Los Angeles Police Commission

A Los Angeles City Council effort to overturn a Police Commission policy requiring officers to disclose personal financial information seemed destined for failure Tuesday, as civic and reform leaders warned that the council's intervention was undermining the commission's authority over the Police Department.

Los Angeles Police Department investigators routinely fail to fully investigate citizens' complaints against allegedly abusive officers, often omitting or altering crucial information in ways that help exonerate the officers, according to a report to be released today. The 34-page report by the Police Commission's inspector general raises questions about the department's ability to police itself, adding to still-unresolved problems highlighted in previous reports.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton is seeking permission to make the department's review of officer-involved shootings and other use-of-force incidents less punitive for some officers who violate department rules. The Los Angeles Police Commission, which oversees the Police Department, is poised to vote today on whether to approve Bratton's proposed changes to how he and his command staff deal with officers who use serious force during altercations.

The head of the Police Commission directed its inspector general to investigate allegations made Tuesday that officers have used excessive force during a crackdown on crime on skid row. Commission President John Mack sought the review after several activists complained and showed a photo of a woman's bruises they said were caused by a police baton.

A Los Angeles Police Department captain who voted not to discipline Officer Steven Garcia this week in the shooting of 13-year-old Devin Brown had warned him in a previous disciplinary case that one more offense would probably get him fired. Yet that history was ignored in the Board of Rights hearing on Brown's death because LAPD rules typically do not allow an officer's past misconduct to be considered.

The Police Commission voted Tuesday to support a moratorium on new marijuana dispensaries and tougher regulations of existing enterprises, even as Police Chief William J. Bratton promised to work with federal authorities to prosecute businesses found to be violating the law. "It's my intent to get rid of these places," Bratton said after the commission voted to ask the City Council to impose a moratorium and adopt new restrictions.

Facing another chorus of community outrage and warnings that public trust is at stake, the Los Angeles City Council and Police Commission separately launched reviews Tuesday to look for ways to reopen police disciplinary board hearings to the public.

The Police Commission ordered a review Tuesday of concerns over the Los Angeles Police Department's handling of racial profiling complaints. The department received 850 complaints of racial profiling in the last four years but did not sustain a single allegation, prompting commission President John Mack to direct the panel's inspector general to look into the matter. "I'm not suggesting that every allegation is a valid one.

A year after an immigrant rights rally drew 500,000 people to downtown Los Angeles, an organizer alleged that his free speech rights were infringed upon by a city Police Commission decision Tuesday to deny a permit for a demonstration Feb. 24.

At a movie theater that no longer exists, on a street since renamed, several gun-toting bandits robbed a teenage cashier of $90. Although the crime was nothing spectacular, the outcome tragically was. It was Feb. 4, 1946, shortly after 9 p.m., when LAPD Officer Walter Kesterson's car radio squawked with news of the stickup. He and his partner, dressed in plain clothes, were working a crime suppression detail around the Los Angeles Coliseum, near the heist.