LOS ANGELES -- A significant increase in staff and money is needed to boost the reach of the city's civilian police commission and ensure it has proper oversight of the LAPD, according to the latest reform-oriented report.
Among the recommendations in the Rampart Independent Review Panel's report is turning the roles of president and vice president of the five-member police commission into full-time positions.
"The Police Commission needs a full-time leader for whom the commission is a 'day job,"' the report stated.
It recommends the commission president be paid the same salary as the chief of police, a salary the Los Angeles Police Department says ranges from $164,806 to $247,198.
Pay for the commission vice president should be equivalent to the salary range for deputy chief II, which is $143,007 to $177,710.
The report says the remaining three commission positions should remain as part-time slots but pay $25,000 a year each. All five commission members currently serve on a volunteer basis.
The inspector general, who works full-time and reports to the commission, makes $125,000 a year. The report recommends extra staff for both the police commission and inspector general's office, which now have a combined 40 positions.
Released Thursday, the report was based on the police department's own Board of Inquiry report, issued earlier this year. Both examined the possible causes of the department's ongoing corruption scandal and concluded that police managers ignored warning signs of misconduct and failed to provide proper supervision.
The allegations of officers lying under oath and planting evidence focused on the antigang Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums -- or CRASH -- unit in the department's Rampart Division.
A call for stronger civilian oversight has been a consistent theme in past reviews of LAPD operations, including the Christopher Commission report that followed the 1991 Rodney King beating and a report released in September by University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky.
The consensus should be heeded this time around, Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash said.
"Will there be additional bureaucracy? I guess so. Is it an appropriate step to take in terms of a reform idea for the LAPD? I think the panel found that it is," he said.
Larger staffs would allow the commission and inspector general to conduct investigations and detect potential misconduct, according to the report released Thursday.
"While a better-funded Inspector General's Office might not have detected the misconduct of Officer (Rafael) Perez and others, an oversight inspection of the Rampart CRASH unit by an Inspector General with adequate resources might have uncovered warning signs that there were significant problems, including the systematic and widespread violations of police procedures," the report stated.
It does not say how much such a staff increase would cost.
"The city of Los Angeles should be prepared to spend whatever it takes to solve that problem," said Richard Drooyan, the Independent Review Panel's general counsel.<
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