Chief’s Lawyers Reject Criteria for Judging Him

In a blistering challenge to the authority of the city’s civilian Police Commission, lawyers for Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams have rejected the panel’s criteria for evaluating the chief and contend that the review process is a sham.

The acerbic critique of the commission is contained in a letter delivered to the board Tuesday, and it reflects the increasingly bitter confrontation between Williams and the five civilians who oversee LAPD policy.

The letter was released Thursday by the Police Commission at the request of Williams’ lawyers, who said they wanted their position made public if the commission chose to release its criteria--a list of 24 points that the board intends to use to evaluate Williams’ performance over the past 4 1/2 years and to assess his suitability for a second term.

In their letter, Williams’ lawyers contend that the criteria are subjective, and they accuse commissioners of drafting them in order to provide “window dressing” for what they see as an inevitable move to reject the chief’s application.

“Any satisfactory set of criteria must include objective and measurable standards, and must consist of standards of which Chief Williams had effective prior notice,” the letter states. “Because the proposed criteria lack these attributes, they are unsatisfactory in their entirety.”

By questioning the commission’s approach to evaluating his performance, Williams effectively is challenging a mainstay of the city’s police reform movement--the notion that the police chief answers to civilian leadership in the form of the Police Commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council. Under a charter amendment recommended by the Christopher Commission and overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1992, the chief serves a maximum of two five-year terms.

That charter amendment gave the Police Commission the authority to reappoint the chief to a second term or to let him go at the end of his first. The City Council can overturn that decision, but it would require 10 of 15 members to do so.

Williams’ letter does not reject the commission’s overall authority to set policy for the Police Department, but it does directly contest the panel’s chosen set of standards for rating his effectiveness.

Commission President Raymond C. Fisher, who served as deputy general counsel to the Christopher Commission, said Thursday that he regretted the chief’s position regarding the criteria for reappointment. Fisher said commissioners had asked Williams for his reaction to the proposed criteria, but instead heard back from his lawyers, Peter Ivan Ostroff and Johnny Darnell Griggs.

Asked to characterize the letter, Fisher responded: “It’s an attack on what we are doing and on our good faith.”

Later, Fisher added that despite the challenge to the commission’s authority, members of the board were confident that they were acting fairly. “We feel comfortable with what we are doing, and we are going to proceed in good faith,” he said.

Williams formally applied for a second term earlier this month, and ever since, the commission has worked to draft a set of criteria to evaluate his suitability for a second term.

Despite the challenge posed by Williams’ lawyers, the commission approved its criteria and released the full, five-page set Thursday afternoon. Most of the criteria are drawn directly from the 1996-97 goals established for Williams by the commission in conjunction with the chief.

The criteria released Thursday by the commission were accompanied by a preface laying out the board’s approach to the evaluation process.

“The board’s assessment will . . . focus primarily on the ability of the chief to lead and manage the department and its resources to meet the expected needs of the department and city over the next five years and beyond,” the commission’s preface states. It added that the evaluation also will take into account the chief’s ability to “inspire confidence in the department as an effective, community-based policing organization.”

Specifically, the board laid out 24 areas in which it plans to judge Williams. The criteria are divided into five categories, ranging from his ability to effectively and efficiently manage the department to his ability to handle fiscal and budgetary issues.

Among the standards that the commission intends to consider in evaluating Williams are his abilities to:

* “Articulate a vision for the department and clear and consistent goals, including improving the department’s credibility and accountability as an effective and fair law enforcement agency.”

* “Establish and maintain a management structure and operation that provides effective leadership, control and accountability and addresses the needs of the department and community.”

* “Cooperate with the board and manage the department consistent with the board’s directions.”

* “Deploy department resources to effectively and efficiently reduce crime and the fear of crime. Create, implement and critically evaluate strategies to deal with current, emerging and anticipated criminal activities and trends.”

* “Maintain effective, informative and consistent communication with the community at large and with the media, and improve relations between the department and the various communities within the city.”

