By Linhchi Nguyen and Hannah Blome
LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Office of Inspector General, after a review of the disciplinary process of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, has determined there are numerous structural and cultural issues resulting in the Department’s failure to regulate and discipline misconduct within their employees.
The flawed disciplinary system and investigative processes have remained essentially unchanged for the last three decades.
Members of the LACSD have been convicted and sentenced to federal prison for assaulting prisoners, wrongly arresting and searching visitors at the jail, and efforts to obstruct the investigation by the U.S. Dept. of Justice into that conduct, according to the OIG.
These members include the Sheriff, the Undersheriff, the Captain of the Department’s Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, and five department supervisors.
Some of this conduct was investigated internally by the Department but resulted in no state criminal prosecutions or department discipline.
As a result, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors created the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence on Oct. 11, 2011 to review the “nature, depth, and cause” of inappropriate deputy use of force in the jails and to recommend corrective action.
Over the course of their review, they successfully identified systemic failures within the LACSD’s internal investigations systems and processes.
The types of misconduct that the Commission found include, well-documented lapses in reporting, multiple deficiencies in the investigatory process itself, the lack of adequately pursuing or imposing discipline for false statements, guidelines for discipline for use of force and dishonesty that were overly lenient and frequently ignored, and a code of silence (tolerated by the 
department) which impeded the LACSD’s ability to prevent, detect, and discipline misconduct.
Unfortunately, these types of findings are not new.
In 1992, a special report by James G. Kolts, Special Counsel to the Board of Supervisors, revealed “deeply disturbing evidence” of the LACSD “lax in its discipline of [deputies]” caught lying to investigators about the force they used or witnessed.
In the 20 years between the Kolts Report and the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence report, Special Counsel Merrick Bobb and the Office of Independent Review each publicly warned about a department that was too lax in its discipline of misconduct and of the corresponding leadership that undermined the disciplinary processes.
In the review by the Office of Inspector General, although there were some significant improvements in the disciplinary systems, the Sheriff’s Department still have many structural and cultural issues which had persisted since the Kolts Report and remained through 2020.
The current Sheriff’s administration has even dismissed some of the reforms, and altogether, these issues further contribute to the root cause of jail violence, say critics.
The first main problem listed in the review revolves around the Department’s initiation of internal investigations, said the OIG, noting that LACSD’s procedures and practices allowed misconduct by some employees to be neither investigated nor disciplined while other similarly situated employees who engaged in the same or similar misconduct were investigated and disciplined.
These procedures and practices contribute to a disciplinary system that is perceived as unfair and ineffective by many within the LACSD and have resulted in serious misconduct going unaddressed, thus undermining public confidence in LACSD’s integrity, according to the OIG report.
For instance, the LACSD’s policy does not impose an affirmative duty on their members to report employee misconduct to the employee’s unit commander, unless the alleged employee is arrested or if the Internal Affairs Bureau Force/ Shooting Response Team detects employee misconduct in its force review.
Even if the Internal Affairs Bureau Force/Shooting Response Team determines that an administrative investigation may be appropriate, it does not appear that the Department follows through with the investigation, said the Office of Inspector General, noting it found multiple cases amongst 234 of these force reviews in which evidence of misconduct was developed, but the unit commanders did not appear to have been briefed on the misconduct.
In one case, a deputy broke the arm of a woman while handcuffing her. He reported to the IAB Force/Shooting Response Team that he had instructed the woman to place her hands behind her back and she refused to comply, although the audio/video recording revealed that no such warning was given.
However, no administrative investigation was initiated and no action was taken regarding these untrue statements.
There also seems to be significant pressure on the unit commanders to not initiate internal investigations of employee misconduct.
It was reported by multiple persons to the Office of Inspector General that in a pre-inaugural briefing in 2018 at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Century Station, the current Sheriff explicitly stated that there would be no career path in his administration for unit commanders who “put cases on” department employees.
Furthermore, unit commanders have frequently been subjected to very public criticism for their decisions to initiate internal investigations of department personnel.
