LAPD needs new civilian watchdogs as leadership void grows

In the market for senior police officers, Los Angeles is hiring.

As of this week, the city faces an unprecedented three vacancies in key LAPD leadership and oversight positions: the head of the Board of Police Commissioners, inspector general and executive director.

The current inspector general, Mark Smith, was named on Monday as a Independent monitor to oversee police reforms in Portland, Ore. Another top oversight official, Richard Tefanc, who served as executive director of the Board of Police Commissioners for nearly two decades, retired at the end of last month.

The department is already without a permanent police chief after Michelle Moore unexpectedly fired announced his retirement In January after five and a half years as chief. Last month, the Police Commission appointed Assistant Chief Dominic Choi take charge on interim basis, A Northern California headhunting firm was hired last month to lead a nationwide search for the city’s next top cop, a process expected to last until August.

The all-citizen Police Commission, which acts like a board of directors for the department, will now be tasked with choosing replacements for Tefanc and Smith — while also selecting three police chief candidates for Mayor Karen Bass to consider. Will go.

The simultaneous inauguration marks a crossroads for civilian oversight in the city, where the commission has an opportunity to “put its stamp on the department moving forward,” said former commission Chairman Gerald “Gerry” Chaleff.

“This has never happened before,” said Chaleff, who helped negotiate the sweeping 2000 federal settlement imposed on the LAPD largely because of the Rampart corruption scandal, in which gang officers planted false evidence, narcotics theft. And shot people without any justification.

If approved for his new role in Portland, Smith would work to settle a decade-old review by the U.S. Justice Department that previously accused the city’s police of using excessive force during arrests of people with mental illness. Was imposed.

It is unclear who will replace Smith until a permanent replacement is named.

Tefanc’s temporary replacement is Django Sibley, an assistant inspector general who oversees all investigations of serious police use of force and has built a reputation as an effective operator behind the scenes since joining the office in 2004.

A former small-town police chief who spent the last 20 years overseeing the commission — far longer than all of his predecessors in the role — Tefanc was appointed to the commission after serving as the top cop in the cities of Buena Park and Pomona. Was named director of. it was fired from last job What he said was that he refused to remove the officers because he felt that doing so was a violation of his due process rights.

Tefanc’s beginnings came at a particularly challenging time for the LAPD. Just 18 months earlier, the long-troubled department had entered into a federal consent decree that forced several changes under the supervision of a monitor and a federal judge. For the next two decades, his gravelly, gravelly voice and thinning gray hair were the main attractions at Commission meetings.

In an interview Monday, Tefanc said he is proud of what he has accomplished in a 55-year career in law enforcement. As executive director he said he had a front-row seat to the department’s Rampart transformation, from a seat that had historically been fiercely opposed to outside influence to a seat that had reluctantly accepted change.

LAPD Chief Michelle Moore, left, and Richard Tefunk, executive director of the Board of Police Commissioners, listen to speakers at a board meeting in 2018.

(Los Angeles Times)

Despite its continuing challenges, including severe staffing shortages, Tefanc says he feels the department is moving in the right direction.

He said, “I hope that my legacy is that I served the commissioners – all 28 of them that I worked for – well, I served the department well, and I served the public well, that I served all of them Balanced the three areas.”

Deficiencies in LAPD oversight have been documented in countless official reports since the 1960s, and Critics say the five-member Police Commission still lacks capacity. It can order policies changed and has the ability to recommend firing a police chief — or decide whether to bring someone back for a second term — but the department’s day- It has no role in daily activities. The Office of the Inspector General is responsible for conducting audits and studies, but only at the request of the Commission.

“The problem is that the Police Commission may be doing more…but it still doesn’t have the ultimate authority to make systemic changes,” said Chaleff, a former commission chairman.

Each week, commission meetings at LAPD headquarters are packed with frustrated activists and residents criticizing what they see as the oversight panel’s unwillingness to stand up to the police department in meaningful ways.

Tefanc pushed back against what he called a “false perception” about the commission’s cozy relationship with the LAPD. He said that taking a more “adversarial role”, as some critics would like, would make it harder to build support for new policies. “I challenged the department when I thought it was appropriate, and obviously I challenged the commissioners when I thought it was appropriate,” he said.

Former LAPD Chief William J. Bratton said that when he began rebuilding the department after the Rampart scandal he found a willing partner in Tefanc, whom he remembered for his extensive knowledge of policing, “very friendly” personality and work ethic. ,

“It’s very important that the police chief gets along well with the police commission,” Bratton said, “and to do that job you need an executive director who has the ability to build a bridge between the two.”

By the time he retired, Tefanc had considerable influence on the Commission. As director, he sets the meeting agenda to clear the way for certain issues or projects. He was also responsible for selecting hearing examiners who sit on panels that decide whether officers should face discipline or dismissal. ,

Police Commission member William Briggs called Tefanc one of the department’s “unsung heroes.” Briggs said that, like him, most commissioners do not come from a law enforcement background and therefore rely on TEFAC’s institutional knowledge for advice in creating new policies or eliminating old policies.

“Mr. Tefunk guided us and led us, and not just through a department that very few people are familiar with,” said Briggs, the entertainment lawyer. “On what’s happening on a daily basis in the department He’s our eyes and ears.”

Briggs, who spoke before Smith’s departure for Portland, said the recent vacancies have given the department and the city somewhat of a clean-up status.

“This is the beginning of a new chapter for law enforcement and the city of Los Angeles,” he said, “one that will lead us into the next century of policing.”