Los Angeles police boosted morale with arrest contests: report

Oct 4, 2007, 20:29 GMT

Los Angeles - Officers at a south-east Los Angeles police station organized arrest contests and other dubious competitions to boost morale among beat deputies, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he has ordered a halt to the practice, which he called a 'well-meaning but ill-conceived idea'. But police watchdog groups sharply condemned the actions.

One competition, described in an internal Sheriff's Department e- mail obtained by The Times, was called 'Operation Any Booking.' The object was to arrest as many people as possible within a specific 24- hour period. The paper said that the contest did not appear to have driven arrests rates significantly higher than usual.

But anther one-day competition called 'Operation Vehicle Impound' saw officers seize 37 cars in one day, even though the daily average during the month was just 4.7 cars.

Lieutenant James Tatreau, who appears to have organized the contests said they were 'just a friendly competition to have a little fun out here.'

'We're not doing anything wrong,' Tatreau said. 'No way, no how did anyone encourage officers to falsify a report or an arrest.'

But Hubert Williams, president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, called the competitions 'highly problematic and inappropriate.'

'The arrest is one of the most potent tools in the possession of law enforcement and should be used with great thought,' Williams said. 'It's not a competition or a game.'

The contests continue a series of high profile scandals for the Los Angeles police, who perpetrated the infamous beating of Rodney King in 1992, as well as other video-taped beatings. A separate corruption case called the Rampart scandal exposed how more than 70 officers framed gang members for crimes they did not commit. The most recent incident occurred when police were accused of using excessive force to break up a peaceful May Day march by immigrants.