In their letter the lawyers do not say what criteria would satisfy them. But Williams, in his application, cited the decline in crime, a drop in citizen complaints against police and an increase in public confidence in the department. The chief’s contribution to each of those trends is disputed.

Although commissioners would not comment on how the chief might fare under any set of measures, Williams has received mixed reviews in previous evaluations. In 1993, the Police Commission signed off on the chief’s glowing self-evaluation in which he asserted that he had “met all expectations placed upon me as the chief executive in the Police Department.”

A year later, however, commissioners warned him about what they perceived as serious problems with his management, saying he seemed to “lack focus and discernible purpose in managing the department.” Since then, commissioners have chided Williams on a number of occasions, most notably in a dispute over whether he had lied about accepting free accommodations from a Las Vegas casino.

Councilman Nate Holden, the chief’s most vocal supporter, said he believed Williams deserved reappointment based on his record and crime reductions in the city. “He should be commended,” Holden said of the chief.

Councilwoman Laura Chick, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, declined to comment on the merits of Williams’ application, but said she was concerned about his challenge to the authority of the commission.

“They have to have something on which to base their decision,” she said of the board’s criteria. “Any decision maker has to have a basis for making a decision.”

In one passage contained in their letter, Griggs and Ostroff accuse the Police Commission of having made up its mind to oust the chief more than two years ago. To bolster that contention, they cite a memorandum from the commission to Williams dated Jan. 10, 1995.

That memorandum, signed by then-Commission President Enrique Hernandez, warned Williams that “significant deficiencies” had been identified in the chief’s performance and said that if they were not corrected, the board would fire Williams before his term was up.

“At the present time, the board does not have an intention to renew your contract to serve as Chief of Police after the initial five-year term,” the memo said.

Griggs cited that as evidence that board members long ago made up their minds to dump Williams, but Fisher called attention to another sentence in the same document. In that sentence, Hernandez, who no longer serves on the commission, stressed that the intention not to renew Williams “is not a final decision at this time.

“It has always been and continues to be the board’s hope that you will effectively manage and lead this department,” the memo said.

The scathing tone and sharp legal language in the letter from Williams’ lawyers suggests that the chief has all but given up hope of winning the board’s backing in his reappointment effort. In fact, his lawyers said the evaluation process itself seemed a farce. “We are very reluctant to lend credibility to a process which appears to lack substance,” the letter said.

But the chief’s decision to challenge the Police Commission is risky because it places him at odds with the board empowered by voters and, indirectly, with the esteemed Christopher Commission. That commission’s chairman, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, specifically endorsed the Police Commission’s authority this week.

In its report, the Christopher Commission concluded that the Police Commission should have unfettered ability not to renew a chief in whom it had lost faith.

“Although such a decision would inevitably be subject to public scrutiny, the Police Commission as head of the department must have the power to change a chief who does not have the Police Commission’s confidence,” the Christopher Commission wrote.

That finding grew largely out of the frustrating power struggle between the Police Commission and then-Chief Daryl F. Gates. In that conflict, commissioners tried to force Gates out, but the chief resisted before eventually retiring under fire.

The reforms approved by voters in 1992 were specifically intended to prevent a repeat of that crisis by imposing a term of office on the chief and by giving the commission the authority to consider reappointment after five years.

But Thursday, some observers worried that the new struggle was beginning to eerily resemble the Gates battle.

“I have concerns that we might get into that kind of situation,” Fisher said at his press conference.

Councilwoman Chick agreed: “Somehow, when all is said and done, we don’t seem to have advanced that far.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Chief’s Critique

In a letter, lawyers for Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams rejected the Police Commission’s criteria for evaluating him. Here are excerpts from the letter and some of the criteria:

EVALUATION CRITERIA

* Establish the chief of police as a trusted and respected leader within the department and the community.

* Articulate a vision for the department and clear and consistent goals.

* Establish and maintain a management structure that provides effective leadership, control and accountability.

* Cooperate with the board and manage the department consistent with the board’s directions.