Internal Report Urges Shake-Up of S.D. Police

SAN DIEGO —  A San Diego Police Department report released Wednesday calls for sweeping reform of the police bureaucracy by thinning its top-heavy management and doing away with its paramilitary culture.

Announcing that the department is “not organized efficiently to fight crime,” the report by Assistant Chief Norm Stamper said the agency should be streamlined and ought to be run more like a big corporation. It offered 24 recommendations for change--all, it said, put forward with the aim of reducing red tape and putting more officers on neighborhood beats.

One of the proposals would undercut the paramilitary culture of the department by doing away with military titles--lieutenant and sergeant, for example--and replacing them with titles similar to those used by the FBI--assistant division director and supervising agent.

The report--long on business buzzwords like quality , empowerment and matrix management --said the current structure of the agency is “to blame for the most destructive and intractable of the organization’s problems”: the antagonism that dogs relations between beat officers and police brass.

Police Chief Bob Burgreen, who commissioned the report six months ago, said he was “intrigued” by all 24 suggestions, had “enthusiastic” support for most of them, and predicted that the bulk of the plan would be enacted by the end of the year.

The report marks the first wholesale restructuring plan put forth in recent memory by a major metropolitan police force, said Stamper, who wrote the 195-page report and called it “revolutionary.”

The plan is “very, very different from what’s happening anywhere else in the country,” Stamper said. “But it’s important to remember these are, at the moment, just recommendations.”

By cutting the number of layers between beat cop and top cop, the plan offers the opportunity to redefine the management climate--the internal “culture” of any police agency--that contributes to incidents like the March 3 beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King, Stamper said.

“I just believe that when you get layer after layer after layer of supervisors and managers--with all that distortion and filtering of information going on as the information climbs the ladder--no matter how well-intentioned people may be, the truth gets withheld,” Stamper said. “I just keep coming back to that basic premise.”

The proposal to do away with military-like titles is likely to be the most controversial, he said. Also controversial will be the plan to reshape the agency hierarchy by eliminating two top ranks entirely, meaning the loss of five jobs, he said.

But, Burgreen said, five fewer people would immediately save the department about $500,000 a year. And streamlining operations should save even more money, though he said Wednesday that precise figures were not available. The department currently employs 2,800 people on a $160-million annual budget.

Burgreen said he expected debate with City Manager Jack McGrory, the Police Officers’ Assn. and community leaders. But he also said: “I am committed to the overall nature and flavor of the recommendations. We need a leaner, meaner organization.”

McGrory welcomed the report as a “good and positive change,” calling it a “blueprint for change in the department for the next five years.”

He said the addition of more officers was “unlikely,” barring a “significant new revenue source.”

Over the past year, the department has received a barrage of unfavorable publicity. Officers shot and killed 12 people and injured 16 others in 1990, the highest total in years. A special multiagency task force is still investigating the deaths in recent years of 44 prostitutes and allegations of police misconduct.

But Burgreen said Wednesday that he ordered Stamper last October to produce the report simply because he decided that, after two years as chief, he wanted a self-examination. The report is not a preemptive strike at bad news yet to come, he said.

Over the past six months, Stamper interviewed 34 sworn officers and civilians in the department’s command staff, McGrory, leaders of community boards, personnel experts, lawyers, corporate executives, newspaper and television journalists, and Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates. The meeting with Gates took place 12 days before the King beating, the report said.

Stamper also met with psychologists and POA leaders. He attended community forums and national police conventions.

The research convinced him that the department’s paramilitary structure had to go, he said.

That kind of system promotes “yes people,” the report said, meaning it discourages lower-ranking officers from disagreeing with higher authority.

Effective police policy, however, depends on accurate information from the field, Stamper said, so the system is self-defeating. It also creates tension between higher- and lower-ranking officers, which leads to personality conflicts, mistrust and deception.

The structure “insulates and isolates the chief executive, produces a bureaucratic mind set, treats police officers--those at the lowest rung--as dependent children, and blocks achievement of community-based policing,” the report said. “It is a system designed to keep the truth from the boss.”

The bottom line, it said, is that neither beat cop nor management truly understands each other.

“This reality cannot be ignored when trying to understand what went on in Los Angeles on the night of March 3, 1991,” it said. “Whether or not the Rodney King beating was an ‘aberration,’ there are elements embedded into the two cultures of the LAPD (and all other police departments) that produce the behavior we saw on that videotape.”

The report suggests that ranks should be replaced by job titles that describe function. A captain would become a division director, a lieutenant an assistant division director and a sergeant a supervising agent. Those kind of titles work for the FBI, so they should work for San Diego police, the report said.

The idea is to reduce the intimidation a lower-ranking officer feels when talking with a superior, Stamper said. It also is designed to create a corporate-like team spirit in which colleagues trade ideas without fear of military-like retribution.

Harry Eastus, president of the POA, said the suggestion “opens up some new avenues that they’re looking at for the first time, truly for the first time.” If “negative input” from an officer truly can be seen by an administrator as “positive input,” then the idea may have merit, Eastus said.

He also said the demilitarization plan is clearly the “one that’s most paramount to the troops, because a guy works hard to be a sergeant or lieutenant and now they want to change what they call him. It’s a natural reaction. People don’t like change.”

The report also concludes that it’s not healthy to have seven management layers between Burgreen and a beat cop.

At the top, the current structure features seven commanders, four deputy chiefs, Stamper and Burgreen.

The report suggests that the commander and deputy chief positions be cut. Six assistant chiefs should be put in charge of various operations, each a “mini-chief” given authority to run that division--such as patrol, special operations and community affairs--and report directly to the chief of police.

A seventh assistant chief--Stamper, Burgreen said--would serve as chief of staff. With seven assistant chiefs and Burgreen, that means five of the current 13 top jobs would be gone.

It is unclear which five people would leave or whether attrition alone can achieve the cuts, Burgreen said Wednesday. The process should be “humane,” the report said.

Other suggestions in the report include a commitment to management training, since there currently is none, according to the report. It also says the department should conduct regular “customer satisfaction” surveys and frequent internal audits.

It also says the agency should do “everything it can” to build a “positive relationship” with the press.