LAPD: Despite Gains, Race, Sex Bias Persist : More Blacks, Latinos and Women Are Hired but Tension, De Facto Segregation Continue

More than five years after settling a federal lawsuit by agreeing to hire more minority members and women, the Los Angeles Police Department remains beset by de facto segregation and racial tension, as well as resentment of female officers, The Times has found.

Although their numbers have increased considerably under quotas begun under a 1981 consent decree, black, Latino and women officers remain frustrated by the perpetuation of several virtually all-white units and the continued, disproportionate clustering of minority officers in minority neighborhoods.

A three-month study by The Times found that minority group members new to the 7,000-officer police force are often demoralized by what they contend is a white-dominated “buddy system” that influences assignments and judges minority rookies more critically than whites.

Ambitions Stifled

The system also has stifled once-ambitious veteran minority officers, some of whom said they no longer seek advancement in the department because they consider the effort futile.

Indeed, interviews with more than 100 past and present patrol officers, detectives, supervisors and administrators paint a portrait of a police force not completely comfortable with affirmative action; of nonwhites and women, particularly blacks, still coping with unacceptance within the ranks.

That lack of acceptance, minority officers contend, has sometimes escalated into ugly episodes.

At the West Los Angeles police station, for example, black and women officers complained last year to their supervisors that white policemen belonged to a clique that was harassing them, The Times learned. The clique was known to some as “White Anglo Saxon Police (WASP)” and to others as “Men Against Women.”

One black woman rookie--the first ever assigned to the West Los Angeles station--alleged that she was maliciously soaked with gasoline at the station’s fuel pump by a white policeman. She also said she was assigned to no fewer than 32 training officers--some of whom she said never spoke to her--during the one year she patrolled West Los Angeles.

‘A Couple’ Involved

The Police Department’s chief spokesman, Cmdr. William Booth, conceded that “a couple” of white officers were involved in “some pranksterisms” at the West Los Angeles station, but Booth said that their actions were “intended as a joke.” Those involved were “strongly counseled” and the group was disbanded soon after allegations of improper behavior were raised, he said.

However, some white officers in West Los Angeles and elsewhere on the force argue that the ill treatment of which minorities and female officers often complain has little to do with racism or sexism. They believe, and some say publicly, that a sizable number of women and nonwhites hired today to fill the department’s quotas simply are not qualified to wear Los Angeles police badges.

“The simple, real fact of life . . . is that (the department) is taking in minorities who are not as qualified as some Caucasians,” said former Capt. Roy M. Randolph, a 28-year veteran who commanded patrol officers in Van Nuys before retiring in June.

Functionally Illiterate

“Some of them have been actual functional illiterates; they’re trying to teach them to write, for Christ’s sake,” Randolph said. “These are people with a lower intellectual ability, (with an) inability to assimilate the information an officer needs to do his job.”

Whatever the reason, black and Latino officers graduating from the Police Academy in fiscal 1985-1986 resigned or were fired twice as often as whites before completing their first-year probation, records show.

Of the 109 white men and women in the Police Academy’s 1985-1986 graduating classes, six (5.5%) failed to finish probation. Six of 56 Latino probationers--10.7%--quit or were fired. Of the 73 blacks in those same classes, nine, or 12.3%, left before completing probation.

Among the black probationers who quit was Lewis Ellis, 53, the oldest person ever to become a Los Angeles policeman. Five months after his graduation from the academy--an event that attracted national media attention--the department’s oldest rookie quietly resigned, citing racial harassment.

“I’ve lost a lot of respect for the LAPD,” Ellis said. “Had anybody told me before that this kind of thing was going on, that their own officers were being treated like this, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Ellis is now a deputy with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

More Complaints Filed

Ellis did not file a formal discrimination complaint, but other Los Angeles police officers are, and in increasing numbers. In the first half of 1986, nine formal complaints of racial discrimination and six complaints of sexual harassment were filed by officers with the department’s Employee Opportunity and Development Division--as many total filings as in the previous three years combined.

Those figures, employee opportunity officials pointed out, do not include other discrimination and harassment complaints, called “181s.” Those grievances, generally categorized as “conduct unbecoming an officer,” are filed at the unit level and the department does not have a specific record of them.

Chief Is Satisfied

Nevertheless, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said he believes that there is equal opportunity for all who join the force today, and that officers who complain of ill treatment because of their sex or color generally are malcontents unable to accept their own inadequacies. The department has a strict anti-discrimination policy, and violations can lead to dismissal, he said.

