Exhibit 1252 ยท Independent commission report
Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (Christopher Commission)
The LAPD's failure to analyze and act upon these revealing data evidences a significant breakdown in the management and leadership of the Department.
Commission appointed after the King beating. Finds that a small group of 'problem' officers drew a disproportionate share of excessive-force complaints and that the Department's management failed to act on its own data. Records the Chief's initial description of the beating as an aberration.
- Source
- Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (chair Warren Christopher)
- Date
- 9 July 1991
- Quoted from
- Foreword, printed p. iv (PDF p. 10)
- Grade
- Primary record
- Document
- https://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-los-angeles-riots-christopher-and-webster-commissions-collections/media/Independent_Commission_Report.pdf
- Accessed
- 2026-11-10
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- Chapter 1, p. 12: 'Chief Gates also described the incident as an aberration and expressed his hope that the public would not judge the entire Department on this one case.' Chapter 3, p. 32 (OCR garbled in the scan; wording to be confirmed on the page image): excessive force 'is fundamentally a problem of supervision, management, and leadership'. The commission also found force complaints 'concentrated in relatively few officers' (the 'problem group' of 44 officers), so the report supports both a small-group finding and a management finding.