LOS ANGELES (CN) - The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday pushed back against a finding that it has done little to reduce the city's liability for tens of millions of dollars in jury awards and settlements to aggrieved police employees.
The L.A. Police Commission met at LAPD headquarters downtown to address Inspector General Alexander Bustamante's employment litigation audit.
The June 27 report revealed that the LAPD destroys case files, keeps inaccurate and incomplete information on lawsuits, and has no system to learn from workplace liability claims.
In six years the city spent $110 million in jury awards or settlements for lawsuits involving LAPD personnel, the inspector general said.
Of that amount, $31 million, or 28 percent, was spent on claims involving sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination.
Former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in 2007 issued an executive directive to reduce the city's exposure to litigation. But Bustamante said he can only guess whether the department is in compliance, since the LAPD Legal Affairs Division destroyed closed cases.
Destroying case files prevented the inspector general from determining the accuracy of data in the Legal Affairs Division's electronic database, the report said.
"OIG [Office of the Inspector General] attempted to audit 30 of these data fields for accuracy and completeness against source documents found in Legal Affairs Division's case files. Because these historical files do not exist, the OIG was unable to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of these data fields," the employment litigation audit states.
Even without that finding, the inspector general said, the database is incomplete, and is "inconsistent" with information in the City Attorney's Office database.
Calculating the cost of individual workplace liability lawsuits is problematic because neither the City Attorney's Office nor the LAPD tracks the hours attorneys and investigators spend on cases, the inspector general said in his report.
"Although the OIG can calculate the amount the city paid in a particular case to satisfy a jury award or settlement, without knowing the number of individuals working on a particular case or the hours devoted to that case, the OIG is unable to calculate the litigation costs for any of the cases within its sample and therefore is unable to determine the total costs to the city related to a specific case," the audit states.
For fiscal years 2006 to 2012, internal costs of defending workplace related lawsuits were roughly $42.5 million.
The LAPD should do more to prevent employees filing similar complaints in the future, the inspector general said.
"Although the department regularly provides managers with training on broad employment related issues, the OIG did not find evidence that the department provides training to its managers on lessons learned from these cases or specific guidance on how to handle particular employment-related issues. Furthermore, the department does not have a system to identify and analyze the at-risk behavior responsible for the adverse outcomes of these cases and then compare these findings with current department policies and practices," the report states.
The inspector general said the LAPD should follow Mayor Villaraigosa's 2007 directive. The report recommended jump-starting an employee mediation program already developed by the commission, the city, and the LAPD to reduce the number of cases that reach settlement or go to trial.
