LOS ANGELES, July 9 -- A little more than four months after a videotaped beating of a black motorist by Los Angeles police officers stirred national outrage, an independent commission today issued a harsh indictment of the Los Angeles Police Department as an agency that has tolerated excessive force and overt racism among its officers.
The commission also called for the replacement of the police chief, Daryl F. Gates, but stopped short of asking for his immediate ouster. It said the department should begin the "transition" to a new chief, but Chief Gates, who has led the 8,450-member force for 13 years, quickly rebuffed the suggestion that he retire soon.
'Illusory' Citizen Control
While the report said most of city's police officers worked efficiently and without excessive force, it found "a significant number" who "repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written guidelines of the department regarding force."
Using computerized department files on the use of force against civilians, the report said that officers accused of repeated acts of excessive force were seldom punished and were often given glowing evaluations, that police reports were routinely falsified and that civilian control was "illusory."
The report concluded that officers were imbued with "an organizational culture that emphasizes crime control over crime prevention and that isolates the police from the communities and the people they serve."
"L.A.P.D. offices are encouraged to command and confront, not to communicate," it added.
Minority officers are often targets of racial slurs within the police department, the report said. It also said the department's management consistently discouraged citizen complaints against officers and ignored racism and sexism, sometimes expressed in open computer transmissions between police vehicles. "Sounds like monkey-slapping time," the report quoted one officer's message as saying.
The report recommended numerous changes, including limiting future police chiefs to two five-year terms, a "major overhaul" of the police disciplinary and complaint process and more "community-based" police work in which patrol officers spend more time on the streets of the communities they serve.
The panel also urged the current members of Police Commission, a civilian body appointed by the Mayor to oversee police operations, to resign, and two members, Melanie Lomax and Samuel Williams, did so this afternoon after the report was released.
'A National Problem'
The 10-member investigative panel was formed soon after the beating of the black motorist, Rodney G. King, on March 3, an incident that raised questions nationally about police brutality against blacks and other minorities. The leaders of the panel said today that they hoped their report would spur action all over country.
"This is a national problem," said the commission chairman, Warren M. Christopher, Deputy Secretary of State in the Carter Administration. "We have conducted our study with an awareness that it might have considerable relevance for other cities, other police departments around the country. We hope that our findings will ignite a national effort to prevent the excessive use of force by police offices."
In Washington, Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation, a private research group, called the report a milestone. "The Rodney King incident has changed the way to look at police," he said, "and this report will cause other cities to look more closely at their police problems. We'll see positive changes in the attitude of police officers and less tolerance by citizens."
The report was also welcomed by minority and civil liberties leaders who said it lent credence to longstanding complaints that the police routinely violated the rights of the poor and minorities, dispensing summary justice at the curb.
Characteristically, Chief Gates greeted the report with a mixture of diplomacy and defiance. While he called it a "good report," he said he would not feel compelled to retire until the voters approved a change in the City Charter that would limit the chief to a 10-year term.
That appeared to set the stage for a protracted political struggle over control of the police here. The politically powerful Chief enjoys civil service status and cannot easily be removed; he has rebuffed calls for his ouster by Mayor Bradley and members of the Police Commission.
"We're not startled by any of the things that have been found in this report," the Chief said. "Most of what was found we already knew, and I think, in many instances, have taken appropriate action to deal with these kinds of things."
Chief Gates said the problems had been traced to just a few officers, 300 at most, and that should not detract from the work of 8,000 others.
Many of the changes proposed by the panel require action by the Mayor, the City Council, the Police Commission, the voters and the police department itself, and Mayor Bradley called on the City Council today to enact the recommendations "without change." He also said the city's personnel department and the Police Commission should begin "an open nationwide search" for a new chief, which he said would take about six months.
