Attorney Merrick Bobb, an important player in the Christopher Commission’s probe of the LAPD, is back in his role of investigator following the Rampart scandal

Once again, attorney Merrick Bobb is putting law enforcement under the microscope.

Nearly a decade after the prominent L.A. lawyer played a key role in the Christopher Commission’s probe of the Rodney King beating, the U.S. Justice Department has hired him to investigate the Los Angeles Police Department in the wake of the Rampart corruption scandal.

The Justice Department has threatened to file a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, alleging civil rights violations by the LAPD, unless the city agrees to implement reforms stemming from the Rampart case. The two sides are now involved in tense negotiations.

The stakes are high for the business community. Mayor Richard Riordan campaigned on the premise that an effective police force is necessary to get businesses to consider locating in underdeveloped inner-city areas: “Make the streets safe and all else will follow,” he vowed.

But L.A.’s image has increasingly been tied to the perception of scandal and corruption in the LAPD, which in itself can be a deterrent to workers and businesses coming to the city.

For Bobb, now 54, Rampart is the latest in a long line of investigations of law enforcement agencies throughout the country, a path that began as a somewhat unexpected career move in the early 1990s. When he first saw the March 1991 video footage of the King beating, little did he realize how much it would change his life.

Until then, the civil litigator had spent most of his career either investigating or representing big corporations and financial institutions. But when the city decided to investigate LAPD policies and practices after the beating of King, Bobb was named to the Christopher Commission and got a good look at how the department operated.

“What surprised me the most was the total lack of risk management,” he said.

Since then, Bobb has parlayed that expertise into a full-time career investigating and monitoring law enforcement agencies around the country. In 1993, he was named special counsel to the Kolts Commission, which investigated the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department after a huge spike in the number of citizen complaints and lawsuits filed against the agency. He remains under contract to the county to monitor the implementation of the reforms called for by the Kolts Commission.

Question: What is your role in the ongoing negotiations between the Justice Department and the city of Los Angeles over the Rampart matter? And what is it that you are charged with investigating on behalf of the Justice Department?

Answer: I am not participating directly in those discussions. I have been engaged as a consultant to the Justice Department with regard to Rampart. I cannot go further into the details about my role.

Q: In the course of your work evaluating the LAPD, I assume you have talked to some of the officers on the force. What has their reaction been to these various scandals?

A: Every police officer I’ve talked to is chagrinned, embarrassed and angry at those few fellow officers that have betrayed their trust. The code of silence notwithstanding, the vast majority of police officers, whether in the LAPD or elsewhere, are motivated by the highest ideals of community service and the desire to do an excellent job. Those officers have no fear of being held to a higher standard or of the need to be held accountable.

Q: As a member of the Christopher Commission, you helped write guidelines to reform the LAPD. Yet many of the recommendations haven’t been implemented and the LAPD finds itself in hot water again with the Rampart scandal. Isn’t this a bit frustrating for you?

A: Yes, it’s frustrating and also quite perplexing, especially since the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has made extraordinary progress in implementing similar kinds of recommendations.

Q: So why has the Sheriff’s Department made such progress and the LAPD hasn’t?

A: I have noted that the leadership of the Sheriff’s Department has shown themselves to be open and flexible and receptive to contemporary management practices, including accountability and the shouldering of responsibility.

Q: And, by implication, you’re saying the LAPD leadership has not been flexible?

A: I am unwilling to state that categorically now, since I have not investigated the LAPD for four years. But in our 1996 (update of the LAPD’s implementation of Christopher Commission recommendations), we concluded that the department had not gone as far as it should have in implementing the reforms. And I think it’s a fair reading of the LAPD’s own Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart scandal to state that many of the Christopher Commission reforms have still not been implemented.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: I really cannot comment on that right now, since I am investigating the LAPD at the request of the Justice Department.

Q: Going back to the Christopher Commission, what was the biggest surprise for you?

A: The most surprising thing I learned was that the LAPD was not engaging in risk management. It was not making an effort to collect all the available information about officer performance, about the kinds of incidents that might lead to liability and loss, about the kinds of incidents that were leading to strained relationships with communities served by the department. Unlike private companies that I had worked for as a lawyer, this large public entity was paying almost no attention to the risks that it ran, to the officers on its force who were problematic or potentially problematic, and to situations that time and again gave rise to liability. These situations were amenable to intelligent risk management, if the department had chosen to do so.

Q: So who was at fault here? The chief of police? The Police Commission? The city itself?

A: Risk management is the responsibility of both the chief of police and the Police Commission. The police chief is akin to a corporate CEO, while the Police Commission is akin to a board of directors.

Q: What does intelligent risk management mean?

A: By instituting certain procedures, you can prevent the constant recurrence of situations that might lead to liability. For example, take an officer-involved shooting, where an officer, fearing for his or her life, finds that he or she must shoot. You have to go back and analyze that situation, asking the question: ‘Is there a way this could have been avoided?’ If you analyze it thoroughly, you usually find there are different ways of handling situations so that you don’t end up in a position where you have no options. I’m talking about different approaches to handling the suspect. Maybe you set up a perimeter, maybe you find a different way to arrest a suspect. It’s the ability to analyze these situations and come up with alternatives to avoid them in advance that’s at the heart of risk management.

Q: I take it this is not something that law enforcement agencies are accustomed to doing. Why not?

A: For a long time, the major goal of law enforcement agencies was to keep order on the streets while ensuring the safety of officers. Those were and still are legitimate goals. But it does not address these issues of recurring liability.

There has been a sea change in the public attitude toward law enforcement in recent years. It’s happening because of incidents like those that led to the Christopher Commission. The public is saying these events will no longer be tolerated and that steps must be taken to avoid them. Like every other industry, law enforcement is beginning to be held accountable for its actions not to boards of directors but to the people. And that’s why these law enforcement agencies have got to develop these best management practices.

Q: Going back to the Sheriff’s Department, how is it that they’ve been able to perform so much better than the LAPD? And are there any areas that still need a lot of work?

A: The Sheriff’s Department has shown the ability to respond proactively to potential problems. It has shown itself to be open to meaningful civilian input, as seen recently with Sheriff Lee Baca’s support of a civilian for the Office of Independent Review.

One area that needs work is the county jail system. There are real shortcomings in the level of health care and safety within the county jails. These shortcomings manifest themselves in the greater frequency of fighting between inmates. Keeping rival gangs apart and protecting older or weaker inmates are two of the areas that need the most work. Separating the weekend drunk driver from the hard-core felons is a difficult problem, especially in the overcrowded conditions that exist today.