“I’m not saying we’re perfect; we’ve got a long way to go to be perfect,” Gates said. “But I think we’ve done a good job” with affirmative action.

The department’s 5,044 white officers make up 72% of the force. There are 1,045 Latinos (15% of sworn personnel), 775 blacks (11%) and 556 women (8%).

Rarely a Factor

Several minority and female officers, most holding higher rank or prestige assignments, agreed with Gates that ethnicity or sex is rarely, if ever, a factor in dealings between members of the department. They said they have never encountered discriminatory treatment or sexual harassment.

Gates, meanwhile, attributed increases in sexual harassment complaints to a departmentwide directive he issued last year which, he said, made female officers more aware of harassment and how to combat it. Gates said he issued no such directive on racial discrimination because “that issue’s been with us for years and years.” He said he could not explain this year’s increase in discrimination filings.

Even so, the chief denied that the rise in discrimination complaints, resignations and terminations among minority officers indicate that the department is “zeroing in on Hispanics and blacks and firing them in disproportionate numbers because they are just that. . . .”

“Many times it’s their inability to do report writing,” Gates said. “That reflects, unfortunately, on the educational process and the raw material we get in the first place.” Just as many white recruits suffer the same inadequacies, he said.

Emphasis on Communication

To counter shortcomings in language skills among recruits, Police Academy instructors have begun placing greater emphasis on report-writing and oral communications, Gates said.

But recent minority graduates of the academy contend that their failure as rookie officers had little to do with writing reports or their verbal skills in general. Nearly all accused their white field-training officers--who educate first-year probationers in the ways of the street--of exaggerating their shortcomings in work evaluations, leaving them no choice but to quit.

Nor are complaints of unfair treatment restricted to probationers.

Dozens of veteran female and minority officers contend that there are still coveted areas of assignment where only a token few are ever permitted to work.

Included in such jobs are “management development” slots--adjutant positions, planning and research work or high-profile detective assignments--that can help a career-minded officer to be promoted. More often than not, the positions still go to white men.

‘Reeks of Racism’

“Sometimes it reeks of racism, but what it is is institutional bias--the buddy system,” said Detective Mike Mejia, president of the Latin American Law Enforcement Assn., which represents the department’s Latino officers. “If you look like them, socialize with them, it’s a different story.”

Officer Richard A. Lett, a black veteran of 18 1/2 years now assigned to the Communications Division, was more succinct in his assessment of the situation. He said, “Some places, you’re just not wanted.”

There is statistical evidence, from the department’s own figures, that may support his contention, as well as those of other black, Latino and female officers:

- Only six of the 229 investigators in the department’s prestigious Narcotics Division are black--the same number as there were before the 1981 consent decree hiring quotas. The lack of black investigators is hampering efforts to fight drugs in black neighborhoods, veteran detectives say.

- Departmentwide, there are actually fewer blacks today holding Detective III rank than there were in 1980, the number having dropped from 12 to nine. The number of Latinos having attained the same prestigious rank--which pays more than any other detective job--has grown from 18 to 21. Overall, the department has 273 Detective IIIs.

- Of the more than 30 police officers assigned to a task force stalking the so-called Southside Serial Killer, only one is black--even though all 17 slayings linked to the same black suspect, or suspects, have occurred in black areas and nearly all the victims have been black.

- There are more black and Latino civilian secretaries (nine) than black and Latino investigators (six) in the 46-officer Internal Affairs Division, an assignment valued by officers who hope to make top rank.

- Among the 220 officers assigned to the Metropolitan Division (Metro), the most elite uniformed unit in the department, there is only one female officer. Although there are 28 Latinos in Metro, there are but 10 blacks, including the unit’s new commander.

- The 72-officer Communications Division, widely regarded as a disciplinary assignment, has one black officer for every two whites. Two of Communication’s three lieutenants are black, as are three of its nine sergeants.

- None of the department’s 88 top jobs--from chief of police to captain--are filled by women. The department’s lone female captain, Gloria D. Harber, retired in July. Seven of the 223 lieutenants (3%) on the force are women.

- In the San Fernando Valley, where officers escape the relatively heavy workloads and dangers of policing inner-city Los Angeles, blacks have their lowest representation. Thirty-four blacks are sprinkled among the nearly 1,200 white officers in the Valley. Of black officers there, one--a newly appointed captain--is above the rank of patrolman.

