In February 2023, Los Angeles City Council members Tim McOsker and Hugo Soto-Martínez proposed updating the police discipline process to allow the police chief to fire officers and alter the composition of the Board of Rights, three-member appeals panel considering serious discipline.
The idea was to craft a ballot measure to correct the problem created by a previous council in 2017, when it sent voters a measure that weakened police accountability, under the guise of strengthening it.
Now it's been more than a year, and with just days left before the deadline to put a new measure on the Nov. 5 ballot, council members and other city officials are still haggling over the details and not It is clear whether the text that is adopted will be approved. voting will be an improvement. It is infuriating that despite having more than 16 months to plan and vet the details, the City Council has postponed this issue for so long that it may be about to get police accountability wrong once again.
That late start meant that by the time the details were vetted in committee, and the full council ordered the city attorney's office to draft language for a new ballot measure to replace the old one, the deadline for the vote had passed. was coming.
Things seemed to boil over on Friday, when McOsker and representatives from the LAPD and the city attorney's office argued, at times heatedly, in the council's rules committee over whether the draft reflects or distorts the council's intent, and whether it would be better provide police accountability for serious misconduct.
Several days earlier, a member of the Board of Police Commissioners (the panel of mayoral appointees who set department policy) asked why the commission had not been consulted about the new disciplinary proposals. Another member asked why the council couldn't simply return to the police discipline system that existed before 2017, which that year's ballot measure appears to allow. It's a fair question.
How could city leaders have reached what should be the end of the debate and drafting process without allowing important parties to intervene?
Council President Paul Krekorian said the process took so long because leaders were “trying to strike a balance between the due process rights of our employees and the authority of the boss to be able to take immediate action in serious situations.”
That's fine, but Angelenos deserve to know whether the police discipline measure they will face in November has been fully thought out and is less misleading and better for the city than the ill-conceived Charter Amendment C it would replace.
That's the question council members should ask themselves Tuesday as they consider whether to put the new measure on the ballot.
