Until recently, the Police Protective League's employee representative was William B. Harkness, who himself was on the list of "forty-four problem" officers in the Christopher Commission report.171

Civil rights advocates have long contended that the police officers' "bill of rights," which provides protections for officers accused of abuse, including human rights violations, is too strong, and that it is a barrier to accountability, and haveurged its repeal.172 As mentioned above, the PPL has a roll-out team of attorneys to help officers involved in shootings, where officers are sometimes interviewed as groups by the union.173

At the September 1996 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearing in Los Angeles, the PPL's president complained that training has suffered: good trainers, he said, were being passed over due to an over-emphasis on complaint histories. During 1996, the PPL supported two bills in the state legislature that would have removed complaint records from the reach of managers, making it more difficult for them to re-train and discipline officers appropriately. The inspector general, the Police Commission, and the police chief, among others, opposed the bills. Governor Pete Wilson vetoed one of the bills that would have allowed officers across the state to delete unfounded complaints from their personnel files, but he did allow the deletion of "frivolous" complaints.174

171 Richard A. Serrano, "`They hit me, so I hit back,'" Los Angeles Times, October 4, 1992.

172 §§3300, 3311 Cal. code, public safety officer "bill of rights."

173 Telephone interview, IAG Commander McMurray, May 8, 1998.

174 Vetoed bill was S.B. 282; Passed bill was A.B. 3434, now Chapter 1108, Statutes of 1996.