That captain, William M. Pruitt, was working at police headquarters as a lieutenant when he was promoted in mid-July and transferred to the Foothill police station in Pacoima, a predominantly black and Latino area.

Pruitt, 45, was notified of his promotion and transferred to Foothill a week after The Times interviewed Gates about the black officers in the Valley.

A department spokesman said Pruitt’s transfer was not prompted by the newspaper’s inquiries. But Gates, while praising Pruitt as being “eminently qualified,” described his promotion as a “pure, pure affirmative-action choice.”

Not a Consideration

Gates said ethnicity is not considered when officers are assigned to specific areas of the city. Most officers request to work at stations close to their homes and that, he said, explains in large measure why disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos work in black and Latino neighborhoods.

In predominantly black South-Central Los Angeles, for example, one out of every four officers is black. In the predominantly white San Fernando Valley, there is one black officer for every 42 members of the force.

A report issued in 1981 by the Oscar Joel Bryant Assn., which represents the department’s blacks, urged Gates to develop a plan that would encourage black officers to relocate to areas of the city where they were, and are, under-represented.

“Black officers know that full acceptance of their equality means an equal opportunity to serve in all areas of the city and all assignments within the department,” the report stressed.

Deputy Chief Jesse A. Brewer, the department’s ranking black officer and commander of South-Central Los Angeles, agreed.

“Knowing the number of black officers that we now have, they should not be concentrated in one area,” he said.

But Brewer’s concerns and the report’s conclusions have had little apparent effect on the ethnic makeup of the police force in the Valley.

‘Not Very Fair’

Gates said that although he occasionally assigns younger officers to the Valley “to instill a balance of age and experience,” he has never ordered black officers to work there to achieve ethnic balance.

“That’s just not very fair” to those who would be transferred to Valley divisions, Gates said.

In any case, after hearing allegations of racial harassment and ill treatment from those who preceded them, few blacks graduating from the academy these days are anxious to go to the Valley.

“If you’re black, it’s a cold place to work, to say the least,” said communications officer Lett, who lived in the Valley for 10 years and worked there for one year before seeking a transfer.

“The (citizens) treat you fine. It’s the other officers. There’s a few (blacks) who like to work up there, but you have to wear cowboy boots and like hillbilly music,” Lett said.

One black officer who said he did not fit in there was Henry Lewis, who left the Army as a sergeant to join the Police Department last year. He quit in April while a rookie assigned to the North Hollywood station.

“In the academy, they tell you that we (police officers) are all family,” said Lewis, 25. “But out there, you’re not a member of their family. You’re treated like an unwanted orphan knocking at the door.”

Used Ethnic Slur

Lewis alleged that earlier this year, one of his white training officers in North Hollywood ordered him to “get your hand off me, nigger,” when Lewis grabbed his arm to pull him from the path of an oncoming car.

“I may not be the brightest person in the world, but I’m not the dumbest, either,” Lewis said. “When it got to the point that I was getting more flak from the (white) officers I worked with than the people I was arresting, I figured it was time to leave.”

Lewis’ former captain, Glenn R. Ackerman, said that Lewis never raised the issue of racism before resigning, and Ackerman angrily denounced Lewis’ allegations as “the cheapest kind of shot.”

‘Too Tough for Him’

“There is no way we would countenance this kind of thing,” Ackerman said. He said Lewis quit because “he said it was too tough for him. He said that a slower-type job would probably be more in keeping with his own estimate of his capabilities.”

Another former black officer who was sent to the Valley after graduating from the Police Academy was Brenda Grinstom.

“I never got the impression that they were trying to train me up there,” said Grinstom, 32, who came to the department with a sociology degree from California State University, Long Beach. “I just got the impression they were trying to weed me out, to write me out of the department. Nothing I ever did was good enough. Nothing I ever did impressed them. It got to the point where I was afraid that some of them wouldn’t even cover me if something went down.

“I’d go all night and my training officer would not say a word to me. Then you’d have others (white officers) who would ask you things like, ‘Why don’t you stay out of the sun?’ ”

Works for RTD

Grinstom resigned in November from the North Hollywood station and works today as a police officer for the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

She and other minority officers said they would have preferred to spend their probationary periods working somewhere other than the Valley, but wound up there because of an assignment system--called “the wheel” in department parlance--which arbitrarily determines where a probationer first works.

