Hahn Seeks to Heal Council Split Over Reforming LAPD

City Atty. James K. Hahn met privately with the Los Angeles City Council on Friday in an attempt to overcome a continuing split among city leaders over ongoing negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice, which is demanding reform of the Los Angeles Police Department.

If federal authorities are unable to secure the city’s agreement, they are prepared to file a civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles to compel reform.

Hahn did not emerge with a solid consensus, but sources say the city attorney was asked to bring specific proposals to the council in two to three weeks so that the city negotiating team can be ready to meet again with members of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in late August.

Although Hahn would not discuss the meeting publicly, council members and others familiar with the meeting said the city attorney outlined 11 areas at the center of the negotiations with the federal government.

Among the topics discussed, officials said, were revisions to the LAPD’s systems for investigating citizens’ complaints, screening applicants, training new officers and monitoring police misconduct. Council members also questioned what role a federal monitor might play if one were appointed to track the LAPD’s adoption of reforms demanded by the federal government.

Hahn, according to one person familiar with the meeting, “believes we can reach significant reform in all the areas discussed.”

Complicating the negotiations, however, is a schism in the city’s negotiating team. Mayor Richard Riordan--represented in the talks by his chief of staff, Kelly Martin--has adamantly opposed entering into a consent decree that would put LAPD reform under the supervision of a federal monitor and judge. Police Chief Bernard C. Parks is not a member of the negotiating team, but he, too, has expressed resistance to some aspects of the proposed agreement.

Other participants in the talks--Hahn, Police Commission President Gerald L. Chaleff and City Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton--have been more receptive to that notion, as long as details of the actual reform plan are acceptable to the city.

At the end of the day, however, the only officials who really matter in resolving the Justice Department’s threatened “pattern or practice” lawsuit are the members of the City Council. Under the city charter, the council has the authority to settle nonmonetary lawsuits, such as the one the Justice Department says it will bring unless the city and LAPD agree to make significant changes.

A majority of the council can agree to settlement terms. If Riordan vetoed that agreement, it would take 10 council members--two-thirds of the 15-member body--to overrule the mayor.

Several city officials said no member of the council argued Friday that the city should try to fight it out with the Justice Department in court. Many legal analysts have warned against that approach, but Riordan and others continue to hint that they believe the Justice Department might back down if challenged.

“There was no sense today that the City Council wants to force a confrontation,” one participant in Friday’s meeting said.

Another agreed, adding that council members want to avoid a situation in which they are presented with a proposed agreement to head off a lawsuit and have little chance to shape it. Instead, they hope their views will be incorporated now so that they can be part of the talks as they develop.

In addition to the legal strategy, politics provide a backdrop for the negotiations. Hahn is a candidate for mayor, as is one member of the council, Joel Wachs. Wachs left Friday’s meeting before it ended.