LAPD: How an Historical Examination can Improve Policing

Understanding a police agencies history, both successes and failures, provides important insights for creating transparency and accountability.  Dr. Craig Uchida, from Justice Security Solutions, discusses his historical research at the LAPD, and explains some of the recommendations for improving policing, which can be made permanent in an agency.

Main Topics

• Examining organizational history, as well as environmental context, matters when understanding police agencies and future plans.
• Using a consent decree as an accountability tool.
• Leadership, whether organizational or political, must recognized its OWN responsibilities, not just the actions of patrol officers.

Policing the Streets of Los Angeles: Controversies, Change, and Continuity

https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/policing-the-streets-of-los-angeles-9781666976458/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the Police in Service Training Podcast. This podcast is dedicated to providing research evidence to street level police officers and command staff alike. The program is intended to help the police and law enforcement community create better programs, understand challenging policies, and dispel the myths of police officer behavior. I'm your host, Scott Phillips. Commonly I talk with people about research published in policing journals, and the conversations focus on a specific issue or topic important to policing. But a friend pointed out a book that provides a historical overview and in-depth look at the key controversies that faced the LAPD for more than 60 years. Now, if you're old enough to remember policing in the LA period of time during the 60s, you've heard of the Watts riots. In the late 1970s, Miss Eula Love, a 39-year-old African-American woman, was shot multiple times by two police officers, and the officers were cleared of any wrongdoing. In the early 1990s, LAPD officers were witnessed beating Rodney King, arguably the first time video evidence was captured of such an incident. In the late 1990s, the LAPD Rampart Division's crash unit was exposed as massively corrupt, including planting evidence, unprovoked shootings, and theft. More than 70 officers were implicated. You might ask yourself, why would anyone take on a leadership role in an agency with this type of history? That's the point of a book titled Policing the Streets of Los Angeles: Controversies, Change, and Continuity, written by Dr. Craig Ugita. Craig has been an academic, an administrator for the U.S. Justice Department Cop's office, and now is the president and founder of Justice and Social Security Strategies, an organization that specializes in crime and public policy issues with an emphasis on policing topics. The book explores how the LAPD for over 60 years has sought to regulate officers' conduct in the face of repeated controversies. The chapters provide important insight into LAPD's successes and failures, and it makes recommendations for ways in which improvements in policing transparency and accountability can be made permanent. Craig, thanks for coming on the podcast. Good. So when I was looking at this, as I mentioned, the book explores LAPD and how it sought to regulate officers' conduct, and it's been trying to do that for 60 years. And again, you make recommendations for trying to improve policing with the transparency and accountability being a key part of that. Why did you take on this type of project? I mean, just doing research and consulting wasn't sufficient enough.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

It actually was sufficient enough, but I just wanted to do something more. And I wanted to tell a deeper story than what you get to do within a journal article or even a report. And I think that's that was part of the reason. And and the other uh reasons are that I've I've followed the LAPD since about 1980 when I first started doing research. And it was my uh research, my dissertation topic was on use of deadly force in Los Angeles, and that's why this book emanated from part of my dissertation. But over time, I also stayed with LA in a lot of different ways at the Justice Department. When we worked at the cops office, I was involved there. Um, when even before that, when Rodney King happened, I was at NIJ and we got called to the Hill, I remember. And and they said to us, go to LA and start community policing there. And so that was part of what I had done as well. And then in in 2008, um Bill Bratton, who was chief then, called me and asked me to come out and to start looking at predictive policing and predictive analytics. And since that time, I've been working with the department on all kinds of projects and and uh and this allowed me to look at the data more closely on use of force and the other kinds of controversies that were happening and had happened uh prior to all of that.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

So exactly. So that's kind of why. Yeah, long relationship, sure. Okay. Yeah. Uh so the a the historical overview, not too many people have looked at any kind of policing history. So why would a historical overview of the um be of value or relevance to police? You know, what can police chiefs and other leaders get from this?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Sure. So I'm a historian at heart. I I think you were too, as I recall, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

To some degree. A little bit, yeah. I did write a history piece uh that got published a couple of years ago. And I thought it was fascinating, but this is your time.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