After passing probation, officers are generally given a choice of where they want to work, and many blacks choose South-Central divisions, where they say they are made to feel more welcome by training officers as well as supervisors.

Gates acknowledged that some white training officers, and not just those in predominantly white areas, are hostile toward minority probationers. He blames the department’s quota system.

“Because we now have a quota, there is a strong belief . . . that in order to recruit (minority members and women) we’ve lowered our standards,” Gates said. “So a black officer comes on or a Hispanic officer or a woman in particular and they’re stigmatized immediately because others say, ‘You wouldn’t have been able to do it under the old standards.’ That is patently unfair. We haven’t lowered our standards, so help me.”

Training Manual Revised

But Gates acknowledged that partly with the consent decree in mind, the department this year revised its field training manual to reflect “a kind of positive,” rather than militaristic, approach to training probationers.

Motivated in part by the potential for discrimination lawsuits, Gates said, the department in recent months also began lessening the academy’s boot-camp image. The changes came about after an internal study found that many recruits were being kicked out of the six-month academy for “arbitrary” rather than specific reasons, Gates said.

“The instructors may have been absolutely correct in their analysis of why they believed that somebody was not cut out to be a police officer, but when you can’t articulate that, then you set yourself up for a real bad time trying to defend yourself should the consent decree be taken one step further as to why more blacks, more Hispanics, more women are flunking the academy,” the chief said.

Rarely Washed Out

Rarely do Latinos and blacks wash out of the academy today, department statistics show. In 1980-1981 classes, 35% of 40 black recruits failed to graduate; 26% of 53 Latino recruits also failed. In 1985-1986, only two of 75 black recruits failed to graduate, a washout rate of 2.6%. Likewise, only two of 58 Latino recruits didn’t make it through the academy, a washout rate of 3.4%.

Washout rates for white recruits, meanwhile, also have declined, but not as abruptly as those for Latinos and blacks. In 1980, about 32% of the more than 125 whites enrolled at the academy did not graduate. In fiscal 1985-1986, washouts among the same number of recruits was about 13%.

“We are very cognizant of our responsibilities to hold on to people if they have any value whatsoever to this Police Department,” Gates said.

Some white supervisors and field-training officers contend that the overall effect of graduating virtually every minority recruit is that the Police Department is sending into the field incompetents who otherwise would have been phased out.

Weeding Them Out

They take it upon themselves to weed out those probationers they deem unfit to be police officers. Randolph, the retired Van Nuys patrol commander, was among them. He said that of about half a dozen probationers he sought to terminate for gross incompetence since 1981, all but one were black.

He estimated that perhaps as many as one in four minority officers graduating from the academy today lacks the aptitude and ability to be a police officer.

Trying to Be Fair

“We might be a little tougher on them in Van Nuys than downtown, but we bend over backwards to be fair and reasonable,” said Randolph, 51. “We just won’t tolerate incompetence.”

Twenty years ago, there were no black officers assigned anywhere in the San Fernando Valley, where Randolph spent the majority of his career. Blacks patrolled only predominantly black areas in South and Central Los Angeles, and were never paired with white partners.

As recently as 1964, there were no blacks above the rank of sergeant anywhere in the department.

The Watts riots of 1965 did much to change that and to heighten the idea of equal opportunity in the department, as did the appointment of Ed Davis as police chief in 1969. Davis, unlike his predecessors, was perceived by minority officers as an advocate of equal opportunity, many of those interviewed said.

However, it was eight years after the riots before affirmative action truly became an issue in the Police Department.

In 1973, a white female sergeant, Fanchon Blake, was denied permission to take the exam for lieutenant because of a long-standing department policy that restricted a female officer’s top rank to sergeant. Blake, a former Army major who had been a police officer for 25 years, sued the department for sex discrimination.

The U.S. Department of Justice later joined her lawsuit, which came to include as plaintiffs minority group members as well as other women.

Consent Decree

After years of battling Blake in court, police administrators in March, 1981, entered into a consent decree after she agreed to drop her suit. The decree required that 25% of sworn personnel hired each year be female, 22.5% black and 22.5% Latino.

Such hiring practices are to continue until women make up at least 20% of the police force and the combined percentage of blacks and Latinos is at least proportionate to their numbers in the Los Angeles-area labor force--about 45% in 1981, according to census figures.

