LAPD disciplinary boards have overturned the city's Police Commission at least four times in recent years, allowing officers to escape punishment for shootings that the department's civilian bosses ruled improper, a Times investigation has found.
Even in shooting cases in which there was no dispute between the police boards and the commission, penalties were often no more severe than might be imposed when an officer lost a piece of equipment, failed to show up in court or got into a traffic accident. Moreover, the LAPD has struggled for years to develop specific punishment guidelines and has meted out inconsistent penalties in shooting cases.
In a pair of shootings that occurred just months apart in 2000, for instance, one officer violated department policy when he shot and killed an unarmed man. A few months later, another broke the same rules when he shot a dog. The officer who shot the dog was given the heavier penalty.
Los Angeles' mayor, the former inspector general of the LAPD and members of the Police Commission are among those questioning a system that some view as dangerously capricious. In addition, Police Chief William J. Bratton and Police Commission President Rick Caruso contend that police disciplinary panels, known as boards of rights, have undermined civilian oversight of the LAPD and limited the chief's authority to manage the institution.
"The system makes no sense," Caruso said last week. "I think it should be disbanded and a new one put in place."
The department's disciplinary system received new scrutiny last week after the disclosure that the officer who fatally shot a homeless woman, Margaret Mitchell, in 1999 had not been punished, although the civilian Police Commission had determined that he should have been.
The Times, as part of an investigation of LAPD shootings, has identified three other recent shootings that, like the Mitchell case, were found "out of policy" by the Police Commission but in which the commission's findings were then effectively overturned by members of internal disciplinary panels, with the result that the officers involved were not punished.
In a fifth case, which the city paid $1.1 million to settle, the officer was given an "official reprimand" as punishment, but that was later rescinded by the chief of police. All but one of the officers involved in the shootings remain on the force.
