Under the threat of a lawsuit that it almost certainly would have lost, the city of Los Angeles nine years ago entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that required the Police Department to embark on an ambitious program of reform. The decree was sweeping -- it included hundreds of specific requirements -- and its goal was nothing less than the transformation of a proud, sometimes stubborn police culture. The same department whose officers beat Rodney G. King into submission, embarrassed themselves in the O.J. Simpson murder investigation and shook down drug suspects in the Rampart Division agreed, among other things, to track officers more closely, document the ethnicity of those it detained and tighten its management practices in areas such as the use of force.
Lift the LAPD consent decree
The sweeping police reforms that L.A. agreed to in 2000 have taken hold. Now oversight of the LAPD should revert to the Police Commission.
From the beginning, there was grumbling, but the reforms forced on the Los Angeles Police Department in 2000 were embraced by Chief William J. Bratton and have become accepted practice. The decree will be reviewed again this summer by U.S. District Judge Gary Feess, who has overseen it all these years. It has been a resounding success, and it should at last be allowed to expire.
That's true despite, not because of, the loudest arguments of those calling for it to be lifted. Bratton and leaders of the Los Angeles Police Protective League have signaled their desire to let the decree go away, but neither has offered a compelling rationale. The league maintains that the LAPD is spending tens of millions of dollars a year to implement the decree's provisions, and that scores of officers would be freed up for patrol duties if the court lifted it. That's false. With or without the decree in place, the LAPD will continue to monitor its officers, investigate uses of force and civilian complaints, and insist that officers do their work without racism or brutality. It will keep doing that not because a federal judge or document requires it, but because it is sound public policy.
As for Bratton, he contends that the decree imposes a stigma on the LAPD, and that lifting it would be good for morale. That's certainly true, but unpersuasive. Working under the scrutiny of a federal court irks some officers, but it has helped restore the department's standing and credibility. If that's tough on morale, so be it. Officers didn't like it much when Bratton criticized the police response to a May Day rally in MacArthur Park in 2007, but he was right to put candor above the possibility of hurt feelings. The same principle should guide here.
