A Watchdog Cheers--and Loses Its Bite

The Los Angeles Police Commission is supposed to police the cops, not lead cheers for them.

The commission serves as the LAPD watchdog and sets broad policies. People who feel they are victims of unjustified shootings or some other police abuse have the right to take their case to the part-time commission, composed of five civilians appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley.

Before Bradley became mayor in 1973, the commissioners were uncritical of the police, even when LAPD tactics and racist comments by the late Police Chief Bill Parker caused a community furor after the Watts riots. The new mayor was raised in the ghetto and had been a cop. He believed that gun-carrying officers, with great authority over those they police, should be accountable to a strong civilian body. He appointed aggressive commissioners who tended to be civil libertarians.

When the police intelligence division was discovered spying on innocent civilians, the commission, along with the City Council, forced the department to disband the squad. The controversial police killing of a black woman named Eulia Love several years ago prompted the commission to lay down new guidelines for officers using guns.

But in two recent cases, the commission has shied away from its watchdog role, and Bradley has become upset with the commission president, Robert M. Talcott, an attorney.

The first instance was Chief Daryl F. Gates’ remark that “the casual drug user ought to be taken out and shot.”

The day the commission considered the Gates’ comment at the request of Councilman Robert Farrell, the atmosphere was warm and relaxed, one of good friends getting together. The commissioners sit around a horseshoe rostrum on the first floor of Parker Center, police headquarters. Chief Gates sits at the horseshoe, too, as if he were another commissioner.

As the meeting began, Talcott said he’d like to say something about the chief. No, it wasn’t to ask him about the “shoot ‘em” remark. This particular day, Talcott said, was the 41st anniversary of Gates joining the Police Department. He asked his colleagues to give the chief a Police Commission congratulations. The commission vigorously applauded. Only later, and behind closed doors, did the commission discuss Gates. It approved a letter, signed by Talcott, saying Gates phrase “was simply a graphic figure of speech. . . .”

The second case stemmed from a police raid two years ago in South-Central L.A. Four apartments at 39th Street and Dalton Avenue were wrecked and, after a police investigation, 38 officers were disciplined by the department and four were charged with vandalism, a misdemeanor.

Earlier this month, a veteran police sergeant, Robert Kavanaugh, told The Times that he’d been doing investigative work for the legal team handling the accused officers’ defense. Kavanaugh’s Police Department job involved defending officers in police administrative hearings. But it didn’t include working for a criminal defense team on city time, helping officers actually charged with a crime.

Kavanaugh, however, said that “I got a clear sign from my supervisors that it was OK to do it.”

Already unhappy over the Gates’ remark and the commission’s brushoff of it, Bradley got angrier still when he read of Kavanaugh’s criminal defense work--and of the department’s disinclination to investigate it. In a sharp letter to Talcott, he ordered an investigation.

Talcott replied that the commission would investigate but “there often is a readily available explanation for this kind of conduct and I suspect that will be the case in this situation. . . .” Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani called that comment “rather strange.”

Talcott talked to me about his approach. He told me he’s been trying to end commission confrontations with the department. That stand is supported by a majority of the commission, who are more conservative than the mayor’s original appointees.

“The way the commission was led in the past was valuable,” Talcott said. But, he said, “my method is rather than create barriers, the commission has one purpose--to make the LAPD the best in the nation. . . . Part of my objective is to break down the natural suspicion that a quasi-military organization has of a civilian oversight body.”

And so Bradley’s watchdog is losing its bite, and there is a last political irony here. The mayor knew what he was doing when he recast the commission in its current conservative mold. The old board had been attracting political heat from the department’s many followers, and Bradley didn’t want such trouble during his 1985 and 1989 reelection campaigns.

His challenge now is to somehow make watchdogs out of cheerleaders.