And so, you know, my my my degrees are in history and criminal justice, and and I've always had a fondness for looking at historical documents, but also looking at how history shapes things and how the past shapes the present and even the future. And so to me, looking at that context was very important. And and the LAPD's history is rife with all kinds of things, and it it it's it's fun to look at what they've done over time, and I think within any police agency, you'll see the same kinds of threads that run through because of societal issues, because of the way in which people view the police, and those all those things shape what goes on. And I think to me, that's why the historical part is really, really important. And for police agencies now, when you look back and you look at George Floyd, which was already six years ago, and even before that, um, all of the issues of police brutality and use of force, etc., have been there and and are still there, and there's still problems that police have to confront and deal with and and maintain their professionalism, maintain their uh I think maintain the way in which they can engage the community without engaging in violence. And and so when you see this evolution of of how things changed in LA, you start to understand that, oh my god, they had a lot of things happen. And at the same time, they're maintaining their professionalism, they're maintaining their engagement with the community and making changes to what they're doing. And I think that's the important thread that runs through this. And I think that's the importance of looking at history and looking at your own police departments as well, and seeing where things have changed and how things have changed. So that that's kind of my take on why I did this and also the importance of history and the importance of the lessons that we learned from history.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

And it's nice that the fortunately there's uh it's if there's only a 60-year history you're looking at, you're not trying to get information that's buried someplace in a basement and an old old. I'm I'm serious, old and molding. I I I've talked to people about doing this, a similar project in Buffalo, but like their early history. And the question is, well, you know, where where would that information be? But yeah, again, there's you know, knowing where you're going, you've got to know where you've come come from to understand that a little bit better. That's exactly right. I I would also imagine that the uh LAPD is a lot like NYPD and a few of the other large agencies and departments that exist in the United States, and I'm thinking like you know, Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta. Basically, they are huge organizations, and for somebody to run them, that it's gotta be complex. Now, when I look at some of the scandals that you talked about, I am actually old enough to at least have a a a weak memory of the the Watts riots. Rodney King is is as fresh as as anything, and I I remember following the the the Rampart scandal, but what were some of the other um incidents that may have had a large impact but were not like national news?

