By Libor Jany
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES —The LAPD does not adequately monitor officers who train new hires in the field, leading to a culture in which hazing is encouraged and rookies are routinely told to “forget everything you learned in the academy,” according to a new study by the department’s inspector general.
The report, released Tuesday by Interim Inspector General Florence Yu, focused on the treatment of graduates fresh out of the police academy, who are required to do three eight-week rotations learning from more senior officers in the field.
Yu’s report called on the police department to ban “‘rites of passage’ that might be construed as hazing or disparate treatment towards probationary officers.” The practices mentioned include officers being required to shave their heads or wear long-sleeved uniforms even in hot weather, and, in some cases, being forbidden from speaking unless spoken to.
The report said the department lacks written policies and procedures to inform officers of all ranks about what exactly constitutes hazing.
Department officials disputed many of the findings, while adding that they had already corrected some of the problems reported by the inspector general, or were in the process of doing so.
The report found that the department does not properly track trainees as they move from one assignment to the next. Barely half of the 49 probationary officers polled said they rotated with at least three different instructors as required.
Since the department still relies on paper records, there’s no way of assessing both the program as a whole and “issues with specific individuals” involved in training the study stated.
Oversight officials said poor LAPD record keeping meant they “couldn’t figure out with certainty who all the field training officers were.”
A previous department audit showed that 414 senior officers were assigned to be field training officers as of July 2023. On Tuesday, the department said that the current number of trainers is tough to pin down due to regular transfers and promotions.
Yu’s report said there is “there is limited documentation detailing the qualifications” of those selected for the training positions, and there’s no way to ensure “ineffective” officers are being removed from the role.
Only three trainers were reassigned between January 2022 and April 2023, all for alleged on-the-job misconduct, not their performance. One officer was downgraded after making racist comments to probationary officers, another for being arrested while off-duty and the third for instructing their trainee to turn off their body camera during a call for service.
Training officers have enormous influence in shaping the attitudes and behavior of younger officers they supervise, including by potentially showing them a more aggressive approach employed by earlier generations of officers, criminal justice experts argue.
LAPD deputy chief Marc Reina said the department acknowledged the need for a new computerized system aimed at tracking probationary officers’ “paperwork and performance from the start.”
“We’re confident we’re going to move forward from that pretty soon,” said Reina, who runs the department’s training division.
The department was close to acquiring such a system, but ultimately canceled a previous contract with the vendor because it was “too expensive” and had “too many flaws,” according to Yu’s report.
Reina pushed back on concerns raised in the report about the qualifications of prospective training officers, saying the department already had a “robust” process for selecting candidates and evaluating their performance.
Commission vice president Rasha Gerges Shields requested that the department report back to the commission with a more “robust definition” of hazing — something akin to the Fire Department’s policy, which specifically bars the shaving of fire recruits’ heads.
She also called the reports of police rookies being ordered not to speak “a dangerous process” that runs counter to department rules that require officers to intervene when they see a colleague acting improperly.
While younger officers “expressed an overwhelmingly positive view of their experience...across a broad range of areas,” a survey given by the report’s findings uncovered some “notable concerns echoed by multiple probationary officers.” Among them were the negative attitudes that some training officers had about their duties; other trainers were unfamiliar with the tactics and practices currently being taught at the academy.
About two-thirds of probationary officers reported that their training officers treated the public with dignity and respect; but that figure fell to roughly 47% when they were asked whether their training officers treated them the same way.
Roughly 90% of those polled agreed that the program “better prepared” them to be a patrol officer. Another 83% agreed that they received instruction on “up-to date versions of the Department’s policies.”
Commission president Erroll Southers said that the fact none of the 1,200 trainer evaluations submitted by probationary officers mentioned anything wrong suggested that they weren’t being entirely truthful. “That’s impossible. That’s a problem,” he said.
Despite its longtime reputation in law enforcement circles as one of the best trained departments in the country, questions about the LAPD’s oversight of its training officers is nothing new. In the 1980s, Black and Latino officers often complained of being given lower scores by their training officers on the basis of their race. Such criticisms resurfaced following the infamous beating of Black motorist Rodney King in 1991, where four of the officers present served as training officers.
The Christopher Commission report in the aftermath of the King incident concluded that while the police academy taught officers restraint in their use of force, those lessons were often subverted by veteran field training officers who set a different example through their unnecessarily aggressive behavior.
Similar concerns have resurfaced nationwide in recent years, most notably during the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer who was a trainer when he knelt on the neck of George Floyd, leading to his death in May 2020 .
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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