LAPD Detectives Criticize Key Unit’s Reorganization : Police: Robbery-Homicide Division is bogged down in routine tasks, letter to chief says. Low morale is cited.

A recent reorganization of the Los Angeles Police Department’s celebrated Robbery-Homicide Division has so overburdened its 36 detectives with officer-involved shootings--most of which are incidents in which no one was hit--that the entire unit has fielded only four new murder cases in seven months, according to a letter signed by the division’s senior officers.

The result is plummeting morale, an exodus of experienced talent and a growing backlog of cases, the detectives wrote Police Chief Willie L. Williams last week in a startlingly candid letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times.

Top city officials already are wrestling with the seven-page document: On Monday, a senior member of Mayor Richard Riordan’s administration discussed it with Williams, and the mayor’s office expressed concerns about the problems identified by the detectives.

Officials throughout the Police Department, meanwhile, said the increased workload in Robbery-Homicide parallels problems faced by detectives in other divisions. But those officials also acknowledged that the points raised in the letter were well-taken, and they questioned whether the reorganization was needed at all.

“We, as a group, are disillusioned and want to do what we are trained to do--investigate murder cases,” said the letter, which is signed by 10 detectives, including lead O.J. Simpson case investigators Philip L. Vannatter and Tom Lange. “We hope you will . . . see the waste of talent, expertise and resources that the RHD reorganization has caused.”

The reorganization of the Robbery-Homicide Division was undertaken by Williams earlier this year. It came after Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti had repeatedly expressed concerns about the officer-involved shooting team and its lieutenant, Bill Hall.

Sources say Garcetti complained that Hall and the team were protecting accused police officers rather than vigorously investigating them. Police officials dispute that characterization, but Williams agreed to re-examine the structure and composition of the team, partly in response to Garcetti’s complaints and partly out of frustration over how long it was taking to complete police shooting investigations.

After months of study, Williams authorized folding the officer-involved shooting team into the Robbery-Homicide Division, where the department’s most experienced and highly paid detectives work. As a result, those detectives now are responsible for responding to all shootings involving police, including those without victims.

In theory, the move was intended to speed up police shooting investigations while guaranteeing that the city’s most difficult murder cases are handled by its best detectives. In practice, detectives say, the reorganization has distracted Robbery-Homicide from its core mission and hurt the unit’s ability to handle cases.

Under the new system, all Robbery-Homicide detectives are on call for a wide array of cases, ranging from serial killings to victimless officer-involved shootings.

“Let’s examine the reality of what has occurred with the homicide sections since the reorganization,” said the letter, whose principal author was Det. Richard Jackson. “In the past seven months, only four murder investigations have been assigned to these 36 detectives. . . . The remainder of new work has been officer-involved shootings. And the majority of those shootings have been where no one was hit.”

That means experienced detectives are spending much of their time probing non-criminal cases, the authors noted.

“To be blunt, we are wasting our expertise,” they wrote.

In addition to sharing their grievances with the chief, Jackson and his colleagues gave copies of the letter to members of the Police Commission and to Mayor Riordan. A spokeswoman for Riordan said Deputy Mayor William Violante accepted the letter Friday. At the time, Riordan was traveling with President Clinton in Europe.

Violante raised the issue Monday during his regular meeting with the chief, spokeswoman Noelia Rodriguez said.

“We are concerned,” she added, referring to the detectives’ list of worries. “We are concerned because they are concerned and they are the front line.”

Rodriguez said the mayor’s office, which in recent months increasingly has voiced frustration over problems inside the Police Department, was eagerly awaiting Williams’ reaction to the issues raised by the detectives.

“We’ll wait and see how the chief responds,” Rodriguez said.

Capt. William Gartland, the commanding officer of the Robbery-Homicide Division and one of the LAPD’s most senior and respected officials, declined to comment in detail about the letter but said he understood the frustrations aired by his detectives. The letter was not shown to Gartland or other Police Department managers before it was sent, according to its authors.

“There’s a lot of honesty in that letter, and there’s lots of soul-searching,” Gartland said, describing the reorganization earlier this year as an “experiment” that may have to be revisited.

“We’ve run that experiment for a number of months,” Gartland said. “Now that we have, there may be some proposals in the wind as to how we may do this better.”

The LAPD’s reorganization of its Robbery-Homicide Division does not mean that homicides in Los Angeles are being ignored. But Robbery-Homicide traditionally has taken charge of complicated, high-profile cases, applying its special expertise and relieving the city’s geographical police divisions of investigations that could overwhelm their detectives.

With Robbery-Homicide now playing a diminished role, that has increased the burden on other divisions. In recent months, for instance, a gang shooting that killed a 3-year-old child in East Los Angeles and the slaying of a flight attendant in Century City are just two examples of cases that have attracted international attention. Normally, both would have been assigned to Robbery-Homicide. Neither was.

“We didn’t even get a call,” Jackson said. “We’re out of the murder business.”

Meanwhile, cases that are being handled by Robbery-Homicide have been pushed back, detectives say, because they are frequently interrupted to chase often victimless officer-involved shootings.

One detective has identified a suspect in a murder case he is investigating but has been unable to complete the investigation because he has been overwhelmed with other duties, colleagues said.

“It has gotten to the point [that] when family members and friends of murder victims call to find out what is happening on cases, the detectives are telling them . . . what they are doing with the majority of their time, namely handling officer-involved shootings.”

The impact on morale has been profound, detectives said.

Although Gartland said that some of the detectives who recently have left the division were planning to go even before the reorganization, the authors of the letter said at least four recent departures could be attributed to the new working arrangements.

“At this time, at least four [senior detectives] who have signed this letter have indicated they plan to leave next year as a direct result of the reorganization,” the document states.

Jackson also said he intends to leave, largely as a result of the reorganization.

In interviews Monday, several Robbery-Homicide detectives said they previously had tried to raise their concerns with high-ranking members of the Police Department. Those efforts elicited little response, they said.

Assistant Chief Frank Piersol told detectives months ago that he would raise their concerns with Williams.

“We have never heard back from anyone on this,” the detectives said in their letter. “There have also been detectives who have tried to meet with Chief Williams on these concerns, but have been unable to do so.”

After the chief’s meeting with Violante on Monday, several of the authors were told that Williams wanted to meet with them later this week.