Hardest Kind of Police Work

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates was right to punish 38 of his officers for their part in a raid last Aug. 1 that bordered on riot near the Coliseum in Southwest Los Angeles.

“Clearly, the situation got out of control,” the chief has said of the drug raid. “Whilethey (the officers) were doing the right thing, they were doing it in the wrong way. They arebeing disciplined for over-aggressiveness in the search.”

The officers have been specifically accused of violating Police Department regulations, ranging from damaging personal property to lying to investigators after the raid that yielded a small amount of crack cocaine and few criminal charges but left four South Dalton Avenue apartments virtually uninhabitable.

Damage was so extensive that the Red Cross offered disaster relief to the tenants. The incident also outraged, among others, Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Farrell, and local civil rights leaders from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Clearly, the officers are not getting off with a slap on the wrist, and by holding them accountable to LAPD regulations, Gates has upheld the department’s discipline and professional standards. He also has reassured inner-city residents who cringed at the incident and at memories it invoked of earlier incidents of mistreatment by police who were not called to account.

That is not the end of the incident. Lawsuits are pending. Tenants insist that their civil rights were violated. The police union says that the rights of the officers were violated by the internal review process. The broad sanctions prove, however, that Chief Gates is willing to police his force even as it faces tough battles against the drug dealers and gangs that terrorize parts of Los Angeles.