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yeah. So so there are there are I hate to say it, but the LAPD has been involved in a lot of officer-involved shootings over the years and a lot of incidents of use of force, etc. The the ones that come to mind though are there are two of them that come to mind. One was the uh uh shooting of Ezel Ford the same week that Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. Within two days, uh Ezel Ford was uh shot and killed by the LAPD. And and because of Michael Brown, the national you know spotlight was not put on the LAPD for this particular shooting. Right. And and Ezel Ford was a young man, he was about 26, he was schizophrenic, he was bipolar, the neighborhood he lived in, everyone knew him. They knew that he was quote unquote slow. And and the they saw this event unfold where he and he and the police were fighting and and got into a hand-to-hand kind of thing, and uh the officer involved said that um, you know, he tried to grab my gun. And the and and he was yelling this to his partner, and his partner sees that he's trying to grab the gun, he shoots three times, and one of them is in the back. And so this is what you know neighbors see it's in broad daylight, it's in uh the Newton area, which is um uh south in South LA, and became a controversy within the city itself. Um, so again, like the other shootings that happened, you have this public outcry, you have the demands of change, etc. uh happen. Um at the time Charlie Beck was the chief and knew the community, knew how to diffuse things, and and and his knowledge and his leadership made a big difference in that. Um, and then the second one I just want to mention is two is a year later um in Venice, Venice Beach, um, there was a homeless man, uh, Brendan Glenn, who was um shot and killed also by uh an LAPD officer. And at the time it was a bad shooting. And Charlie Chief Beck said, This is a bad shooting. Um there was no real reason for this to happen. And he Charlie uh Chief Beck said the DA needs to prosecute this case, but the prosecutor declined. Last year, 10 years later, the current prosecutor in LA charged the officer with manslaughter. So you had, you know, I mean, this is this is a quiet event that took place 11 years ago, and last year you have this prosecution, and and they actually arrested the officer at the airport, and he he's in jail. And so waiting awaiting trial. Um so those are the kinds of things that you know I I've seen and heard and still keep track of as I go forward.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Okay, so you're mentioning Chief Beck, and this actually leads nicely into a question I was gonna follow up with. In the can you tell us about the LAPD leadership um particularly during the scandals? And and sure. Again, you know, in the 60s, 60s were no picnic for anybody, so yeah, there's a context.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Well, the context makes a huge, huge difference. And and this is again what what I think is important. So in the 60s, um, you had William Parker as the chief, and and Chief Parker was the man who brought Dragnet to TV, uh, Adam 12, all these things, right, to showcase LAPD. This was his thing in the 50s and 60s, but he was also one who wanted to raise the professional attitude of the police, and that's what he did. That was a large part of what he did. He brought technology in, and and this is where, again, the distance with the community started to enlarge, get bigger, right? You had you had radio cars now, you had uh two officer cars, and they're zipping around and and responding to calls, etc. They were not no longer the doing footbeats, and they weren't doing the the bumper morgan uh kind of uh footbeat things that they used to do. This changed things a lot within the black community. And um and there became there this is when the distance was raised with the black community, Hispanic community, uh within the department. Um and and Parker, even though he brought all of this to the forefront, he didn't understand what was happening with the Watts Riot, for instance. He didn't understand how to deal with the black community and wouldn't. And so you had that kind of thing happen, right? In in the 70s, Darryl Gates followed that same mentality, and so through the 80s, and and Chief Gates was a lifelong LAPD guy, and he was chief for 13 years and could not be unseated. Okay, this was the thing about the chief's position. It was a civil service protected position, he could only be ousted by the city council or the mayor, and the mayor had no say in doing that. So when Rodney King happened, uh and again, Chief Gates relatively good guy, but didn't understand, didn't get it, um, about the black community and what was gonna happen. He didn't know that the community was gonna riot after the acquittal of the four officers. Right. They were totally unprepared. And and again, so that it was that kind of leadership that was going on. And and the Rampart scandal, too, they were oblivious to the corruption that was going on with Crash Unit, which was this super gang unit that was that was in every division across the city. And they were doing great work, quote unquote, because they were making arrests, they were seizing uh drugs, they were you know breaking up gangs, all these different things. At the same time, they were stealing the drugs, they were planting the evidence, they were shooting gang members and saying that, oh, that was in self-defense, he came at me with a gun. So the leadership during those years uh was relative, I would say relatively blind to the things that were happening externally within the community and the things that were happening happening uh internally, there weren't there wasn't the accountability systems that Bratton brought into place uh in in 2003, etc. So the Ramport scandal led to the consent decree. And that consent decree brought Bill Bratton in as chief. Uh and his leadership and Charlie Beck's leadership after Bratton left made things change. And and they invoked the consent decree. They weaponized the incent decree for consent decree, frankly. They used it as a tool to change over the way in which accountability systems would work, and and that was really important. Um Bratton brought in Comstat, but it was more than just looking at crime, it was looking at risk, risk management. How many uses of force did you have? How many shootings did you have this week? And things of that nature uh were being asked then, and and and so that accountability started to b build into the department, and it was that leadership that made the difference.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

I don't remember who said it, but the quote is failure is delay, not defeat. So why why is it important to study failure? Well, you learn a lot.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

