List Serve Message - February 2003
www.LAPDOnline.org
 

The following is the monthly update for February 2003.  I hope you find the information
useful.  I encourage you to continue to visit our Web site at www.LAPDOnline.org as it
has grown to over 10,000 pages since its inception in 1998.

CHIEF’S MESSAGE

The LAPD has an extraordinary range and depth of talent.  I have been continuously
impressed by the sheer quality of people I am meeting since my appointment in October.
But these high-performing individuals are being held back by a low-performing
organization.

For whatever reason, the Department has not kept pace with the ever-changing realities
of this City, and its complex crime problems.  Department personnel are too mired in
paperwork, have been too preoccupied with over investigating our own officers for minor
offenses, and poorly focused on the central mission of crime reduction to fulfill Mayor
Hahn’s dream of making Los Angeles the safest large city in America.

A number of dramatic reforms must be made as we aggressively implement the federal
consent decree and establish community policing practices and principles throughout the
Department.

For the first time, the Staff Officers’ Annual Retreat (SOAR), which used to be limited to
Chiefs and Commanders, included all Department Captains.  I wanted the Department’s
middle managers involved in the discussions and the reforms designed there. Also for the
first time, the Police Protective League and civilian union representatives were asked to
participate.  If the Department is serious about unions helping shape the future, what
better place to start than at the Department’s central management planning meeting.
Following SOAR we will be initiating a significant reorganization of the Department.

We will be convening Crime Strategy teams to develop practical strategies for addressing
street violence, gangs, and narcotics.  The COMPSTAT system will be established to
drive Department operations and implement crime strategies.  We will be conducting an
allocation analysis of the entire Department to staff current operations and build the case
for more police in the future.

Additionally, we will convene reengineering teams, drawn from all ranks and areas of the
Department, to make recommendations for reforming procedures, policies and practices.

I am eager to see what the high performers of the LAPD can accomplish in an
organization built around the COMPSTAT principles of timely, accurate intelligence,
effective tactics, rapid deployment, and relentless follow-up assessment.

By reorganizing the Department to work together, we can transform a low performing
Department into one whose reputation for excellence, effectiveness and professionalism
is second to none.

WILLIAM J. BRATTON
Chief of Police

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