LAPD Discrimination Unit Sidetracked and Cut Back

At the time, the idea seemed simple: Create a unit that would investigate allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment within the Los Angeles Police Department.

More than two years later, however, insiders say the project has been scaled back and sidetracked by City Hall politics, budget fights and bureaucratic mismanagement. Only now does it appear that the Police Commission soon may hire a consultant and at last begin the work ordered in 1994, after a spate of news stories and wrenching City Council testimony about allegations of discrimination and harassment.

Police Commissioner Art Mattox, a longtime proponent of the unit, said he is relieved that the logjams finally may be clearing but added: “I am distressed by the time and effort it has taken to fight the internal political battles on this.”

Over the course of two years, the unit--intended to give discrimination and harassment victims a place to turn other than the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division--has seen its proposed staff cut from 14 to six. Backers once championed the idea of housing it outside the LAPD so that victims would feel more comfortable coming forward, but no site has been located. And a series of problems and misunderstandings has let an idea that had strong council and Police Commission backing languish despite widespread agreement that it was essential to address a festering LAPD problem.

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. “But now we’ve made all the mistakes that can be made.”

Some critics say Goldberg herself is partly to blame for the project’s slow progress. The councilwoman has championed the idea but also has slowed the process, her critics say, in an attempt to steer a key consulting contract, worth about $500,000, to Penny Harrington, a former Portland, Ore., police chief and founding member of the Women’s Advisory Council to the Police Commission.

Goldberg said she is aware that some people have accused her of trying to award the project to Harrington.

But Goldberg, the prime City Hall backer of the anti-discrimination units, insisted that her support for Harrington reflects her belief that the unit should emphasize investigations over training. And though Goldberg remains convinced that Harrington would be a top candidate to carry out that mission, the councilwoman stressed that her view does not reflect favoritism for a friend or supporter.

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“I think that’s a little sour grapes,” she said of the criticism directed toward her. “I will assure you that if there’s someone like Penny who can do this as well for the same or less, I’m all for them.”

The push for creating the police unit dates from March 1994, after The Times revealed dozens of cases of alleged sexual harassment within the LAPD, including a number in which LAPD employees accused others of sexually assaulting them. Goldberg’s committee held hearings on the issue, and in October 1994, the Police Commission unanimously approved creation of an investigative unit, which it directed to report to the commission rather than to Police Chief Willie L. Williams and the LAPD.

Goldberg hailed the commission vote and vowed to seek funding for the unit, which she said would “begin to change the culture of the institution.”

Goldberg then pushed to expand the idea beyond the Police Department; a second unit was envisioned to field complaints by non-LAPD city employees. But according to some within the byzantine process, the personnel department took more than a year to draft a request for proposals--a document that solicited the interest of private consultants in starting up both the citywide and LAPD units.

Goldberg attributed the delays to turnover in the personnel department and to a misunderstanding about what she and others wanted to achieve. In her mind, the proposed units would emphasize investigations, not classroom training, but the request for proposals that eventually was drafted did not weight the candidates’ investigative skills heavily enough, Goldberg said.

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“We were using the same words, but we did not mean the same things,” she said. “What slowed the process was that the RFP [request for proposals] wasn’t what we wanted it to be.”

In January, at last armed with a request for proposals, the first round of consultant interviews was conducted by a panel of city officials. Harrington, whom Goldberg favored for the contract, was passed over. The councilwoman and her staff then asked the panel to re-weight the criteria used to evaluate candidates and hold a new round of interviews, this time weighting more heavily the investigative credentials of the candidates.

That request troubled some people, who felt Goldberg was intervening improperly to steer the contract to Harrington rather than assessing the candidates impartially.

Assistant City Atty. David Hotchkiss said he had no information about why the criteria had been re-weighted. But he withdrew from the committee, he said, out of concern that participating in the reconsideration of the proposals might create a conflict for the city attorney’s office if anyone ever raised questions about the contracting process and his office was asked to defend it.

In addition, he said: “Fundamental fairness comes into play. I was concerned because I had already expressed an opinion about the candidates.”

The panel went forward without Hotchkiss or the city attorney’s office, but it still did not pick Harrington for the job. The Personnel Committee, which Goldberg chairs, rejected the panel’s work and sent the matter back to the personnel department so it could prepare a new request for proposals.

Because of that, yet another round of proposals for the city unit will be considered later this year, Goldberg said, a process she hopes can be completed over the next few months.

Faced with the rejection of the proposals, police commissioners were angry and concerned that their unit would be delayed along with the citywide unit. Instead, the police unit is being allowed to go forward--assuming that a few extra dollars can be scraped together from the budget to make up for a shortfall in the money set aside for a consultant to oversee that unit’s start-up.

Given that, the police unit could be up and running as early as next month. Police Commission staffers have approval to go ahead and hire their own consultant.

Richard Dameron, executive director of the Police Commission, said Monday that he hopes a contract can be written within the next week or two and that the commission can approve it later this month or in early June.

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But he acknowledged that finding a place to house the discrimination unit remains a deep concern, since officials long have believed that the unit would be most effective if kept outside the LAPD. So far, no place has been identified, though Goldberg said she believes office space can be found. Moreover, the cutback from 14 employees to six may limit the staff’s reach and effectiveness, Dameron and other officials said.

Gary Greenebaum, a former Police Commission president who pushed for the unit’s creation while serving on the five-member board, said its long and troubled history has left women and others inside the LAPD unprotected from the continuing problems of harassment and discrimination.

“Here we are, two years later, and there is still as great a need as ever for this unit,” said Greenebaum. “It is very sad that women are still vulnerable in the department, without any sense of recourse.”

Goldberg agreed that the delays have been frustrating, but she pledged that the Police Department unit will be operating by the end of the summer, and she said the city’s unit should be in place by September or October.

After so long, said Goldberg, all the obstacles at last seem to have been overcome.

“If this doesn’t go quickly from here,” she said, “I’m going to be very upset.”