I mean, this is the this is the beauty uh of looking at uh the the department in this way, because after Rodney King, for example, um there there's a you know Warren Christopher Commission looks at what happened and why it happened, right? And goes through and does this massive study and massive investigation of what happened and shows all the things that the LAPD was doing wrong. What did LAP do do about it? Not a lot. Okay. In the immediate aftermath, um, so Gates is the chief for about a year after the um the commission report comes out, and he comes up with his own recommendations and puts his in there and says, here's what we've done, right? So rather than then look at what they did and what they did wrong, he says, Oh no, here's what we did wrong, and here's what we're gonna fix with it, right? And that didn't that fail that failed, clearly failed. What happened though, because of the commission report, was that Gates gets pretty much pushed out. The the writings on the wall, the public changes the city charter to make the chief accountable, and the chief's office then is uh limited to two terms of five years each.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Right, I remember that.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah. The chief is supposed to be selected by the police commission, by the mayor, and rubber stamped approved by the city council instead of the other way around. So you had this failure of Rodney King, the beating, the riots, everything else. The city and the public says, oh, wait a minute, here's what the commission said we needed to do. And so they go about and and they have a referendum and it passes. So Gates has to leave. And the new chief that comes in, Willie Williams from from Philadelphia, is the is the first chief selected under this new kind of rule, but even he doesn't know what to do. Okay. And and this is what leads to uh again, the rampart scandal occurs in '98, '99. You have a new chief that takes over from from Willie Williams, Bernard Parks, and even he fails. And and and the failure of leadership during those years was a lot of it was internal. So Willie Williams comes from uh Philadelphia. And uh at the time, uh, as I mentioned, you know, we were told to go to LA and help help him establish community policing. And uh at the time I I worked with Jack Green because Jack knew Willie from Temple University, and and so at that time, you know, he was helping do some things. But Willie could never get the respect of the of the rank and file. Um he was an outsider, he was overweight, he couldn't shoot his gun, he couldn't pass the firearms test. And so he couldn't be a law enforcement officer. The state had to pass a special rule that allowed him to be a law enforcement person, authority, even though he didn't pass the the fireing the firearms exam. So he lost all this credibility within the department. Yeah, I would imagine so. Right? Right, and and and so he he had no standing, they wouldn't listen to him, they didn't care. And so you had this kind of thing happen. And and so you see these kinds of things go on uh as leaders and uh as failures, and and so so Bill Bratton comes in in 2003, Bill spit and polish, right? Knows how to talk to his knock, knows how to talk to people, knows how to work with the community, knows how to do all these different things. And he saw from 2000, you know, 1999 to 2003 the problems that the department had because he was On the police monitoring team for the consent decree in its first two or three years. He saw the failures internally within the department. He saw that they didn't care and didn't want to do this, right? And he came in and said, no, this is what's going to happen. So that's what happened. So this is why failure is important, right? Is you see these lessons and you're like, oh my God, that's that's what happened? That's what they did? Really? And so, yes, this is these are the stumbles, these are the things that that precluded change from happening. And and and reforms actually actually taking place and commitments being made to them. And it was that transformation that you start to see. Or and I personally was able to see up front when Charlie Beck was the chief. And that's I think what made made the book so much fun to write, if you will, too.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Well, that makes it worthwhile whenever you're having I I enjoy research, which makes me a little bit of a freak. People don't understand that, but I enjoy it very much. So yeah, when you're enjoying yourself in your topic, have a great time, right? You're learning something new, you're discovering something nobody else was aware of. Yeah. But so so getting back into your book, okay. So can you give us an overall summary of what you were trying to study? Okay. Yeah and and the the data you collected and what you were what you found basically.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Okay, sure. Okay. So um overall, I think what what I was trying to look at and examine was uh what did uh initially what did the use of deadly force look like in Los Angeles over time? Right? What did the what did these critical events look like? And how did they change over time? And and did police behavior change as well as all these events started to take place? And and you know, a third part of it to me was what were the catalysts for change? What what were the things that made change happen? And and so looking at it from that broad umbrella of uh what did use of force, what did deadly force look like, you could track things over time. I could track things over time, right? I had a lot of data, so this was the other half of it too, was that uh as I mentioned, I I worked in the department, I've worked in the department since 2008. I have uh a lot of security clearance, I have the ability to get data, uh, and and as well as get to know the department. And and when I say that, I think part of what I was able to do, and this is also part of the uh research design that that really happened over time was that I got to interview people, I got to talk to people, I got to converse with them like we're doing now about different issues, right? Um, one of the projects I worked on too was an evaluation of body worn cameras. And in doing that, we did ride-alongs with officers that no researchers were ever allowed to do in with the two officer vehicle. Okay, so I had research assistants and myself sitting in the backseat on that hard seat, riding with cops, and able to understand and see what they did. Okay, and we did this uh in 2015, 2016. So I had a bird's eye view literally, not only of you know what the officers on the street did, but what was going on in in at headquarters and elsewhere too. So, in in all, what I was looking at was how does use of force affect the department, individuals, and and body worn cameras were a big part of this too, right? I mean, the impetus for that was Michael Brown, was Ferguson, were all these events. Let's get those body worn cameras out there and and see how it shapes police behavior. And and I was able to get data, we're able to look at those kinds of things, um, as well as you know, the the effects of the consent decree, and and have the data to do that and and and say, did police behavior change as a result of the consent decree? And it did. Civilian complaints dropped incredibly. In the first five years after the consent decree, uses of force dropped incredibly and plateaued and and started to go back up again in the in the 2010s, but it did have an effect. So, you know, having that data and having the ability to talk to people about what was going on in the department and to see what was going on, again, fascinating, fun stuff for me, right? And and and and so, you know, all these broad questions I could ask, I could ask detailed questions, right? What were what were the effects of internal change that that happened and did some things, right? And Compsat made a huge difference in command staff and and captains and their understanding of what they had to be accountable for. And to me, it's remarkable how much that permeates the department's attitudes, not only towards crime, but police behavior. And you know, the they're asking about overtime, they're asking about how much how many cases have you closed, how many, you know, all these kinds of things they ask about at Comstat, and captains have to be able to answer. So again, this is the this is what Bratton brought in in 2003. Lots of changes have happened since that time, but the accountability process is there consistently. And I think that's the other thread that I see with what has happened. And in the book I write a a bit about it, but not to the degree that I would have liked.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Now, based upon what you found, we've only got about five minutes, but can you give us some uh a couple of recommendations for police, whether it's leaders or even officers?

