 which states that "managers and executives shall not use the numbers of incidents [on the PPI] as the basis for the evaluation of or for personnel decisions affecting an employee." We believed it was only fair to take a close look at whether supervisors were using the PPI appropriately: "Simply put, if the deputies' conduct is to be scrutinized and tracked, the unit commanders' use of that tracking system must be scrutinized as well. With the PPI, the Department is well on its way to having the most sophisticated personnel tracking system in the country. By and large, it appears that the PPI is working very well, but it is important that the Department not lose sight of the need to address the fears and concerns of the deputies." Ninth Semiannual Report, p. 34.

There is a big difference between addressing fears and capitulating to them. Proposals to take information off the PPI or to limit how long data is retained smack of capitulation because the question posed is not "how can we keep the information and at the same time insure that it is not misused?" but rather is "how much data can we lop off?" In this and many other areas of law enforcement, fear of information seems to lead to suppressing it rather than confronting it. Like ostriches, law enforcement personnel at times seem to believe that if you do not know about something, it cannot strike and hurt you. Or, put more cynically, if the information is negative or controversial or subject to misinterpretation or manipulation to political ends, then better to suppress it than worry about explaining it or educating people about it. Law enforcement, however, cannot control excessive force, corruption, or other police misconduct without the data. Hence, whatever changes to the PPI are proposed, the question should always be "how can we prevent unintended and inappropriate use of the information?" rather than "how can we eliminate information that is vulnerable to misuse?"

It is important that the LASD move carefully and cautiously in this period where the growing pains associated with the PPI are most acutely felt. It is important that the new administration not encourage enemies of strict accountability and risk management to test the waters and press their luck. The PPI is, without question, the most carefully constructed and powerful management tool for control of police misconduct currently available in the United States. Although other law enforcement agencies have early warning or tracking systems, they are, with the possible exception of Pittsburgh, far less useful, detailed, and powerful. There is no commercially available tracking system that is a match for the PPI. Whereas small police and sheriff's departments may not need all the power and features of the PPI and could make do with commercially available software, there is no question but that any law enforcement agency with 1000 or more sworn officers would be well-served by having the PPI. Police and sheriff's departments from around the country have approached the LASD about purchasing or licensing the PPI, and the Department is seriously exploring how it can be made available to others. It would be ironic and tragic if the LASD, having been far ahead of the rest of law enforcement in embracing modern technology and computers for risk management, capitulated to fears and worries, drained its own version of the PPI of some of its power and usefulness, and retreated from its position as the nation's leader in police accountability and good management practice.

We rather guess that Sheriff Baca is too well-versed in the merits of the accountability and risk management to let that happen. Indeed, as Chief Lee Baca, he was a vigorous and convincing advocate for accountability both within the LASD and in conversations with Judge Kolts and his staff. After the Board of Supervisors ordered implementation of the Kolts reforms, he was the first to require quality service plans from his captains as a way for management to put Kolts into practice. Our April 1994 Second Semiannual Report at page 5 specifically remarked how "Chief Baca has initiated a process of planning and goal-setting . . . which is very promising in terms of accountability." At the same time, the Sheriff is cognizant of deputy concerns. There are ways to address deputies' fears without hurting the PPI, and we will watch to see if the LASD wisely will move in that direction.

III. Training

USE OF FORCE TRAINING

Introduction

The LASD is in the midst of a far-reaching reorganization of its Training Bureau. Among other things, the reorganization calls for the dispersal to different assignments of most of the members of the Force Training Unit ("Force Unit"), a group of dedicated individuals who have been responsible for some of the most innovative and comprehensive use of force training in law enforcement today. Members of the Force Unit argue with vigor that instead of building upon the Unitís accomplishments and hard work of the last seven years, there is some danger that the LASD will lose, in the current shuffling of programs and personnel, what has been dauntingly difficult to assemble and perfect. We have been assured by the LASD that this will not be so, and for now we take the LASD at its word.