There is no question that since then, the ranks of minority members and women on the force have grown considerably. Female officers, who numbered 171 in 1980, have more than tripled to 556; the number of Latinos on the force has increased 65%, from 709 to 1,045; while the department’s black officers have grown 60%, from 449 in 1980 to 775 in 1986.

But the climb to the department’s top management jobs continues to be slow, particularly for Latinos and women.

Although there are three blacks who have reached the rank of commander and one black deputy chief--Brewer--no Latino on today’s force has made it higher than the rank of captain. There are three Latino captains--the same number as there were in 1980. The highest-ranking woman is a lieutenant.

Less Promotion

Latinos say they have not been promoted at the same pace as blacks because the department’s black officers historically have been more outspoken in their complaints of discrimination, and have been more organized.

“The black movement has been a more aggressive and assertive movement, and I think in this case, the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” said former Capt. Joe G. Sandoval, 49, the department’s ranking Latino who left last year to assume command of the California State Police Department.

Pressured by local Latino groups, the Los Angeles Police Commission last week voted to establish a task force that will study why relatively few Latinos have reached management levels in the Los Angeles Police Department. The task force is expected to release its findings in January.

Gates blamed City Hall for the departure of Sandoval and other promising Latinos and blacks. If he were permitted to have more deputy chief slots (cut from 11 in 1980 to five now), more minority officers might well rise to top jobs in the department, Gates said.

“A lot of people talk affirmative action, but . . . I’ve done more for affirmative action than any other chief or any other official in this city,” he said.

Indeed, the department’s community relations section, whose designated task is to “foster mutual trust and respect between the department and the community,” is the model of equal opportunity: The unit is made up of three white officers, three blacks, three Latinos and even three Asian-Americans.

But no other area of the department enjoys such ethnic proportions.

In the elite 220-officer Metro Division, home of the department’s dog handlers, horse patrols and Special Weapons and Tactics Team, there are 10 blacks, including the unit’s new commander, Capt. Ronald C. Banks. Two of the 60 men in SWAT are black.

To join Metro, an officer must pass special physical testing and be recommended by others already in the unit. Then, the applicant’s photograph is tacked to the unit’s bulletin board and any Metro officer who knows the applicant can turn in a questionnaire describing his merits or failings.

“They can endorse you or blackball you, really,” said one of 28 Latinos in Metro. “And if you have a jacket (bad reputation) or they don’t like you, you might as well forget it.”

Lone Female Officer

There is one female officer in Metro, Lynn Horton. She is married to another Metro officer and is affectionately described as a “good ol’ girl” by some men in the unit. She shrugs when asked why there are not more women in Metro.

“Maybe it’s because the hours aren’t the best,” she said. “If you want a family, there are better jobs.”

A police spokeswoman, Officer Margie Reid, said there are no more women in Metro because none has applied. “It’s military and it’s macho and it’s all male and who would want to be amongst that?” asked Reid, who is married to a Metro officer. “It would be like trying to join a fraternity.”

Banks, Metro’s leader, said he is not troubled by the the fact that the unit is overwhelmingly white and virtually all male.

“Part of attracting (minority members and women) to Metro goes way back to when it pretty much was a closed shop,” said Banks, who took over Metro in July. “Those times have changed. The doors are open to anyone who qualifies, regardless of gender or ethnic background.”

Other ranking police administrators insist that the same opportunities exist in the Narcotics Division, but some detectives say that drug investigations in black neighborhoods have suffered because of the department’s limited number of black narcotics officers.

Still, instead of transferring more blacks to full-time detective assignments, narcotics and vice commanders continue to “borrow” black patrolmen for temporary, two-week tours of undercover duty.

Need New Faces

Detective coordinators contend that by bringing in fresh faces, drug dealers and other suspects are less likely to identify undercover officers.

Black officers who have worked the assignments, however, say that the two-week arrangement rarely offers them enough time to develop expertise or gain substantial information about illicit activities on a higher level. Consequently, the job of infiltration and intelligence-gathering in the black community is often left to white investigators--sometimes with comical results.

Retired black Sgt. Nathan G. Parnell, who left the force two years ago, remembers a temporary undercover stint in which he hung out in a South-Central pool hall.

“Somebody every day would stick his head in the door and say, ‘Here comes Vice,’ ” Parnell said. “You’d look up the street and, sure enough, four blocks away, here would come these two white boys with Hawaiian shirts on, untucked, trying to blend in. It was ridiculous. And it’s still going on.”

Despite criticism, police administrators say they have done all they can to bolster the number of black narcotics investigators.