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yeah, sure. So one of the things that I would say is that things are things are gonna happen, right? Critical events happen all the time. Um, you're gonna have shootings, you're gonna have demonstrations, you're gonna have uses of force, you're gonna have officers use foul language. What what I've seen is that with within the LAPD, yeah, all those things happen. But now they're ready for them. Now they're prepared for them. Now they know that they have to do X, Y, and Z. So for example, if if there's an officer involved shooting, um, which which there are fewer and fewer over the last 10 years, by the way. But if there is an officer involved shooting or a critical event, uh the the department has to release the video footage within 45 days of that event. This is this is now this was a policy implemented by the police commission in 2018. Okay. So eight years ago they did this. The state, uh based on what LAPD did, made it a law that every law enforcement agency has to do this in the state of California. So the department, LAPD has an entire system for dealing with officer-involved shootings. They have a force investigations division, they have all these rules that if a shooting happens, here's what you need to do. And so they've planned now for what would happen. And they're able then to go to the public and say, here's the video, here's what happened, here's what we're doing about it. So having those kinds of accountability systems in place makes it much easier for the department now to be to argue against or agree with the public about what happened. So the demonstrations, the George Floyd demonstrations, they had four separate after-action reports done internally within the LAPD. Okay, four of them. And they were able to respond to them and respond to the criticisms that they received by saying, okay, here's what we're doing. And and I think to me, the strongest recommendation is really to be prepared for these things and to know that these things are going to happen and to know how to respond to them appropriately. Because they can.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, it's it sounds like what you're saying is that the police agencies across the country have policies, procedures, general orders, standard operating procedures, whatever, for officers, whether it's a a chase or a shooting, we we you know when you wear a tie. Okay, you can have that. So it's almost like they they they woke up to the fact that we need our own standard operating procedures for when it hits the fan. Here's what we need to do.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Right. Yes. And and that game plan is really, really important, and it it helps you be transparent, it helps you be accountable, and everyone then knows what's supposed to happen. I to me that in a nutshell is the lesson I learned. But also, I would also say this that community engagement is extremely important, and relationships with the community are extremely important, and that's what Bratton and Beck and and even today Jimmy McDonald do. They engage the community. And if they don't, they're in deep trouble.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Well, Craig, this this was wonderful. This was really good information, and I'm really glad that you were able to uh come onto the podcast. So I again we're we're running really short on time, but thank you very much for your time. And uh and this was good information. So um I will try to post this uh on the uh the uh show notes, the information, and uh thanks for coming on the podcast, Craig.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Sure, thanks for having me. You have a great day. Take care.

unknown 33:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

That's it for this episode of the Police in Service Training Podcast. I want to thank you, the listener, for spending your valuable time here. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to review this podcast. If you have any questions or comments, positive or negative, or if you think I should cover a specific topic, feel free to send me an email, which you can find in the show notes. Or you can find me on Blue Sky using the handle at policeinservice.bsky.social. Thanks very much and have a great day.