We are aware that the reorganization of the Training Bureau has been a keenly disappointing blow to the members of the Force Unit. We also understand, from the perspective of the last seven years on Kolts, that significant institutional change, good or bad, is hard for the LASD rank and file to accept. Individuals loathe losing jobs in which they have great personal investment of time and energy, and they dislike when a unit with great esprit de corps is dismantled and all must go their separate ways. Nor are changes in policies, priorities, and longstanding practices easily understood and accepted. Accordingly, we try to guard ourselves against empathizing so much with the stinging blow felt by individual members of the Force Unit that we lose sight of the overall merits of the reorganization that is taking place. There is no question but that the current administration of the LASD has reasonable arguments, at least at first blush, why this reorganization makes sense. As we say, we readily believe the Department when it assures us that force training will not suffer by virtue of this reorganization.

But if, despite these honestly and sincerely given assurances, the quality, comprehensiveness, uniformity, and teaching excellence on use of force that has been the hallmark of the Force Unit declines in any significant way, the LASD will be find itself out of compliance with its commitments to the Board of Supervisors in the wake of the Kolts Report; commitments by the LASD upon which the Board of Supervisors specifically relied in fashioning appropriate relief in the wake of the Kolts Report. It is useful, therefore, to revisit the Kolts Report and the subsequent Semiannual Reports to trace the history of progress in use of force training.

Use of Force Training between 1992 and 1998

The Kolts Report strongly criticized the use of force training the LASD was providing its deputies. The 1992 Kolts investigation first looked at recruit training at the Academy. As we monitored recruit courses on use of force, we encountered inconsistency and confusion. Although some instructors taught from updated materials and discussed changes over time to the LASDís force policy and practice and why those changes were necessary, other instructors taught from outdated materials, and still others reverted to telling "war stories" drawn from their early days in the LASD. The stories failed to distinguish between what may have been tolerated in the 1970s and then-current expectations. Force training was not well integrated: Policy issues, defensive tactics, and weapons training were taught as stand-alone topics, and inadequate attention was paid to the legal and ethical issues surrounding use of force.

As we moved from the academy to patrol stations, we discovered that station cultures were the dominant determinant of what was necessary and legitimate force; thus, Department-wide rules governing force which were taught at the Academy were dissipated by divergent interpretations at different stations. At some stations, the captain attempted to ensure the stationís training staff was briefed regularly regarding policy changes and the problematic incidents which had prompted them. In these exemplary stations, the information was quickly disseminated to deputies during station training days and at briefings. Yet even at these stations, briefings and training went by the wayside when staff had to scramble to find enough deputies to fill patrol cars. At other stations, however, staff not only failed to pay even lip service to then-current LASD policy and practice, but actually rejected the demands and expectations of the Department in favor of their stationís own self-defined standards.

In the wake of the Kolts Report, the LASD moved rapidly to address the problems raised, and then-Chief Lee Baca was involved in this project in its earliest stages. Indeed, he was instrumental in selecting Lt. Mike Grossman to assume overall responsibility for developing and institutionalizing a integrated, centralized force training and evaluation program which would address the problem throughout the LASD.

As our Semiannual Reports reflected, from the beginning, we were impressed with the quality of thought, research, and planning that went into the development and implementation of this important project. In January, 1993, the following candid and perceptive diagnosis of the "force problem" was developed and circulated for consideration by the Command Staff in an impressive working paper:

"Seldom do we successfully integrate the various elements of training in the use of force spectrum in a meaningful manner, that is easily understood and retained by the members of our Department. Although cognitive (academic) and manipulative (physical) skills are taught in existing programs, often the majority of our training is primarily focused on the physical techniques only. Cognitive skills can be further developed and emphasized throughout our programs. These skills can positively impact decisions made regarding the degree of force that may be appropriate and the subsequent justification for application of such force."

The working paper then proposed solutions which were both innovative and ambitious:

"An integrated use of force training program which brings together all the elements of defensive tactics is needed to develop personnel skill and judgement in applying appropriate force measures in a wide variety of situations. Consistent, verifiable, realistic training and evaluation can serve to enhance a deputyís knowledge and confidence in the application of force, while developing a deputyís ability to articulate, explain, and justify actions taken.

