REJECT LAPD DISCLOSURE

It's Hard to See How Combing Through Police Officers' Finances Would
Be a Useful Tool for Fighting Corruption.

The Los Angeles Police Department recently entered its eighth year
under a federal consent decree that imposes strict mandates on
operations and record keeping. The LAPD has modernized its procedures
to root out corruption and purge from its ranks a Rampart-era culture
of excessive force and false arrest. Full compliance with the decree
is within reach, and it is tempting to urge the Police Commission to
finish the job today by completing one final piece -- requiring full
disclosure of personal and family finances by those officers in
specialized units who in theory could be bribed because of greed or
financial distress.

There's nothing outrageous about demanding that some members of the
nation's preeminent local law enforcement organization make the same
kind of reports required of FBI and other federal agents. And the Los
Angeles Police Protective League, which adamantly opposes the
requirement, only hurts its cause with its bullying claim that
hundreds of officers would rather leave the department than let
administrators know how much money they have in the checking account
or how much they owe on the vacation condo. The union's knee-jerk
rejection of financial disclosure is part of an unfortunate tradition
of opposing disclosure of any kind. Union pressure already has helped
strip the public of crucial oversight it long had, such as access to
use-of-force reports and open discipline hearings.

And yet. It's hard to see how periodic financial reports would help
LAPD brass nail corrupt cops. Officers already must submit to lie
detector tests, and they now work in an environment in which stings
are all but routine. Financial disclosure would do nothing to allow
the public to monitor the kinds of corruption and excessive force
that led to the Rampart scandal -- or the kind of management and
training failures that produced this year's MacArthur Park fiasco.

The Police Commission has long been in need of the sort of backbone
it lacked when the union pushed it to close the truly crucial records
of officer misconduct. It would be ironic if the commissioners
suddenly found the nerve to stand up to the union on this superfluous
requirement.

The judge overseeing implementation of the consent decree already
rejected a compromise offered by the LAPD and the union, but the
panel could call on the U.S. Department of Justice to revisit the
requirement or, at least, seek an early sunset date from the court.
Los Angeles has a citizen commission that should be able to
distinguish between simply checking off a box on the consent decree
and requiring disclosure because it's truly useful.