LAPD Report on Arrests Stirs Dispute

After more than nine months of study, the Los Angeles Police Department has finished a report on why arrests have fallen dramatically in recent years and has concluded that much of the reason is a shift in its approach to law enforcement, particularly its adoption of community-based policing.

But that finding, which will be shared with the Police Commission next week, remains a point of contention between Police Department leaders and critics who say that the LAPD has not moved far enough toward adopting that philosophy for it to be responsible for the decline in arrests.

“While one may logically assume that a community-policing philosophy and approach would have an effect on arrest activities, absent any objective criteria, its impact remains unquantifiable,” the commission’s executive director, Richard Dameron, concluded after analyzing the LAPD’s report on arrests.

The issue of falling arrests has dogged the LAPD since March 13, 1996, when The Times reported that the number of suspects being apprehended by the Police Department had fallen from 290,000 in fiscal year 1990-91 to 189,000 in fiscal year 1994-95. Those statistics were drawn directly from the LAPD’s budget requests, but department officials objected, saying that the numbers did not fairly portray the department’s efforts.

Mayor Richard Riordan, responding to the reports of falling arrests, asked the LAPD to study the issue and report to him within 60 days.

In the months since, the department has struggled to produce a report that would satisfy members of the civilian Police Commission, which sets policy for the LAPD. Even after all that time, the latest effort contains glaring errors: In one section of the report, it lists the number of 1995 arrests as 189,191 and notes that that number represents an increase from the year before.

But the same document contains an attachment labeled as a “fact sheet” that shows the number of 1995 arrests as 175,071. If that number is correct, it would mean that arrests had continued to decline in 1995, not increase.

Given a series of data mix-ups such as that one, commissioners expect next week to question department officials about whether the LAPD needs to improve the way it collects and analyzes statistical information. In addition, commissioners and other observers are eager to hear whether some of the decline in arrests is the result of officers scaling back their aggressiveness--a development that some would welcome but others would lament.