In addition, disagreement among higher rank officers is widespread across a broad spectrum of misconduct, from false statements to failures to report uses of force. This caused a discrepancy in cases where acts of misconduct were disciplined while some were not, said the OIG.
A second major problem, said the OIG, that contributes to the LACSD’s issues relates to the investigative processes conducted by the Internal Affairs Bureau, which is in charge of finding the evidentiary basis upon which department managers and executives rely to make disciplinary decisions.
Despite having many internal investigations, they were incomplete, not timely, and included irrelevant or unreliable information, said OIG, which noted the Internal Affairs Bureau failed to further look into these issues and determine whether those statements were supported by evidence.
The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors also argued that investigators were not allotted a sufficient amount of time to properly investigate the use of force in Los Angeles Prisons.
“When adjudicators are given only days to review, analyze, and adjudicate the evidence collected, a deliberate review and evaluation of this evidence is not always possible. Lack of time prevents adjudicators from listening to all of the audio recordings or viewing all video recordings. This can deprive adjudicators of highly relevant evidence.”
The commission reported that investigators often rely too heavily on investigative summaries, even though these summaries fail to capture defendants’ state of mind, tone of voice, and other investigative observations that are only accessible through in-person investigations.
Furthermore, the Board of Supervisors commented on the “culture of silence” prevalent throughout police departments.
“All organizations suffer from the difficulty of convincing employees to report improper conduct of coworkers due to bonds of friendship and obligation. In law enforcement, a profession that often feels under siege and in which the members must rely upon each other for potentially lifesaving support, the pressure against reporting on or testifying against others is much stronger,” they added.
LACSD critics also note there appears to be a value system amongst deputies in the Los Angeles Police Department that facilitates a culture of shame towards officers for reporting other officers.
“One of the police officers who was required to use force to subdue an intoxicated off-duty deputy told Internal Affairs Bureau investigators, ‘the deputy [k]ind of blamed me [for] being an officer who arrests other officers’ type of deal. . . what we’re dealing with . . . is that reputation for arresting cops.’”
The report reveals a “secret society” formed out of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Matching tattoos have been used as evidence against deputies in previous trials, but the evidence has never been substantial enough to convict or prove probable cause. “The Department has enabled the “code of silence” by permitting it to continue,” was the charge.
The Commission’s report concludes, “As the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence did in 2012, our review of the Department’s disciplinary process and the internal investigations policies, procedures and practices which inform that process found multiple structural and cultural impediments to effective discipline within the Department.”
The report recommended an independent “Office of Law Enforcement Standards” within the Department of Human Resources at Los Angeles County.
Appointed by the sheriff and funded by the Sheriff’s Department, the Office of Law Enforcement Standards would be tasked with monitoring: “The number of internal and external complaints and referrals to be reviewed and evaluated. The number of cases to be completed. The number of hours required to complete a typical case. The number of days within which it is desirable to complete the case.”
The next recommendation provided by the commission is a revised method for “Investigation of Allegations of Misconduct” – allocating authority to the Office of Law Enforcement Standards over all misconduct allegations.
The third recommendation is “Adjudication of Misconduct Allegations.”
“The letter of intent should be replaced with a notice of charges which notifies the subject employees of: Allegation(s) of policy violation(s). A description of the conduct which is the basis for those violations. The right to a hearing before discipline is imposed. The Department’s intent to assess discipline if policy violations are found.”
When imposing discipline, the commission suggests, “The discipline [if any] for each employee should be selected by the employee’s unit commander or higher ranking authority based upon: The hearing officer’s findings as to: Facts, Policy violations, Aggravating and mitigating factors o Severity of infraction, Aggravating factors of Mitigating factors of Intent, truthfulness and acceptance of responsibility, Degree of culpability, and The Department’s guidelines.”
The last two recommendations suggest giving the Office of Law Enforcement Standards authority over case settlement and appeals.
Linhchi Nguyen is a fourth year at UC Davis, double majoring in Political Science and English. She currently lives in Sacramento, California.
Hannah Blome is a third year Political Science major at UC Davis, pursuing a double minor in Professional Writing and Logic Philosophy. She is originally from San Diego, CA.
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