Limited Recruiting

Capt. Noel K. Cunningham was second-in-command of narcotics until he took over command of the department’s Northeast Area station this year. Cunningham, who is black, said his efforts to entice other blacks to Narcotics met with limited success because “they don’t want to be the person out front buying drugs.

“They were afraid that because there were few other blacks (working narcotics), that they would be alone out there,” Cunningham said. “There’s an attitude that’s hard to break: That there’s not enough blacks in there to feel comfortable, so they’re not going to apply.

“It hurts; you lose your effectiveness.”

No Point in Trying

Contrary to Cunningham’s explanation, other black officers say that few apply to Narcotics because they believe that it would be a waste of time.

“That assignment comes with a take-home car, a lot of overtime (pay) and an opportunity to make your own schedule; once you are in, it takes an arm and a leg to get you out,” said L. C. Nettles, who was among half a dozen black detectives working Narcotics. Nettles retired last year after he was shot in the head while serving a search warrant.

“They maintain those jobs for the people they want, and the people they want aren’t usually black,” said Nettles, security director for a Santa Monica department store. “I spent 15 years in Narcotics . . . because I was a workaholic. I set up a lot of cases; I kept a lot of guys busy. But I always felt like I had to be twice as good as everybody else to keep them from breathing down my neck. If you’re different from them, you have to walk on water.”

West L.A. Problems

Such was the thrust of complaints raised last year by minority probationers assigned to the West Los Angeles police station, where female and black officers new to the division accused white officers of belonging to a clique that harassed them.

The allegations were raised during an administrative hearing in March, 1985, involving Sharyne L. Johnson, who was appealing her firing by the department.

Johnson, the first black woman rookie assigned to patrol West Los Angeles, had been dismissed from the force literally hours before her one-year probationary period was to have ended. Her supervisors and several field-training officers with whom she worked had deemed her incompetent.

She did not dispute many of the allegations against her: She at least twice forgot her revolver before going on patrol and once stopped to smell a rosebush while her white partner knocked on a door during an investigation.

However, Johnson said that she had little chance to improve in the 12 months she was stationed in West Los Angeles because she was shuffled among 32 training officers, many of whom refused even to talk to her.

Although Johnson declined to be interviewed, her allegations and those of other officers from West Los Angeles were revealed in testimony during Johnson’s hearing, a transcript of which was obtained by The Times.

Unpleasant Lecture

Johnson testified that during her first night on duty in West Los Angeles, her training-officer partner lectured her for half an hour on “how blacks are very lazy and . . . how 80% of the crimes are caused by blacks because they are shiftless and have the need to rob.” Her partner said little else for the next eight hours, Johnson testified.

On another occasion, Johnson said, she was doused with gasoline by a white patrolman holding a gas-pump nozzle at the station’s fuel pump. The patrolman insisted afterward that it was Johnson’s fault: She had failed to shut off the pump after filling up her police cruiser. But Johnson argued, and an expert in gas pumps backed her up, that she had properly turned off the device.

Asked by the hearing officer what might have prompted the incident, she speculated: “It could have been like an initiation stunt because they had a male club there called Men Against Women in which the officers aren’t supposed to help the female probationer. . . . So if he was trying to get into a type of fraternity, maybe he was told to do that.”

Department spokesman Booth denied that the actions of the few white officers involved were “intentionally sinister” or as elaborate as a fraternity initiation.

Other black and women probationers told of similar, though less blatant, treatment at West Los Angeles.

Challenged to Fight

Officer Tia M. Morris testified that one training officer “told me how I didn’t belong here. He challenged me to a fight up at the academy if I could get another female officer, and he’d fight us both and choke us both in so many minutes--things like that.

“He would send me messages like, ‘You should be a secretary,’ or ‘Why don’t you go dance on Soul Train?’ ”

Morris later transferred to the department’s traffic coordination section; Johnson was rehired and sent to a predominantly black area, the 77th Street Division, where she remains today.

Throughout the department, minority officers say they are frequently subjected to ethnic remarks by their white counterparts. Latino officers complain of being called “Julio” or “wetback” by their own partners. Blacks say they are expected to ignore all manner of racial slurs that white officers direct toward criminal suspects.

The comments are often intended to be funny and to break the tension of an often dangerous job, white officers say. But not all minority officers slough off such remarks.

