LOS ANGELES
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The Los Angeles Police Commission agreed Tuesday to allow police Chief William Bratton to impose less punitive punishments on officers who use serious force during altercations.
The purpose of changing the process is to remove the "scarlet letter" of additional training that is typically assigned, but not always needed, during disciplinary reviews, said Cmdr. Richard Webb with Internal Affairs.
Instead of automatically requiring officers to undergo more training, LAPD brass will focus on discussing the force incidents with police officers in some cases.
"We found, informally, in adjudicating these particular incidents that the debriefs tend to be very, very positively received. They really do require officers to identify their own areas of needed improvement and it actually causes that adult learning," Webb said. "We as an organization are moving toward being more reflective in the area of discipline."
The move alters a review system used by the department for more than 25 years. It comes as part of a recent, ongoing shift within the LAPD away from hard-nosed discipline toward a more nuanced approach of "strategy before penalty."
Under existing policy, an officer who is found to have violated department policies regarding a "categorical use of force" -- incidents such as when an officer fires a weapon, strikes someone in the head or causes someone to be hospitalized -- is automatically subjected to a formal review to determine what, if any, discipline should be imposed.
Webb gave the example of officers who separate during a foot pursuit and put themselves in danger.
"I'm not sure what training is going to do, other than to sit this guy down and say, 'You do this again and you're going to be in big, big trouble.' We would send people (to training) really for an attitudinal thing, rather than an aptitudinal," Webb said.
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