It also now takes just one click to go from the department’s landing page to the reports. The most recent annual use-of-force report now covers the first half of 2014. The site now provides a 2013 officer discipline report for the fourth quarter.

The website also cites the decree requirement for the posting of the reports, which comes from the 2000 consent decree between the LAPD and the U.S. Department of Justice in the wake of the Rampart scandal in which a gang unit connected to the division was infected with corruption. The decree mandated:

“Under the terms of the agreement with the Justice Department, the LAPD was required to make available on its website reports on use of force and complaints to include “a summary of all discipline imposed during the period reported by type of misconduct, broken down by type of discipline, bureau and rank…”

The LAPD, like other law-enforcement bodies around the United States, has vowed to be more open with in its police procedures in the wake of last year’s spate of fatal police encounters with young men in several cities.

On Jan. 22, Cmdr. Andrew Smith, an LAPD spokesman, told the Los Angeles Times the department’s failure to post the reports was “not intentional, and the department would be posting the latest reports.”

Sheriffs

Ironically, the LAPD’s lax condition came to light in a Dec. 31, 2014 report on another law-enforcement agency. It was the County of Los Angeles Office of Inspector General’s “Recommendation to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for Public Data Disclosure.”

The report mainly pointed out the county sheriff’s office has been deficient in posting officer discipline action on its website.

But it also revealed the LAPD had not posted its quarterly summary of officer discipline since 2012 or its annual use of force report since 2010. Yet both data sets were supposed to be posted under the terms of the 2000 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that ended in May 2013.

The department had failed to post quarterly discipline reports since the 3rd quarter of 2012, seven months before the decree requiring the reports ended. It does not appear, though, that the department violated any oversight provisions.

According to the Inspector General’s report:

“In 2009 and 2010, the LAPD published on its website ‘Annual Use of Force Reports.’ Although it appears this practice was shortlived, these reports were detailed as to statistics on officer-involved shootings, animal shootings, unintentional discharge incidents, and other uses of lethal force or force resulting in significant injury.”

Further, the information was deemed difficult for a viewer to find:

“The Use of Force Annual Report and the Quarterly Discipline Reports were not easily accessible on the LAPD’s website. These reports were found under the subheadings of ‘Police Commission’ and ‘Special Assistant for Constitutional 11 Policing.’ A citizen unfamiliar with these terms and their meaning might find it difficult to find these reports.”

An email to Smith regarding the updated site and the lack of current reports on the website was not returned. And a person answering the department’s media line requested an email query, which was also not returned.

The reports are especially valuable in a state in which all law enforcement disciplinary records are uniquely private, said Peter Bibring, a lawyer with the ACLU of Southern California. “It’s only through these reports that the public has any idea what’s going on,” he said

He understood there can be a lag time as the disciplinary process for an officer runs its course, “but just the number of instances of force should come fairly promptly.”

Body cameras and transparency

Last December, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti promised every LAPD officer soon would be wearing a body camera.

“The trust between a community and its police department can be eroded in a single moment,” Garcetti said during a press conference to announce the initiative. “Trust is built on transparency.”

But LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said any video coming from the body cameras would not be released under the state’s public records law, claiming the investigative records exemption.

“I think people misunderstand transparency as having everybody and all the public have access to everything,” Beck told the Times. “And it isn’t so much that as having the ability for oversight by multiple entities outside of the Police Department. I think that’s the meaning of transparency.”

In the past, Beck has been more welcoming of a transparent application of policing, although his endorsement of such came with an interpretation of the state’s public records law.

Upon his appointment in 2009, he told a gathering of LA Times editors and reporters that part of being a police officer is the understanding that “you give up some right to anonymity that most other people enjoy. Unfortunately, state law doesn’t agree with me on that.”

In a recent message posted on the LAPD site, Beck asserted “trust is built on the truth and truth is displayed through transparency.”

Which brings us to the usual arguments in defense of insanely high pay for police officers. Does the following really have to happen in Santa Monica to attract a decent police force? In a city where leaders brag of “historic lows” in crime? I refuse to believe it.

By Steven Greenhut

While sitting in a restaurant in Philadelphia’s Chinatown during my first visit here in more than a decade, I watched TV news reports of violent protests erupting in normally placid Anaheim after two fatal police shootings the prior weekend. It was shocking. The footage of riot-clad police tussling with and firing nonlethal weapons at protesters brought back bad memories of growing up in the Philly area in the 1960s and 1970s.

