Kelli Sager, a lawyer for the news media, including the Los Angeles Times, disagreed. She said the ruling did not foreclose open meetings in discipline appeal cases. Until Thursday's ruling, the public sometimes learned about disciplined officers only when they appealed sanctions to civil service or other personnel commissions. Internal discipline is confidential.
Such information has played a defining role in the recent history of Los Angeles, and helped usher in police reform. Both the 1991 Christopher Commission report, which analyzed the beating of Rodney G. King, and the Los Angeles Police Department's internal report on the Rampart scandal named officers involved in use of force incidents, sparking widespread public debate and eventual adoption of reform measures, including tracking of problem officers.
The Los Angeles Police Commission, on the advice of the city attorney, stopped naming officers involved in use-of-force incidents this winter. A spokesman for City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said his office had not determined the ruling's effect in Los Angeles.
A lawyer for the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs union called the decision "a sweeping and thorough rebuke of the forces that wanted to pry into the private lives of police officers" and said it would overturn the county Civil Service Commission's decades-long practice of opening appeal hearings and documents involving sworn personnel to the public.
"This is a final and thorough examination and it was determined that these records are confidential," lawyer Richard Shinee said. Shinee added that he believes sufficient protections remain in place to ensure "miscreant" officers are identified and punished.
But several community activists called the ruling a further setback in the struggle for the public to learn about problem officers.
The only time past allegations "come out about the officer is when you go to court," said Royce Esters, Compton-based president of the civil rights group National Assn. For Equal Justice in America. "You don't know what kind of person is patrolling your streets."
Merrick Bobb, who monitors the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for the Board of Supervisors, said, "One can open a newspaper and see which lawyers have been disbarred and doctors whose licenses have been suspended. Because law enforcement officers have the power of life and death it is vital that police officers too should be held accountable in a public way."
