PoliceLink

Written by Mark Nichols www.apbweb.com   

According to a recent report by City Controller Laura Chick, some 400 Los Angeles police officers now assigned to administrative tasks and other desk jobs should be patrolling the streets in order to bolster the city’s understaffed police force. The 203-page study hasn’t changed plans by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton to continue their aggressive push to hire 1,000 officers by 2010 despite a severe budget deficit.

Bratton largely endorsed the report’s findings but made clear he was getting ready for the inevitable fight with City Council members, whom he expects to use the review as an excuse to slow down the hires.“Let’s make it perfectly clear, I have no intention, the mayor has no intention, of retreating back from the hiring,” he said at a news conference with Chick.

“We actually need 12,500 police officers. Even with the 1,000, we’re still short almost 2,500 police officers from what we need in this city.” The study was conducted by an outside consulting firm. The report identified 565 administrative jobs in the Los Angeles Police Department currently assigned to sworn police officers.

The report recommends those positions should be phased into civilian posts over a three-year period. One of the report’s eye-catching proposals is the recommendation that the LAPD overhaul the department’s crime data analysis unit into an almost entirely civilian operation. In addition, the report suggests that firearm experts in the LAPD, who do forensic examinations of guns and ammunition used in crimes, should also be civilians.

But one item contained in the report that seemed misguided, Bratton said, was Chick’s recommendation that the operation of the city’s jail be turned over to non-police officers. Both Chick and Bratton agree that the civilian conversion plan would be slowed down by the 163 injured or otherwise incapacitated police officers in jobs that should be given to civilians.

Those officers, who are exempted from a 2006 policy that allows the LAPD to remove officers from the force who cannot fulfill police duties, will be allowed to remain in their positions until they retire. The plan would mean putting more of LAPD’s estimated 9,720 officers on the street.

That’s something that Bratton, who has complained about the department’s undersized force since taking over in 2002, wants to achieve. The LAPD has 24 officers for every 10,000 residents.

That’s about half of what New York, Chicago and Baltimore have. Charged with covering the city’s sprawl over 466 square miles, the LAPD has fewer than 20 officers per square mile, compared with nearly 60 in Chicago and 120 in New York.

My force started replacing sworn officers with civilians quite a few years ago.  It forced a lot of our aged and injured into positions they hate (i.e the Collision Reporting Centre...YAWN).  We used to have a sergeant and a constable on each of our communications platoons as supervisors, but they have been replaced by civilians, which has caused a major problem with people who don't know the actual police duties entering calls for service that back us up for hours and have nothing to do with anything the police can assist with.

We also used to have our front desks manned solely by sworn officers.  We now have 1 civilian "front desk operator" who can take reports of minor incidents however still requires sworn officers at the desk to do anything that may involve an investigation (which is pretty much everything these days).

I used to be a civilian on my force, and have nothing against them, however there is a lot to be said for actual police training and experience.  Sworn officers shouldn't be shuffled out or away due to age or injury.  Their experience and knowledge is useful in almost every position, and they should be accomodated as needed.