Hard to Accept

“You have to be thick-skinned when dealing with the public but, my God, not with your peers,” said Mejia, president of the department’s Latino officers association. “Some of the guys are fed up, and they have a right to be.”

That might well describe the mood of Boyd A. Johnson Jr., a veteran black motorcycle officer who is seeking a stress-related pension from the Police Department. Johnson has alleged that racial teasing by white officers in the Valley Traffic Division sent him into a deep depression, causing him to seek psychiatric help.

Johnson, 37, testified in a pension hearing that his white co-workers often called him “Sambo” and gave him a nickname from the punch line of a racially offensive joke.

Johnson said that sometimes during roll calls, when descriptions were given of black suspects, white officers would tease him by suggesting that Johnson resembled the suspects.

On other occasions, he testified, white officers would tease him by stretching out their bottom lips grotesquely and asking, “What does it mean when a referee does that? That means that there was too many niggers on the field.”

Officers who worked with Johnson, however, testified at his hearing that he is genuinely well liked, and that they were only kidding.

“I have in my . . . years with the department never observed racial bigotry,” said Johnson’s supervisor, Sgt. Dennis Zine. “It is just a way that people communicate in law enforcement.”

WOMEN AND MINORITIES IN THE LAPD RANKS These figures contrast numbers of women and minorities in various ranks between 1986 (bold type) and 1980.

Rank White Black Latino Women Deputy Chief 5 1 0 0 (1980) 11 0 0 0 Commander 15 3 0 0 (1980) 17 2 0 0 Captain 60 4 3 0 (1980) 73 3 3 0 Lieutenant 187 19 14 7 (1980) 192 16 9 0 Detective 1,000 60 119 58 (1980) 971 54 82 26 Sergeant 721 59 57 7 (1980) 718 43 44 5 Officer 3,056 629 852 483 (1980) 3,314 333 566 95

WOMEN AND MINORITIES BY LAPD UNIT These Los Angeles Police Department figures from May, 1986, show how minorities and women are represented in the department’s support, headquarters and investigative units.

Unit Whites Blacks Latinos Women Administrative Vice 45 3 3 4 Air Support (helicopters) 68 2 5 0 Anti-terrorist Division 28 4 8 3 Bunco-forgery 52 3 8 4 Burglary-auto theft 36 1 5 1 Chief’s office 29 4 2 3 Communications Division 39 19 14 13 Community Relations 3 3 3 1 Detective Headquarters 87 8 10 8 Detective Support Bureau 53 6 19 2 Employee Opportunity Devel. 7 5 4 3 Internal Affairs 40 3 3 1 Investigative analysis section 6 0 0 1 Jail 31 5 1 0 Juvenile 74 7 13 14 Labor Relations 13 0 2 0 Metropolitan 179 11 28 1 Narcotics 203 6 20 10 Operations, Evaluation Section 23 1 4 1 Organized Crime Int. Div. 46 3 4 2 Personnel and Training Bureau 6 2 0 0 Planning and Research 21 2 2 2 Police Comm. Investigations 17 2 1 1 Records and Identification 19 6 4 0 Robbery-homicide 65 3 5 1 Scientific Investigations 15 0 1 0 Tactical Planning 16 1 1 1 Traffic Coordination 33 3 3 1 Training 81 6 8 7

LAPD DEPLOYMENT BY RACE

White Black Latino Central 183 38 50 Hollenbeck 81 13 85 Northeast 121 7 52 Rampart 184 12 86 Newton 140 36 54 Operations 32 4 14 Central Traffic 145 11 27 Totals: 886 121 368 Percent: 64% 9% 27%

SOUTH LOS ANGELES

White Black Latino Harbor 132 15 26 77th Street 139 73 43 Southeast 132 57 35 Southwest 118 66 31 Operations 24 19 10 South Traffic 94 16 10 Totals: 639 246 155 Percent: 61% 24% 15%

SAN FERNANDO VALLEY

White Black Latino Devonshire 155 6 12 Foothill 189 3 25 N. Hollywood 178 7 34 Van Nuys 212 11 20 West Valley 221 4 11 Operations 33 1 1 Valley Traffic 202 1 9 Totals: 1,190 33 112 Percent: 88% 3% 8%

WEST LOS ANGELES

White Black Latino Hollywood 227 25 41 Pacific 199 38 34 Wilshire 124 79 29 West LA 159 24 17 Operations 28 4 1 West Traffic 121 13 9 Totals: 858 183 131 Percent: 73% 16% 11%