Lou Reiter

About Lou Reiter

Lou Reiter currently is a police consultant. He offers three (3) separate professional services to the law enforcement community. He provides training to police groups in the high liability areas of use of force, emergency vehicle operations, high risk operations, investigations of citizen complaints, Internal Affairs procedures, investigation of critical incidents, and liability management. Each year, Lou conducts an average of 5-10 agency management audits and liability assessments. These have been for state, county and municipal police operations. The size of these agencies has been from 3 persons to 39,000 employees. These audits allow him to be in police cars up to 100 hours each year. He has been a consultant on 8 U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section, investigations of agencies involving patterns and practices of Constitutional violations. He was selected as a Federal Court monitor for the Consent Decree of Colln v. Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, CA. Lou provides litigation consultation to attorney firms involved in police civil actions. Since 1983, Lou has been retained in over 950 such cases in nearly every state plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. This has been on both sides of the table with approximately 60 percent being for plaintiffs. Lou Reiter was a member of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1961 to 1981. During that tenure he had 22 different assignments and rose through to ranks to retire as Deputy Chief of Police. About 70 percent of his time was spent in uniformed operations while the bulk of the remainder was in Internal Affairs, use of force review, training and personnel administration. Lou has been published throughout his professional career. He was one of the principle researchers and authors of the 1973 Police Task Force Report of the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Standards and Goals, where he authored the chapters on Internal Discipline, Training and Management-Employee Relations. In 1993 he authored and published the Law Enforcement Administrative Investigations a Supervisory and Agency Guide to handling citizen complaints of misconduct, conducting administrative investigations, managing the Internal Affairs Function, and creating reasonable and defensible discipline.

The Complaint Alleging Police Employee Misconduct Starts the Process and is the Essential Element for any System of Accountability

©2017 Lou Reiter, Director, Internal Affairs, Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) “The complaint process should not discourage, dishearten, or intimidate complainants, or give them cause for fear” (Internal Affairs Guidelines, 2008, 10) A complaint is an expression of displeasure [...]

FIVE ISSUES THAT MIGHT PROTECT YOUR AGENCY FROM A ‘FERGUSON’

Far too much criticism has been hurled at the police and far too little understanding of the difficulties of the police work prevails. This criticism and lack of understanding has resulted in alienating the police from the public, so that [...]

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO REPORT AND MONITOR ‘STOP, QUESTION AND FRISK’ ENCOUNTERS?

“Two police officers must pay a Milwaukee man more than half a million dollars for violating his civil rights by searching him without a legal reason and wrongfully arresting him, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A federal jury determined that [...]

WHAT’S THE BEST EMPLOYMENT DECISION FOR OFF-DUTY POLICE OFFICERS ARRESTED FOR DUI/OWI?

“What’s the best employment decision for off-duty police officers arrested for DUI/OWI?” This was one of the options for a research paper topic for the over 100 participants who opted to challenge the National Professional Certification for IA/OPS Investigators and [...]

CHEMICAL TESTING OF NYPD OFFICERS INVOLVED IN SHOOTING INCIDENTS

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rendered an important decision in the chemical testing of NYPD officers involved in shooting incidents. The significance of this opinion, even if that Circuit isn’t necessarily authoritative in your jurisdiction, is that it is [...]

SOCIAL MEDIA LEGISLATION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL PRACTICES Part I

Part I | Part II | Part III How will the current trend to legislate employee rights regarding social media access affect our law enforcement personnel practices? Not much if we continue to use reasonable and defensible practices. Recently, six states have passed [...]

THE COP WHO’S A SEXUAL PREDATOR

©2012 Lou Reiter, Co-Director, PATC Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) ©2012 Steve Rothlein, PATC Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) Sexual misconduct, unfortunately, has become a more frequent allegation for many police agencies, large and small. This article, however, [...]

PROFESSIONAL INTERNAL AFFAIRS CERTIFICATION FOR PUBLIC SAFETY:

©2012 Lou Reiter, Co-Director, PATC Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) PATC has offered a variety of programs over the past fifteen years on conducting administrative investigations (IA/OPS) for both law enforcement and fire service personnel. PATC has provided this [...]

US SUPREME COURT

©2012 Lou Reiter, Co-Director, PATC Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) Held: A private individual temporarily retained by the government to carry out its work is entitled to seek qualified immunity from suit under §1983. In 2006, Rialto, CA., Firefighter [...]

REESTABLISHING SCHEDULED INSPECTIONS/AUDITS OF POLICE HIGH RISK, HIGH LIABILITY TASKS

©2012 Lou Reiter, Co-Director, PATC Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (www.llrmi.com) Police organizations used to advocate regular staff inspections of various agency operations. [i] That was considered to be a sign of a professional organization. Somewhere in the ensuing years [...]