A comprehensive use of force training and evaluation program should encompass all elements of the use of force spectrum including physical presence, verbal communication, weaponless defense techniques, chemical sprays, electronic devices, intermediate weapons, and lethal force options. Deputies must comprehend and understand the use of force options available in their training sessions to assure that they will give proper attention and considerations to the same options when they are confronted with use of force decisions in the course of their duties."

In a subsequent document, training staff expanded their model to propose "training which will encompass the philosophical, legal, moral, procedural, and tactical elements of the use of force."

Members of a newly created "Force Training Unit" were given the task of forecasting and coming up with plans to overcome any obstacles to successful implementation. In their subsequent "Implementation Plan," they described the various shoals upon which the new training program might founder and proposed ways in which they might be successfully circumnavigated. For example, they recognized that their efforts could be fatally undermined while the pilot program was still on the drawing board if no preemptive efforts were made to control rumors and counter negative word of mouth interpretations of the program and its intent. They proposed, therefore, to:

"inform all levels of Department personnel about the upcoming training program in order to avoid any rumors as to the actual purpose and content of the course. This is aimed at establishing a preliminary general acceptance of the training by emphasizing the positive aspects of the program to be implemented and to ensure a successful pilot program."

After consultations with the LASDís Training Committee and its executives, the force training staff developed an explanatory video and attended meetings to introduce the program to all the Chiefs, Commanders and Captains. They made presentations at quarterly Training Lieutenants meeting and at FTO schools and at Defensive Tactics Committee meetings. The objective of this effort was both to build support for and neutralize resistance to the new force training program.

Despite this careful planning, the planners nonetheless anticipated insurmountable resistance at the patrol station level if new force training was perceived as a unilateral attempt by the central command to impose rules on use of force mandated by outsiders who were suspected (erroneously) to be willing to compromise officer safety in order to quell civilian complaints. They believed therefore that it was inevitable that unit level Defensive Tactics (DT) instructors would play a critical role in the informal dissemination of opinions about the new training program that could assist or hinder their efforts to win the support of sworn personnel. Unit level DT instructors, therefore, were selected as the first sworn staff to whom the pilot curriculum was offered. By presenting the pilot curriculum to this audience and eliciting suggestions for the final curriculum, planners sought both to update the unit level DT Trainers on current Department policy and practice and to win over an anticipated source of resistance to the new force-training program.

Although primarily a vehicle for providing standardized and integrated force training, it is important to note that the goal of the program was far broader: the establishment of centralized control of standardized force training and evaluation (and accountability) throughout the Department. The "Force Unit," as the Force Training Unit would come to be called by everyone in the Department, was designed to penetrate the Departmentís everyday operations and "get everyone on the same page" regarding use of force. The Force Training Unit would therefore become a centralized institutional repository for information about law enforcement use of force. It would additionally serve as a force hotline and or clearinghouse, available to supervisors as well as the rank and file in need of clarification or interpretation of LASD force policy and practice. At the same time, when Force Unit found flaws, contradictions, or ambiguities in Department policy, it could bring them to the attention of the LASD executives for clarification or revision. The Unit also assumed responsibility for notifying all LASD units of the changes in policy via bulletins.

The Force Unit also created a feedback loop to connect training with the changing legal and social realities of policing and their implications for risk management. This was accomplished by assigning a central role for the Force Unit in the force rollout team implemented by the LASD in response to the Kolts Report. A sergeant or lieutenant from the Advance Training Bureau would participate in force rollouts and prepare a training analysis that would determine (i) whether the deputies had used force as they were trained to do and (ii) whether force policy, tactics, strategy, or training needed to be modified in light of the particular incident. The Force Unit would also be involved in use of force reviews by panels of Commanders and in shooting reviews by LASD executives. Force Unit staff would also be available to provide expert testimony regarding force and force training in court.

By assuming responsibility for force training throughout the Department, the Force Unit could repair damage that may have been done by earlier outdated or flawed training and "retrofit" seasoned deputies with up-to-date training in the mechanics of use of force and current policy. The Unit would also be involved in evaluating proposed lethal and non-lethal equipment being considered by the LASD. As experts, the Force Unit staff would be able to explain the rationale and merits behind departmentally approved techniques or equipment. They would also be able to lobby for changes in techniques or tools when they deemed it appropriate.

