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Personnel Management
you during your career. On some of the charges, you were
exonerated, and some of them were not sustained, but the
guys you work with all do good police work and most of them
have clean records. What we are alter, Jim, is to figuie out
what it is that you're doing. Perhaps it is the way you are
handling people that has given rise to so many complaints.
We want to eliminate this problem so you can stay here for
your full 25 or 30 years and not get fired, not get suspended,
not lose any of your pay, and not be disgraced." Then someone sits down with him in a nondirective interviewing session
and tries to give him some insights into what he might be
doing. The officer provides some insight into what he is doing,
and he may be called back for another session.
We have cut drastically the number of complaints lodged
against Los Angeles police officers. The first year it was in
effect, we had a 32 percent reduction in complaints. Then we
had a 20 percent reduction. As of now, we have about a 50
percent reduction in the number of complaints received
against Los Angeles police officers from outside sources
when compared with the number of complaints seven years
ago. The counseling program is one of the principal reasons
for this success, because it prevents a guy from continuing to
do the things that prompt a complaint.
I have seen policemen who somebody could have taken
aside and talked to, policemen we might have saved. We could
have saved them a lot of trouble and we might have saved
the department a lot of trouble. Yet few partners ever want
to say, "Hey, sit down, partner, I want to straighten you
out. You are screwing up out there." Most policemen just
want to get away from that kind of guy. He is an accident on
its way to happening, and you do not want the accident to
happen while you are with him. You would try to tell the
lieutenant you wanted to work with old Joe Jones, but you
would never tell him what was wrong with Jim Smith. 1 am
not sure you can ask partners to do that anyway. You cannot
expect a man to invade the personal mind and thoughts of
his partner and straighten hint out. The solution is really
178
Personnel Management
more of a management responsibility. So we developed our
system of counseling.
The program outlined here is a program of positive
prevention. What occurred to me was, if we try to prevent
crime, why shouldn't we try to prevent misconduct on the
part of police officers? We should try to prevent it before
the guy puts himself in peril of being terminated. The program
is a success; it has reduced complaints and saved the city
both embarrassment and replacement costs, to say nothing of
the potential problems it saved the community.
A related problem that should be discussed here concerns
the huge civil suits being filed against police officers. They
are much like the malpractice suits being filed against doctors.
This problem is occurring all over the country. It is a national
phenomenon, as cities have lost their sovereign immunity
that kept people from bringing suits. There has been a gradual
growth of these civil suits against policemen primarily because
they are very lucrative to lawyers. In lawyers' terms, cities
have deep pockets.
A lawyer can get himself a "good" police brutality case,
and if he can get it to go to trial instead of a settlement, he
gets 50 percent of the judgment. If he gets a half-million
dollars for his client, that's a quarter of a million potatoes
for himself. Even by the time he cuts it up with his law firm,
he has done well. It is a happy hunting ground. There are
going to be more civil suits like that. One guy picked up
$150,000 in Honolulu and walked out of City Hall saying that
he thought it was terrible that the city had to pay; he wanted
the police officers who abused him to pay. Well, you can bet
there will soon be a day when police officers will pay. The
courts will assess punitive damages against the officer; in the
future, when a city pays off $150,000, another $50,000 in
punitive damages will be assessed against the poor copper.
I le will be paying for the rest of his life. They will grab everything he gets above subsistence, and they will take his home
and sell it.
