Resignation Takes Luster Off Public Relations Gem

At 53, Lewis Ellis was the oldest person ever to join the Los Angeles Police Department, but he was more than a middle-age anomaly. To a police administration hungry for positive publicity, he was a public relations gem.

Black, physically fit and college educated, the amiable Ellis was a grandfather who had spent 19 years with the Southern California Rapid Transit District before deciding he wanted to contribute something more to society. When he sought to become a full-time policeman (he had been a part-time reserve officer from 1972 to 1980), his application was readily accepted. He graduated from the Police Academy in May, 1985, amid departmental hype and media hoopla.

He resigned five months later, alleging racially motivated harassment.

Rookie’s Road

A rookie fresh from the academy is assigned training officers to build street savvy. Ellis, however, contends that most of his training officers were excessively critical instead of educational and that they purposely exaggerated or misrepresented incidents in their written reviews of his performance.

“One guy got on me every time because he said my shoes and Sam Browne (gun belt) weren’t shined,” Ellis said. “It was ridiculous. I shined my shoes every day and my belt once a week.

“Another guy stole my shotgun. I saw him run around the corner with it. He turned me in and said I’d left the gun unattended. But he didn’t say in his report that he took it while my arms were full, while I was loading stuff into the (patrol) car before we went out.”

The incidents occurred at the police station in West Los Angeles, where Ellis was assigned after graduating from the academy. But the alleged harassment did not stop when, after five weeks, he was reassigned without explanation to the Northeast area station, he said.

Flashlight Incident

He was written up after shining his flashlight on his training officer’s clipboard. Ellis said he was trying to be helpful because his training officer was trying to write on the clipboard and aim his own flashlight at the same time. The training officer insisted that the second beam could have made him an easy target for a sniper had there been one nearby.

Ellis, a former bus driver, was also chewed out for the way that he handled a patrol car. In addition, he was criticized for the way that he filled out police reports and handled the police radio--even though he said he was commended in the academy for his communication skills.

“Here I am, sitting in the car eight hours a day . . . and I’m so tense from criticism that I can’t even put my feet down on the floorboard because I don’t know what they’re going to accuse me of next.”

Although he encountered no overt acts of racism, “the feeling is there,” Ellis said. “They’re too smart to be up front because they know that it’s officially not tolerated. They’re underhanded about it.”