Police Commission Begins Chief’s Evaluation in Closed Session

Meeting behind closed doors to begin a delicate and potentially controversial process, the Los Angeles Police Commission consulted with its lawyer Tuesday and began drafting criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of Police Chief Willie L. Williams, who has applied for a second five-year term at the helm of the LAPD.

Among the commission’s early tasks is to assess how public the evaluation process can be, an issue that is made difficult by strong, competing pressures: intense public interest in the issue and Williams’ right to protect his privacy.

“We will try to balance those competing interests to make the process as open as we can,” said commission President Raymond C. Fisher.

Williams has sent mixed signals about whether he wants the evaluation to be conducted publicly or privately.

When he announced his decision to seek a second term, he did so to a crowd of about 1,000 supporters. When he formally applied last week, Williams released his 11-page application letter to news organizations and called a news conference. But Tuesday, when confronted with questions about his application letter, Williams refused to speak.

“This is between me and the commission,” he told reporters. “I have no comment.”

A department spokesman later reiterated that Williams would not discuss in detail the contents of his letter, including his repeated statements that the department enjoys a public approval rating of “over 70%,” a figure that the chief cited in defense of his contention that he deserves a second term. By contrast, The Times’ latest poll, conducted last summer, showed the LAPD’s approval rating at 56%, up 22 percentage points from its 1991 low but down from its high of 71% in 1995.

Pressed further on the poll numbers, a department spokesman said later that Williams was not quoting “a scientific document” but that his assessment of public support for the LAPD was “his understanding based on talking to people as he travels throughout the city.”

Fisher declined to comment on the chief’s letter. Deflecting questions from a host of reporters who gathered for the commission’s first meeting of the year, Fisher said he and his colleagues were eager to begin considering the chief’s application. Voters overwhelmingly approved a reform measure in 1992 that imposed a term limit on the chief of police and gave the Police Commission the authority to consider a chief’s application for a second term; this marks the first time that authority has been put to use.

“We start today,” Fisher said. “This has never been done before. . . . We feel an obligation to do this very carefully, to do it right.”

Partly because of the novelty of the application and evaluation process, the commission has hired a lawyer, a move that Fisher and his colleagues say is prudent, but which some of the chief’s supporters see as an indication that the board anticipates a fight.

Williams has hinted that he does not necessarily intend to take the commission’s evaluation lying down. He pointedly included a footnote in his application letter in which he insisted that his application should not be interpreted as a waiver of his rights--including his right to argue that he is not bound by the provisions of the 1992 voter-approved police reform charter amendment. Among other things, that amendment stripped the chief of Civil Service protection.

For Williams to assert that he is not covered by the reform measure would be a risky legal and political move. Although Williams was hired before the reform measure took effect, he has long been identified with the police reforms of the early 1990s, and even before being hired he agreed to waive his Civil Service protection.

In his recently published autobiography, Williams wrote that he “readily agreed” to waive Civil Service protection and added: “I was appointed to a five-year term and can be reappointed by the Police Commission to one additional five-year term.”

Tuesday, neither Fisher nor Williams would comment on the possibility of the chief asserting his right to Civil Service protection despite those earlier comments.

Instead, Fisher said he expected the commission for now to focus on compiling a list of criteria by which to evaluate Williams’ performance since 1992. Fisher said he hoped those criteria could be made available to the public, so that residents could see for themselves the basis by which Williams’ record will be considered.

Although Fisher declined to say what might be included in those criteria, the commission previously drafted goals and objectives for the chief--standards it intends to use to evaluate his performance this year. Those 1996-97 goals included a variety of suggestions, from reducing crime to improving management and demonstrating a professional work ethic.

In other business Tuesday, members of the commission asked Williams and his top staff to study a recent slew of LAPD consultant reports and synthesize them into a single planning document. An article in The Times last month analyzed those consultant reports and concluded that they highlight important options for LAPD improvement but also found that little had been done to implement their suggestions.

“I think what we’d like is some synthesis from the department, some game plan to say, ‘Here we’ve got these major studies. . . . what do we want to do with them,’ ” Fisher said, adding that he wanted a report within two to three weeks.

Williams agreed to report by then.