“So you have a culture change. They’ve gone from an openly racist and misogynist subculture that they had, controlling the majority culture, for at least 50 years. Over the last 20 years that is what we have exorcised, after the Rodney King riots.”

Ms. Rice said one of the most important changes was the shift in the demographic makeup of the force.

“When I first started suing L.A.P.D. it was 70 percent white, military men,” she said. “It’s 60 percent minority now.”

Ms. Rice has had a close relationship with the departing chief, Charlie Beck, who replaced the reformist William J. Bratton. “Charlie Beck took the aggressive-reform baton from Bratton and he ran a fantastic leg,” she said. “Because of Charlie Beck we now have what we call partnership policing.

“They are the only cops in a major city who get promoted not for making arrests but for demonstrating how they kept a kid out of the prison pipeline.”

Looking forward, she said, there was still “a long way to go.”

“Abuse of force is still something we’re trying to get recalibrated, so that there isn’t hair-trigger shootings,” Ms. Rice said. “So you don’t get those videos of shootings of unarmed people.”