Balance for LAPD Watchdog

The purpose of Monday’s meeting of the Los Angeles City Council’s Public Safety Committee seemed clear enough. It was designed, as committee Chairperson Laura Chick put it, to strengthen and preserve the independence and integrity of the Police Commission’s inspector general post.

The inspector general position was one of the most important of the police reforms suggested by the 1991 Christopher Commission report. The intent was to bring a new level of civilian oversight to citizen complaints against police officers.

Recently, however, it has been hard to separate the job and its mandate from the controversial person who recently announced her resignation from the post, Katherine Mader. The situation has been complicated by other problems, such as Police Chief Bernard C. Parks’ contention that the inspector general is largely unnecessary if he, Parks, is doing his job well. There has been confusion and infighting over Mader’s authority and that of commission Executive Director Joe Gunn. The matter was further inflammed by a memo, written by Gunn and signed by President Edith Perez, on the scope of the inspector general’s duties.

Small wonder that there was evident concern over whether the inspector general post was about to be significantly weakened.

By Monday’s committee meeting, however, the various players were falling all over themselves in agreeing the post ought to be strengthened. Police commissioners, for example, testified that they could see to it that the next I.G. reported directly to the commission and not to the executive director, which would be a welcome reform. Council members said that they too could do that, and more, by city ordinance. Representatives of the city’s charter reform commissions said that those bodies should deal with the issue through the reform process.

In fact, many seemed to ride the pendulum so far to the other side that they weren’t giving enough thought to another potential problem: giving the I.G. too much power. Repeatedly, for example, council members and those who testified talked about the need for unfettered access to Police Department files and argued for the right of the inspector general to instigate investigations on his or her own, without prior permission from the Police Commission. The nation has seen, and has been appalled by, the excesses that can result when independent investigators have the freedom to delve into whatever whimsical suspicions possess them. Repeating those mistakes would signal the end of serious police oversight in Los Angeles.

Let’s not forget that the Christopher Commission talked about the inspector general having access to information on complaints against police officers and that the 1995 voter-approved city charter amendment that established the I.G. post added only “other duties as may be assigned” by the Police Commission. Handling those duties will be more than enough work for the next inspector general. Careless wording that allows open-ended fishing expeditions must be avoided.