Ex-Judge Is Low-Key in Sheriff’s Dept. Probe : Investigations: Some critics question Kolts’ independence. But the retired jurist hints that his final report may be critical.

County lawyers have been receiving some unusual phone calls since retired Judge James G. Kolts started investigating the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Confused deputies and department officials call to ask: Who is this guy? What is he up to? Should I hand over the documents he’s asking me for?

“Not everybody knows who he is or what he’s doing,” said Fred Bennett, an assistant county counsel and liaison to the Kolts investigation, ordered by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in December after a series of controversial shootings by sheriff’s deputies.

In contrast to the Christopher Commission, the panel that investigated the Los Angeles Police Department last year, Kolts and his small band of attorneys are a decidedly low-profile group. Although their study could affect the future of the nation’s largest Sheriff’s Department, few outside law enforcement circles show much interest in its existence.

The staff Kolts commands is a far cry from that available to former Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who had a volunteer staff of 100 attorneys and accountants at his disposal. To investigate the 7,800-member Sheriff’s Department, Kolts has a paid staff of four--two attorneys, a psychologist and a secretary-- and about 30 volunteers.

Some critics have raised questions about the Kolts investigation’s independence, pointing out that the group has established a satellite office in the downtown Hall of Justice Sheriff’s Department headquarters.

Others fear that even if Kolts recommends a major overhaul of the department, there will be no teeth to his proposals because the sheriff is an elected official and the Board of Supervisors has little direct control over the department. And Block has indicated he will not necessarily follow recommendations of the judge, who issued an interim report on May 15 and plans to release the final draft July 15.

With no single incident like the beating of Rodney G. King to spur public outrage against the Sheriff’s Department, community reaction to the Kolts investigation has been low-key. About 100 people attended each of three public hearings, which came and went this winter with little fanfare.

Commission staffers say the recent riots--in which sheriff’s deputies joined Los Angeles police officers in battling looters and arsonists--have intensified their focus on the probe. Still, the riots did little to garner more public attention for the Kolts team.

By now, the activists and civil rights attorneys who first called for the investigation say they have lowered their expectations.

“There is a serious limitation on the resources and it may be a fatal handicap,” said Robin Toma, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “Without the resources, their task is going to be overwhelming.”

Gloria Romero, a Cal State Los Angeles professor and member of the Coalition for Sheriff’s Accountability, complained that the public hearings seemed designed only to give angry citizens a limited forum to vent their frustrations. She said she left with the impression that the public comments would have little impact on the outcome of Kolts’ report.

“It was dull, it was boring, I left early,” Romero said. “You’re given three minutes to testify and there’s not much you can say. I thought, this is not what I had wanted. . . . We need something sweeping and exhaustive.”

Such criticisms and doubts mystify Kolts, an amiable retired Superior Court judge who has established his investigation in austere offices in the county Hall of Administration.

“We’re always subject to criticism, but I think the report will speak for itself,” Kolts said. “If I had concerns about (a lack of resources), I wouldn’t have undertaken the job in the first place.”

Four months into the investigation, Kolts is hinting that his study may be critical of the department.

“I think we’re going to wind up with some conclusions that recognize an intractable problem that won’t go away,” Kolts said in an interview. Some of the problems, he added, “may be human problems rather than policing problems.”

Kolts is investigating the department’s handling of citizen complaints of deputy misconduct. Like Christopher, Kolts has enlisted the services of an accounting firm--Simpson and Co.--to analyze the patterns in hundreds of cases of alleged abuse.

“One of the criticisms we’ve been hearing is that complaints can only be made with a great deal of difficulty and, when made, don’t go anywhere,” Kolts said. In the area of complaint procedures, he added, “I think we’re going to have some very concrete suggestions.”

Also under way is a major review of five years’ worth of civil lawsuits filed against the department. The county has paid out $32 million in court settlements involving excessive force over the past four years.

“We simply cannot base a report and recommendations just on what people say” about brutality by deputies, Kolts said. “We’re trying to go into the department itself and see what we can find by way of police procedures and statistics. Those are things that will give our report objectivity and solidity.”

The one area in which the Kolts probe has outstripped the Christopher Commission effort is in financing: The Christopher Commission relied primarily on volunteers, spending no city money and receiving only a $50,000 grant from a private foundation. Kolts, however, has essentially been given a blank check by the Board of Supervisors. As of April 1, Kolts, who is being paid $650 a day, had spent $142,795, most of it on staff salaries.

