TRANSCRIPT FROM KCET WEBSITE/LIFE & TIMES (Do Google Search for "Bratton KCET Life and Times Transcript" for Part One & Two of this interview. WAY TO GO VAL!)
Val Zavala>> Police Chief, Bill Bratton, has been Los Angeles's top cop for more than four years now. He came from New York where there are twice as many officers per resident as there are in Los Angeles. One of Bratton's biggest challenges has been to increase the number of officers on the force.
First, it was a money issue, but earlier this year, this Los Angeles City Council approved a hike in trash pickup fees. The additional millions will go to boost the force from about nine thousand officers to ten thousand. But qualified applicants are few and the competition among cities is fierce.
In July, a minor feud broke out between Bratton and the City Council over drug policy for recruits. Some council members criticize the policy. Bratton responded by saying they "don't know what the hell they're talking about." I sat down with Chief Bratton to hear what he has to say about city politics and the recruitment challenge. One of your biggest challenges is recruitment. You want to hire a thousand new officers over the next five years. Why is it so hard?
Chief William Bratton>> Well, we have three challenges right now. We have our normal attrition of three hundred some odd officers a year. That's going to be compounded by a program that was initiated several years ago that officers who are retiring agree to stay on for an extra five years. We have this year alone an additional three hundred officers that will be leaving under that program. So almost all the officers I'll hire this year will be to replace what's going out the door.
The reason it's going to take us so long to hire the thousand officers is that we have to take care of normal attrition, that extra attrition, and then try to get new officers. But the challenge is that we only hire about one out of every twelve or thirteen applicants. We have very high standards. But we'll do it.
The beauty of the trash fee is that we know that we can hire without interruption for the next five years and that's critically important. As for the last several years, we've been stop and go, stop and go, and young kids aren't going to wait around. They're going to take a job someplace else if they don't know with certainty that they have a job waiting for them at the end of the process.
Val Zavala>> Is it more difficult in general, given our society and the values in society or how young people perceive police work? Is it harder to get young people interested in police work these days?
Chief William Bratton>> There are a number of difficulties we're facing in the police profession and not just in Los Angeles in hiring young people. Everywhere in the country is having trouble hiring people. One, we have the war keeping a lot of young people in the service who might ordinarily be available. Two, we have a pretty good economy right now. Employment is very high. Unemployment is very low.
We have a compounding factor in big cities in that a lot of the minority candidates that we seek to acquire, Latinos and African-American, the dropout rate is phenomenal before they ever get out of high school. We have a minimum of a high school education, but in a city like Los Angeles where fifty percent of the kids that we normally seek to go after don't even make it through high school, that compounds the issue of trying to hire minorities. So there's a lot of factors at work.
We are a very aggressive agency in seeking out women, gays, ethnic diversity. The good news is, our department almost mirrors the community we police almost exactly in terms of our percentage of personnel.
Val Zavala>> You mentioned that one of the things you might have to do is be more flexible or change some of the standards. Now that's led to some criticism that you have lowered the standard, especially in terms of drug use. What is the drug use standard for recruits?
Chief William Bratton>> Actually, the issue was with tightening up rather than relaxing any standards. For example, we now hair test every candidate that gets through our process. Hair testing will give you drug use going back six months. The traditional urinalysis, which the department used for many years, will give you three days. So if somebody is a habitual drug user, they're not going to be able to stay off drugs for the six months we can test for.
We use the polygraph. If they tell us, "Oh, I used drugs five years ago. I just experimented", we can confirm that answer through the polygraph. So we have the tightest hiring standards in the country for drug testing and we did not always have that system in place. So we've tightened our standards rather than lowered them.
Additionally, we've put into a place a concept called "the whole police officer", the whole person. We look at all aspects of that person's life and, if there is an issue, we don't disqualify them necessarily just based on that issue. We take it in the context of that person's whole life.
As a result, if somebody has made a mistake in the past that is not going to be repeated again, why deny ourselves access to a person that made a mistake such as somebody that might have experimented with marijuana in college? In today's day and age, it's a rare kid that probably gets through college without having some experience with some type of drug.
Val Zavala>> So you're willing to consider that, consider past drug use, if it's confined, isolated, it has not become a problem?
Chief William Bratton>> Experimental, not of a major consequence, and we can confirm that drug use by a polygraph and by hair testing. I would point out that the standards we use are the same as the FBI uses, the same that are used for top secret clearances in this country, so that what we are doing is not the exception. It's rather the norm.
Val Zavala>> Now it's no secret that you've had some run-ins with the City Council. What do you feel the relations are between you and the City Council?
Chief William Bratton>> Well, it's just the Council, by and large, is very good, but from time to time, they are strained. That's the nature of politics. From time to time, we have differences of opinion. We certainly have a difference of opinion on this issue, one that I'm happy to explain. I report to the Police Commission and will be giving a presentation to the Police Commission and we'll make a presentation to the council.
Again, I'm very comfortable with what we're doing and, if the council seeks to disagree, well, if they can get a majority to overrule it, fine. That's their role and that's their responsibility. But I think you'll find the majority of the council members understand what we're doing, understand the importance of it and, more importantly, understand that we're still hiring the best candidates in America.
Val Zavala>> To what extent do you think the tensions are a result of the fact that there's a former police chief on the council?
Chief William Bratton>> Most of the tensions are a direct result of that and we can be very clear about that. But again, former police chief Parks, now council member Parks, basically we make cases to him and to his colleagues and, by and large, we get what we're looking for.
Val Zavala>> Do you ever regret being so blunt?
Chief William Bratton>> Not at all. Why should I regret that? That's my nature.
Val Zavala>> (Laughter) Because it causes tension and squabbles and whatnot?
Chief William Bratton>> That's life in the big city. If you can't stand it, get out of the business. We're not in this business to be polite to each other all the time. You're in this business to do the best job we can and, unfortunately, sometimes you have to be very pointed in making your remarks and that's the way it is.
Val Zavala>> Chief Bratton, thank you very much for your time and your hard work.
Chief William Bratton>> Good being with you.
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