These days, Philadelphia is a surprisingly calm place, but back then, when tough-guy Mayor (and former police commissioner) Frank Rizzo ruled the roost, there were frequent confrontations. The worst incident actually came in 1985, after Rizzo had left office, when city cops dropped a bomb on a row house occupied by a black liberation group. Eleven people died, including five children. Those were dark times, but it seems Philly has learned some lessons that have eluded many California police forces.

While Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait (pictured above) thankfully is no Frank Rizzo, he tried his hand at tough-guy rhetoric at a news conference after Tuesday’s violence: “Vandalism, arson and other forms of violent protest will simply not be tolerated in our city. We don’t expect last night’s situation to be repeated but if it should be, the police response will be the same: swift and appropriate.”

Of course, we all are against violence, vandalism and arson. Indeed, the mother of one of the men killed by police poignantly called for calm. But I can’t agree that the police response was appropriate.

Tait, who rightly called for an outside investigation of the police shootings, over the objections of other council members, needs to work harder to live up to the promises he made when became mayor. Tait promised to foster a culture of “kindness” in the city. I know he means it, and he told me he is deeply concerned about some police actions.

Police culture

Anaheim’s police culture echoes the old Los Angeles Police Department culture that valued aggressiveness over community policing, and the city administration has shown no willingness to confront it. City police have shot six people this year, five fatally, under varying circumstances.

Sunday, an Anaheim gang officer shot and killed Joel Acevedo, 21. Police said Acevedo fired at the officer during a foot chase. A handgun was found lying between the man’s legs.

But it was the shooting July 21 of Manuel Diaz that brought people out on the streets.

Diaz, 25, reportedly ran from police, possibly from plainclothes officers. He was unarmed. According both to a lawsuit filed by his family and witnesses quoted in the media, one officer shot him near his buttocks; another officer then shot him in the head.

Police reportedly left the mortally wounded man on the ground without calling an ambulance. It’s not hard to understand the resulting outrage.

Fullerton death

After Fullerton police beat to death an unarmed homeless man last July, hundreds of people took to the streets in protest, and there were no violent encounters. Fullerton authorities just left the protesters alone. In Anaheim, the police — bolstered by reinforcements from other police agencies — cordoned off downtown streets, stood in riot gear and fired nonlethal projectiles at the crowd, including at journalists.

I covered one police shooting in Anaheim in 2008. A 20-year-old newlywed stepped outside his house with a wooden rod in his hand after hearing a ruckus nearby. Police had been chasing a robbery suspect, and when the young man came out of his house, they shot him to death. Even Police Chief John Welter, who still leads the department, said the man “was innocent of anything that the officer thought was going on in that neighborhood.” Yet, apparently, nothing has changed since then.

Powerful police unions

While Anaheim has a greater need than some other cities to re-evaluate its policing policies, problems with police use-of-force problem are endemic throughout the country and, especially, in California, where police union priorities — i.e., what’s best for officers, not the citizenry — have dominated policy decisions for decades.

Recent news reports show a significant increase in police-involved shootings in many areas of California. Police shootings account for one of every 10 shooting deaths in Los Angeles County, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Videotapes of the encounters often show that the official version of the story is at odds with what really happened. No wonder police agencies spend so much time confiscating video cameras from bystanders, something that should chill every freedom-loving American, whether on the political Left or Right.

The California Supreme Court’s Copley Press vs. San Diego decision in 2006 allows allegations of police misconduct to remain shrouded in secrecy. The public can access complaints against doctors, lawyers and other professionals but, in California, misbehavior by public employees who have the legal right to use deadly force often is off-limits to scrutiny. Because of an exemption in the public-records act, police agencies need not release most details of their reports of officer-involved shootings.

Furthermore, the Peace Officers Procedural Bill of Rights in California’s Government Code gives accused officers such strong protections that officers can rarely be disciplined or fired. The “code of silence” is alive and well in police agencies.

Most police department citizen-review panels are toothless. We should never condone violent protests, but it’s not hard to understand the recent frustration in central Anaheim. What if it were your child or your neighbor’s child?

It’s time for a real discussion about how police should deal with the community and under what conditions they should use deadly force. It’s time to bring California in line with other states and open records to greater public oversight. If Mayor Tait is serious about creating a safer and kinder city, he will need to insist on this debate, regardless of the expected pushback from the police unions.