Kolts also has recruited the pro bono services of attorneys from some of Los Angeles’ largest and most prestigious law firms, including O’Melveny & Myers; Tuttle & Taylor, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. To date, Kolts says he has received $430,000 in free legal services.

The scope and method of the Kolts investigation rely heavily on the example of the Christopher Commission. Most of the probe is taking place behind closed doors, in interviews with Sheriff’s Department personnel and in painstaking searches through department and court records--Kolts says he and his staff have reviewed 220,000 pages of documents.

Three teams of attorneys and accountants have been created to carry out different branches of the investigation, Kolts said. One team is working at an office in the Hall of Justice, looking primarily at the department’s internal disciplinary system.

That team is headquartered on the fifth floor, next door to the office of Capt. Jeremy I. Conklin, head of the department’s Internal Investigation Bureau. Conklin said he and his team of sheriff’s detectives are in contact with Kolts and his team daily.

“They are reviewing all of the files of the Internal Investigations Bureau as they see fit,” Conklin said. “Other than that, I don’t know what they’re doing. We provide the material they need to review. I don’t presume to inquire into their business.”

A second team is working at the county counsel’s office, studying how excessive-force complaints against sheriff’s deputies proceed through the courts. The investigation is examining all the civil litigation filed against the department in state and federal court over the last five years.

A third team, led by psychologist Fred Loya, an expert on interracial violence, is working at the department’s recruitment and training offices in Valencia and Whittier.

The team is drawing a psychological profile of the career path followed by sheriff’s deputies, including the training they receive and their experiences after leaving the academy. Members of the Kolts team point out that a recruit’s first assignment after the academy is a two-year stint in a custody facility such as Los Angeles County Jail.

Critics have said that exposure to the violent jail environment may have lasting effects on deputies when they are transferred to patrol duty in the community. Kolts and his commission staff counsel, Merrick Bobb, said they too are asking what effect mandatory jail service has on a new recruit’s development.

“Training is where I think you have to make the corrections, if there are corrections to be made,” Kolts said. “The older people are stuck in their mind-sets.”

In all, the structure of the investigation may owe much to the influence of Bobb, the only attorney to serve with both the Kolts investigation and the Christopher Commission.

Bobb played a central role in the Christopher Commission’s study of excessive force in the Los Angeles Police Department.

“The Christopher Commission report was a good starting point,” Bobb said. “Anybody who takes a comprehensive look at a police department has to look at what the Christopher Commission did.”

Bobb added that the riots have added a sense of urgency to the Kolts study. “It certainly has made me very conscious of the relationship between law enforcement and the people in our community,” Bobb said of the unrest. “I would hope that all of us learn from recent events . . . to foster greater mutual respect among police officers and individuals.”

Although Bobb said the team has received full cooperation from the department, Sheriff Block said in an interview that he may not necessarily implement Kolts’ recommendations.

“Anything they recommend, I will evaluate with an open mind as to whether or not we believe . . . it would be best for our delivery of services,” Block said. “I’m certainly not going to reject anything out of hand or blindly accept anything.”

What authority the Board of Supervisors would have to implement any recommended reforms is an open question. Under the County Charter, the sheriff is responsible for the department’s day-to-day operations, while the Board of Supervisors exercises control only over the department’s budget.

Supervisor Ed Edelman said: “The rub will come if (Block) says he doesn’t like this reform and five supervisors say they do. We’ll face that when we get to it.”

It was Edelman who plucked Kolts, a registered Republican and death-penalty supporter, from judicial retirement to head the independent investigation. Block had formed his own commission to investigate the department, but disbanded the group when the Board of Supervisors appointed Kolts.

Although few details of the investigation have leaked to the public, some attorneys who represent claimants in police abuse cases have criticized Kolts after learning about the satellite office in the Hall of Justice sheriff’s headquarters. They say the arrangement contributes to an appearance of collusion with sheriff’s officials.

“I can’t see how (Kolts) can be independent when he’s trying to investigate this right in the lion’s den,” said attorney Carol Watson, who has represented plaintiffs claiming they were abused by sheriff’s deputies. “The impression that I have is that there is little faith in the community in the (Kolts) investigation.”

Such complaints seem don’t seem to faze Kolts. In the absence of an ongoing political furor similar to that which accompanied the videotaped King beating, there is little sense of outside pressure.

Much of the final report will reflect Kolts’ personal viewpoints and impressions. Unlike the Christopher Commission, whose report was approved by a committee of 10 attorneys, educators and political figures, Kolts alone will be responsible for the final report.

“I’ll have the last word,” Kolts said. “It’ll be a majority of one. . . . I’m not going to sign anything I don’t agree with.”