LAPD Minorities Voice Concern on Female Quota

In the wake of the City Council’s decision to dramatically expand the ranks of females in the Los Angeles Police Department, minority officers raised new concerns Thursday about their own staffing levels, and rank-and-file officers were divided on the merits of the plan.

LAPD Detective Rick Barrera, president of the Latin American Law Enforcement Assn., said that the council’s mandate does not ensure ethnic representation in its plan to increase women from 13% to 44% of the department’s 8,100 sworn officers.

“There has got to be a built-in process, where within that 44% it is ethnically balanced,” Barrera said.

Reginald Jackson, vice president of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation, an association of African-American law enforcement employees, said his organization will monitor the hiring process along with the City Council.

“We want fair representation across the board” for females, said Jackson, a Wilshire Division detective. “But we do not want it to infringe on us being represented. We need to make sure that in that 44% ratio, African-Americans are equitably represented.”

Blacks make up 14% and Latinos 23% of the police force’s sworn officers.

Despite the concerns, Jackson and others said they do not believe it possible to raise the proportion of female officers from the current 13% to the targeted 44% in the near term.

“That number is an unrealistic goal,” Jackson said. “This department hasn’t done any outreaching per se that makes the job appealing to women. It is still a department that is dominated by male Anglos, and it will take a lot to change that.”

Barrera concurred: “I can’t imagine us going out and being able to recruit that many people. How are we going to pull this off?”

Sgt. Carol Aborn-Goldstein, president of the Los Angeles Women Police Officer’s Assn., questioned both the feasibility and advisability of expanding the ranks of women on the force too quickly.

“It’s not possible to hire that many women” in just eight years as has been recommended by City Council members, said Aborn-Goldstein.

Aborn-Goldstein said her organization does not advocate lowering the LAPD’s strict hiring criteria to clear the way for more women candidates. She said the proportion of women on the force has increased by only about 1% a year in the past decade.

While the City Council plan does not specify a fixed time for reaching the 44% goal, as was reported incorrectly by The Times on Thursday, key City Council members said they are committed to voluntarily reaching the goal by the year 2000.

A requirement that the hiring goal be met by the end of the decade was dropped from the council motion on the advice of the city attorney’s office, which said that setting a time limit could be discriminatory.

Rather, the measure calls for an annual examination by the City Council of the number of females added to the department to see if a higher hiring percentage of women should be mandated to reach the 44% mark. This year, the goal is 30% of new recruits.

The sweeping measures adopted by the council also call on the Police Commission to make the police chief personally responsible for eliminating gender discrimination; order the Civil Service Commission to include women candidates, interviewers and issues of sexual discrimination in the selection process for police chief and call on the department to make attitudes toward women a criterion in making hiring and promotional decisions.

The council plan also requests that the mayor “adhere strictly to a policy of gender balance” in making appointments to the police and other commissions.

The council action follows recommendations of the Christopher Commission, which found widespread sexual discrimination and harassment in the LAPD. The commission, which was formed after the Rodney G. King beating, also found that female officers are better equipped to peacefully resolve potentially violent situations.

“Each year, we will ratchet up the number of women in the (police) academy,” said City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, an author of the measures. “It’s 30% this year, it could be 35% next year,” he said.

Yaroslavsky said he still plans for the 44% goal to be achieved by 2000. “I think 2000 is realistic,” said Yaroslavsky. “It’s just a matter of money and time.”

To achieve the 44% goal on the force of 8,100 officers, the LAPD would have to add nearly 2,500 more women to the current 1,100.

Some police officials questioned the practicality of that target.

Ann Reiss Lane, a member of the Board of Police Commissioners, said: “We won’t make it by 2000.”

Lane said that in order to hire 2,500 women in the coming eight years, academy classes of 100% women would be necessary. “I don’t think it is appropriate to hire classes of 100% women, just as I don’t think it is appropriate to hire classes of 100% men,” she said.

Barrera said an indication of the difficulty in meeting the council’s mandate is the inability to reach a goal of 22% female representation set more than a decade ago after a legal challenge to the department’s hiring process.

“We haven’t even been able to reach that goal. Now they want to raise it to 44%. That’s why I say, ‘Holy cow, how are we going to do this?”’

Bill Violante, president of the Police Protective League, a union that represents about 7,800 LAPD officers, said the council’s action is hollow without an accompanying mandate to fund the hiring of more officers. The number of department recruits has been cut back severely because of a city hiring freeze.

Yaroslavsky noted that a measure on the November ballot could raise funds to hire 1,000 new officers.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for him said that Williams supports the council’s action and that efforts to accomplish the 44% will include balancing minority hiring concerns.

Commissioner Lane said minority officers’ concerns over how their own staffing levels will be affected by expanded female recruitment are unfounded. “I keep reminding everyone that women come in every color,” she said.

Still, some officers are clearly resistant to the new hiring goals.

“It blows me away,” said a veteran white officer assigned to a Valley division who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. “I just don’t think any gender or ethnic descent should be targeted for anything. It should all be based on ability. Guys in the department are afraid to say this because it’s such a touchy situation.”

Comparing Departments The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a package of initiatives that would require the Police Department to hire thousands of women and whose goal is to eventually increase the ranks of women on the force to 44%. Here is a comparison of the LAPD’s officers, by sex and ethnicity, with other major police departments around the country:

POLICE AREA POPULATION TOTAL MALE DEPT. SERVED OFFICERS Los Angeles City 3.5 million 7,846 86% Philadelphia City 1.6 million 6,401 84% New York 5 boroughs 7.3 million 28,592 86% Chicago City 3.0 million 12,130 84% San Diego City 1.1 million 1,920 87% Houston City 1.6 million 4,218 90%

POLICE FEMALE ANGLO BLACK LATINO OTHER DEPT. Los Angeles 14% 60% 14% 23% 4% Philadelphia 16% 71% 25% 3% 1% New York 14% 73% 12% 14% 1% Chicago 16% 67% 25% 8% 1% San Diego 13% 76% 8% 12% 4% Houston 10% 72% 15% 12% 1%

NOTE: Numbers may not add up to 100% because of rounding. Compiled by Times researcher Cecilia Rasmussen