Head
of LA's police commission on reform: 'You have to change hearts and minds'
by A Martínez and Dorian Merina
Matthew Johnson is president of
the Los Angeles Police Commission. Johnson was elected president of the
commission in September 2015.Maya Sugarman/KPCC
From Chicago to South Carolina,
New York to Cleveland, police shootings and questions of how and when officers
use force are drawing increased scrutiny.
Here in L.A., it's a topic that
we've been taking a close look at, as well. KPCC's investigation, Officer
Involved, found that over a five-year period, from 2010 to 2014, at least 375
people were shot by on-duty officers from multiple agencies in Los Angeles
County. To date, no officer has been prosecuted for the shootings.
L.A.'s police commission is one
group that reviews and adjudicates such incidents. The commission is a
civilian-led body that oversees the LAPD. It has five members who are appointed
by the mayor and confirmed by the city council.
The Commission's new president
Matthew Johnson, the board's only African American member, says he has two top
goals for his new term: reducing crime and bringing down the number of police
shootings. Take Two's A Martínez sat down with Johnson to talk about police
reform, body cameras and the influence of racial bias.
And he started his conversation
talking about his two top goals: reducing crime and bringing down the number of
police shootings. Click the arrow above to hear the interview.
Highlights from the interview:
Through November 7, 2015,
homicides in L.A. were up nearly 12 percent (11.7%) violent crimes were up over
20 percent (21%), compared to 2014. Has the department explained to you what
the root of that increase is?
Frankly, no one really knows the
answer. But let's put it in perspective: we are still at historic lows, even
though we saw those rises in 2015 over 2014, we're still at historic lows.
Should we be panicking? No. But should we be concerned? Absolutely. If you look
at the crime figures from the first half of the year, we were seeing numbers
that were way more significant in terms of increases than where we ended up. So
a lot of the tactics that the [police] department has deployed to combat this
rise in crime are showing that they're working.
Over the past five years, police
in Los Angeles County have fatally shot black people at triple the rate of
other races, such as white and Hispanic people. That’s according to our data at
KPCC and the coroner’s reports on fatal police shootings. When you hear that
number, what do you think?
It brings me back to why I agreed
to take on this position in the first place. It's a huge problem, it keeps me
up at night and it's why I'm sitting in this chair. The problem is exacerbated
with the African American community, for sure, but we need to lower the number
of officer-involved shootings across the board. One of the areas of training
that we're spending a lot of focus on is anti-bias training because a lot of
these issues are subconscious. We need to figure out ways to train our officers
to recognize that bias. When they see an African American person doing
something, they see a white person doing something, when they see an Hispanic,
often times the same act is perceived differently – and that's a subconscious
thing that's not necessarily a conscious thing – the goal of that training is
to eliminate or at least help recognize where that bias could come into these
situations.
In our reporting at Southern
California Public Radio, we've also profiled officers who have taken great risk
or faced dangerous conditions in order to perform their duty. How would you say
police officers are doing in LA?
I've spent a lot of time with
police officers since taking this position...and the consistent thing that I get is that they're doing this for the
right reason. They're doing this for the same reason I'm on the police
commission. They have a desire to help improve our society, to help make a
difference. So it's very painful for them to be in this environment right now,
where there's such distrust. And they want to change it.
In a year from now, or two years
from now, what would you use as a gauge to say that things are turning out the
way you want them to, that [these reforms] have been a success?
I've set very concrete goals. Do
I think we'll be able to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish in a year? I
would like to say yes, but I think that's probably a little unrealistic. Within
two years if we don't see a significant drop in use of force incidents, I will
have considered my tenure a failure...You can't do it overnight, it's not just
[sitting] someone in a classroom for three hours and they walk out and they're
a changed person. We're talking about a significant amount of training that
10,000 officers have to go through.
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