Greetings from the men and women of the Los Angeles Police Department. The following is the monthly update for July 2006. We hope you find the information useful. You are encouraged to continue to visit our website at www.lapdonline.org as it has recently been redesigned and updated. CHIEF’S MESSAGE As many of you may already know, U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess extended the consent decree for three years beyond the expiration date of June 15, 2006. While it was my hope that the scope of the decree would be narrowed to the reforms that have yet to be enacted, I am confident that we will achieve full compliance before the new deadline. In the five years that the consent decree has been in place, we have made remarkable strides in reforming the LAPD culture, policies, and practices. The Department is already in “substantial compliance” with the majority of the provisions. The men and women of the LAPD, both sworn and civilian, have embraced the tenets of the consent decree, recognizing that many of the requirements have greatly improved our organization. TEAMS II, the computerized system that will track sworn personnel history—including citizen complaints, use-of-force incidents, traffic stops, detentions, arrests and commendations—remains at the center of the consent decree discussion. Because of its mere scale, and our ambitious and comprehensive goals for TEAMS II, the Department has been presented with several formidable technical challenges, including digitizing and merging data from 18 previous and often incompatible sources. These challenges have caused delays and because of these delays, the Department has missed the June 15 deadline. Judge Feess is requiring the three-year extension because the decree requires that all of our reforms, including the $40-million TEAMS II system, be in place for two years before the agreement can be ended. As a result, implementation of the system is a top priority and the TEAMS II Development Bureau, headed by Deputy Police Chief David Doan, is working hard to get the system up and running. It is our hope that TEAMS II is in place as early as September 2006. With that said, I understand that talk of TEAMS II has raised concern that the system will trap good officers. The logic being that good cops make the most arrests, write the most tickets, and handle the most calls for service. As a result, productive cops engage more with the public and are likely to receive more complaints than other less productive officers. Productive cops, therefore, worry that TEAMS II will reflect this. Although on the surface this rationale would seem plausible, TEAMS II is not about numbers. It is about providing supervisors and managers with accurate and up-to-date information. The Department has gone to great lengths to ensure that this system encourages productivity. Therefore, TEAMS II will evaluate officers in comparison to their peers. The system will compile information daily and, periodically, quantify results based on 15 thresholds, including use of force, claims and lawsuits, complaints, preventable traffic collisions, and pursuits. A universal category will also apply to police officers in administrative positions. TEAMS II is designed to create an action item alerting the supervisor when the collected data about an officer deviates, either positively or negatively, in comparison to that of others in the officer’s peer group. The system will usually be activated when an officer is in the upper one percent of their peer group. For instance, in the case of use-of-force, the system will gauge the number of incidents generated by a patrol officer in relation to the number of arrests made, and the risks associated with conducting lawful detentions. The results will then be compared to those of other patrol officers. The common misconception is that a system-generated action item indicates that something is wrong or bad. That is not the case. It simply reveals that an officer has an unusual number of deviations or exceptions in comparison to other officers performing the same duties. It is up to management to study the data in order to assess the reason for the deviation or exception. If an officer exceeds the use-of-force threshold, for instance, a supervisor could determine, upon closer inspection, that the officer has been involved in making arrests of very violent people. TEAMS II will also provide a quarterly report to each command that will reflect excellence among officers, identifying those who have made the most arrests and written the most citations with the fewest use of force incidents or personnel complaints. These reports will be sent to commanding officers and the police officers identified will be rewarded. Finally, and most importantly, TEAMS II will help to identify intentional misconduct. This will protect those officers out there doing a good job. Good officers should not have to work with corrupt cops. To secure the integrity of our Department, we must weed out bad cops from our ranks, and TEAMS II is the tool to do just that. My goal is to focus our internal affairs efforts on that small group of officers who do not have the right to wear the LAPD badge and uniform. As I’ve said before, I have no tolerance for intentional misconduct and will address it with the harshest of consequences. Once implemented, TEAMS II will evolve and become more sophisticated and impart more data than any other system currently in use by a police agency. It will encourage accountability and promote compassionate, consistent, and constitutional policing. Additionally, TEAMS II will enhance leadership, as it will provide accurate and up-to-date personnel information for supervisors and commanding officers to recognize patterns and make key decisions about mentoring, training, counseling, and discipline based on the patterns. For the success of the Department, it is critical for leaders to be well informed on the activities of their subordinates. TEAMS II will give leaders insight as to why a subordinate has a high ratio of uses of force to arrests. And, when appropriate, it will allow leaders to take steps to improve the performance of their subordinates. TEAMS II is a resource for risk management, not risk avoidance. As leaders, it is our duty to improve the Department’s ability to contain the risks inherent to police work using tools like this system. Our ultimate goal is to reduce the number of use of forces, complaints and lawsuits, if possible, without reducing our efforts to make Los Angeles the safest big city in America. There will always be those few citizens who file excessive complaints and lawsuits, as there will always be a few cops who don’t follow the rules. TEAMS II will be our best defense. I am committed to achieving full compliance of the consent decree in our quest for “best practices” in policing. I expect nothing less from the men and women of the leading law enforcement agency in the world. CRIME STATISTICS - CITY-WIDE Year to Date as of June 24, 2006 Homicide Down -6.3% Rape Down -1.6% Robbery Up 7.3% Aggravated Assault Down -11.9% --------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL VIOLENT CRIMES Down -3.2% Burglary Down -9.0% Burglary/Theft from Vehicle Down -14.8% Personal/Other Theft Down -16.0% Auto Theft Down -10.6% --------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL PROPERTY CRIMES Down -13.0% TOTAL PART 1 CRIMES Down -11.0% WILLIAM J. BRATTON Chief of Police To unsubscribe from this newsletter please click on this link http://listserv.lacity.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?SUBED1=lapd_monthly&A=1