It is critical for those in leadership positions to keep
179
Object Description
| Title | Staff one, 1978 |
| Description | Edward M. Davis. Staff one: a perspective on effective police management. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1978. Accompanied by memo indicating the photocopy of the book was provided by the author. PART OF: Commission meetings (6 of 6). PART OF A SERIES: Materials in the series fall into one of several categories related to the Independent Commission's work product: (1) Commission meeting materials, which include meeting agendas, work plans, memoranda, and articles about police misconduct that were circulated and reviewed during the Commission's internal meetings; (2) public correspondence, which includes citizen complaints against the LAPD in the form of written testimony, articles, and an audio cassette tape, as well as letters drafted by citizens in support of the LAPD; (3) summaries of interviews held with LAPD officers regarding Departmental procedures and relations; (4) public meeting materials, which include transcripts, supplementary documents, and witness statements that were reviewed at the Commission's public meetings; (5) press releases related to the formation and work product of the Commission; and (6) miscellaneous materials reviewed by the Commission during its study, including LAPD personnel and training manuals, a memorandum of understanding, and messages from the LAPD's Mobile Digital Terminal (MDT) system. |
| Creator | Davis, Edward M. |
| Publisher (of the original version) | Prentice-Hall, Inc. |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California |
| Date issued | 1978 |
| Type |
texts images |
| Format | 130 p. |
| Format (aat) | books |
| Format (imt) | application/pdf |
| Language | English |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Part of collection | Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, 1991 |
| Series | Independent Commission file list |
| File | Commission meetings |
| Box and folder | box 22, folder 9, item 2 |
| Provenance | The collection was given to the University of Southern California on July 31, 1991. |
| Rights | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Manuscripts Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained. |
| Physical access | Contact: Special Collections, Doheny Memorial Library, Libraries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189; specol@dots.usc.edu |
| Repository name | USC Libraries Special Collections |
| Repository address | Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189 |
| Repository email | specol@dots.usc.edu |
| Filename | indep-box22-09-02 |
Description
| Title | Staff one, 1978, p. 97 |
| Format (imt) | image/tiff |
| Physical access | Contact: Special Collections, Doheny Memorial Library, Libraries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189; specol@dots.usc.edu |
| Full text | Personnel Management you during your career. On some of the charges, you were exonerated, and some of them were not sustained, but the guys you work with all do good police work and most of them have clean records. What we are alter, Jim, is to figuie out what it is that you're doing. Perhaps it is the way you are handling people that has given rise to so many complaints. We want to eliminate this problem so you can stay here for your full 25 or 30 years and not get fired, not get suspended, not lose any of your pay, and not be disgraced." Then someone sits down with him in a nondirective interviewing session and tries to give him some insights into what he might be doing. The officer provides some insight into what he is doing, and he may be called back for another session. We have cut drastically the number of complaints lodged against Los Angeles police officers. The first year it was in effect, we had a 32 percent reduction in complaints. Then we had a 20 percent reduction. As of now, we have about a 50 percent reduction in the number of complaints received against Los Angeles police officers from outside sources when compared with the number of complaints seven years ago. The counseling program is one of the principal reasons for this success, because it prevents a guy from continuing to do the things that prompt a complaint. I have seen policemen who somebody could have taken aside and talked to, policemen we might have saved. We could have saved them a lot of trouble and we might have saved the department a lot of trouble. Yet few partners ever want to say, "Hey, sit down, partner, I want to straighten you out. You are screwing up out there." Most policemen just want to get away from that kind of guy. He is an accident on its way to happening, and you do not want the accident to happen while you are with him. You would try to tell the lieutenant you wanted to work with old Joe Jones, but you would never tell him what was wrong with Jim Smith. 1 am not sure you can ask partners to do that anyway. You cannot expect a man to invade the personal mind and thoughts of his partner and straighten hint out. The solution is really 178 Personnel Management more of a management responsibility. So we developed our system of counseling. The program outlined here is a program of positive prevention. What occurred to me was, if we try to prevent crime, why shouldn't we try to prevent misconduct on the part of police officers? We should try to prevent it before the guy puts himself in peril of being terminated. The program is a success; it has reduced complaints and saved the city both embarrassment and replacement costs, to say nothing of the potential problems it saved the community. A related problem that should be discussed here concerns the huge civil suits being filed against police officers. They are much like the malpractice suits being filed against doctors. This problem is occurring all over the country. It is a national phenomenon, as cities have lost their sovereign immunity that kept people from bringing suits. There has been a gradual growth of these civil suits against policemen primarily because they are very lucrative to lawyers. In lawyers' terms, cities have deep pockets. A lawyer can get himself a "good" police brutality case, and if he can get it to go to trial instead of a settlement, he gets 50 percent of the judgment. If he gets a half-million dollars for his client, that's a quarter of a million potatoes for himself. Even by the time he cuts it up with his law firm, he has done well. It is a happy hunting ground. There are going to be more civil suits like that. One guy picked up $150,000 in Honolulu and walked out of City Hall saying that he thought it was terrible that the city had to pay; he wanted the police officers who abused him to pay. Well, you can bet there will soon be a day when police officers will pay. The courts will assess punitive damages against the officer; in the future, when a city pays off $150,000, another $50,000 in punitive damages will be assessed against the poor copper. I le will be paying for the rest of his life. They will grab everything he gets above subsistence, and they will take his home and sell it. It is critical for those in leadership positions to keep 179 |
| Filename | indep-box22-09-02~097.tif |
| Archival file | Volume72/indep-box22-09-02~097.tif |
