Gates’ Forum Credited for LAPD-Black Dialogue

Black leaders, including frequent critics of the Los Angeles Police Department, said Wednesday that a panel created last year by Chief Daryl F. Gates has improved communication and crime-fighting efforts in the city’s black communities.

“I do remember a few years ago when we were having problems with (the use of) chokeholds (by LAPD officers) and other issues,” Joseph Duff, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, said during a break in the bimonthly meeting of the Community Forum, held at the Parker Center downtown.

“This kind of forum has changed that. In 1990, we’re communicating . . . not simply as adversaries.”

The Community Forum was created in January, 1989, to open lines of communication between LAPD’s top brass and the black community, Gates said.

It arose in part, say black leaders and police officials, from Gates’ desire to prevent the kind of racially motivated violence that consumed Miami for three days after a Latino police officer shot and killed a black motorcyclist on Jan. 16, 1989.

During the last year, the panel, made up of about 20 black leaders and high-ranking police officials, has discussed volatile issues, such as a massive drug raid in South Los Angeles that left four apartments in shambles and sparked a federal grand jury probe into allegations of civil rights violations and police brutality.

And on Wednesday, they discussed a recent violent clash between 24 LAPD officers and 13 Nation of Islam followers during what police insist was a routine traffic stop. The Muslims have charged that officers treated them like “animals” and forced them to lie spread eagle on the ground.

While the forum hasn’t solved all their concerns about law enforcement, Mark Ridley-Scott of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles said there is a “wider area of common ground” than ever before.

As an example of the Police Department’s new attitude, Urban League President John Mack cited the “direct meetings between representatives of the Nation of Islam and LAPD,” even as an internal investigation into the Jan. 3 brawl is under way.

A spokesman for the Nation of Islam confirmed that two meetings with top LAPD officials and leaders of the Muslim organization have spawned a “very positive dialogue.” Nation of Islam representatives soon will be visiting LAPD stations to acquaint officers with their beliefs and to emphasize their common goals, said Chilton Alphonse, who has served as an intermediary in the current conflict.

“They are both against violence, they are both against drugs and they are both against gangs,” he said.

Duff said things have come a long way since 1982, when he and other black leaders demanded Gates’ ouster after the police chief said in an interview that “some blacks” might be at greater risk of death or injury from chokeholds than “normal people.”

The method of communication is the biggest change, he said: “We’re holding dialogues now, rather than trading insults.”

Mack, who described himself as having been a “slight nemesis” of Gates in the past, said as a result of the Community Forum meetings, “we can have candid, constructive exchanges.

“Now every time a leader of the Afro-American community has some criticism, there seems to be a greater willingness (on the part of LAPD officials) to listen to what we have to say.”