In July 1993, the Force Training Unit implemented their 24-hour (3-day) pilot training program. We monitored some of the initial training sessions. We described them and commented on them favorably in October 1993 in our First Semiannual Report. We found the program effective and efficient in addressing prior inconsistent and uneven force training in the Department. We had some recommendations for fine-tuning, but overall we strongly approved: The new force-training program was at the heart of a risk management strategy and thus also squarely at the heart of the Kolts recommendations.

Our Second Semiannual Report in April 1994 had a mixed assessment. Although we remained quite favorably impressed with quality of the training the Unit was providing, our enthusiasm was tempered by the slow pace of its dissemination to sworn member of the Department. Budgetary constraints had delayed long-planned expansion of the Force Unit, and some thinly staffed patrol stations were balking at releasing their sworn personnel for scheduled force training.

When we revisited force training program in our Fifth Semiannual Report in February 1996, we again presented a mixed picture. The Force Unit had worked hard to develop and refine a model core curriculum that effectively transmitted technical knowledge and practical skills in the appropriate use of force, as well as imparting knowledge about the legal and social constraints surrounding use of force by police in a democratic society. The classroom curriculum was designed to complement and supplement exercises and testing in force techniques at the gymnasium.

We noted with particular approval that the staff had been broadly cross-trained in search and seizure law, citizen contacts, tactical communication, practical applications of force, Constitutional law, Miranda issues, LASD force policy and reporting, general report writing and documentation, and an array of less-than-lethal options and technologies including, Taser, batons, rubber bullets, and chemical weapons.

On the other hand, we deplored the very slow pace at which LASD were being trained pursuant to this exemplary curriculum. To our disappointment, we found that the new training program had been completely shut down from May to August 1995, as the LASD shuffled priorities in response to a general budgetary shortfall. Another factor slowing progress was that force training was competing with equally critical cultural diversity and sexual harassment training. And patrol captains continued to resist releasing sworn personnel for training. The Force Training Unit, as a result, encountered chronic problems with "no shows" and last minute cancellations.

In our Sixth Semiannual Report in September 1996, we again criticized the slow progress in reaching all sworn personnel in the Department. We expressed frustration at the chronically unreliable and overly optimistic predictions about how many sworn personnel would in fact receive the training in given time periods. At the same time, we lauded a role-playing scenario test for deputies completing patrol school. The Force Training Unit was providing patrol school deputies with training and testing which was unparalleled in its realism and comprehensiveness. Indeed, we continue to believe that those training scenarios are models for law enforcement training and testing in use of force which and should be widely emulated by other law enforcement.

Recent Changes in Use of Force Training

Our Ninth Semiannual Report in June 1998 discussed a substantial change that had occurred in the Departmentís approach to force training. We reported that the LASD had, in effect, rejected the conception of standardized force training for all sworn LASD personnel in favor a model where separate, newly-formed training units would provide specialized force training for sworn personnel in Custody and Court Services assignments. The existing Force Unit would limit its training to personnel in patrol and detective assignments. Although we could appreciate the arguments in favor of specialized force training for sworn personnel in differing assignments, we were concerned that the separate training could undermine the advantages of standardized, comprehensive training which interrelated all aspects of the use of force by law enforcement. We cautioned that a move away from comprehensive training by one duly constituted Force Unit could prove to be regressive, reopening the door to the fragmented and inconsistent force training described in the Kolts Report.

An incipient erosion of commitment to standardized integrated force training was evidenced by instructions from above that the Force Unit expand the curriculum to cover additional topics, some of which were at best tangentially related to force. The Force Unit responded with a new five-day block of training, incorporating some of the new topics, while lobbying hard to keep their primary focus on integrated-force issues. At the end of the day, the Force Unit managed to keep force training at the core of the five-day curriculum, now known as the CPT (Continuing Professional Training) program. Under the leadership of Lt. Mike McDermott, who replaced Lt. Grossman, the Force Unit, working closely with the LASD fiscal experts, developed a financial incentive for patrol captains to release their p