Bradley Names Activist to Sit on Police Panel : City Hall: Council approval of Melanie Lomax would give commission a majority of members from the minority community.

Mayor Tom Bradley on Tuesday appointed Melanie Lomax, a longtime civil rights attorney and political supporter, to the Board of Police Commissioners--continuing his efforts to strengthen civilian oversight of the massive Los Angeles Police Department.

The appointment, which requires City Council approval, apparently marks the first time that most of the members on the powerful civilian panel that monitors the LAPD will come from the minority community.

Asked to describe how she views her role as a member of the Police Commission, the 39-year-old black community activist said: “Someone said they need a pistol over there. With me they’re getting a shotgun.”

She also faulted the current commission for appearing too supportive of Chief Daryl F. Gates and his inner command staff. She said that with her appointment and that of Dan Garcia, another Bradley ally who was named last month, the board should become more aggressive in the way it oversees the 8,400 sworn officers.

“I think the Police Commission has to be concerned about real leadership, about sending a wrong message to 8,400 people with revolvers on their hips,” she said. “And the legal mandate of the Police Commission is to be independent and review and evaluate police functions in this city.

“Unfortunately,” she added, “there’s some question as to whether that’s been going on.”

In recent weeks, commission President Robert M. Talcott has been sharply criticized for not aggressively reviewing the performance of the department. Specifically, the commission has been chastised for not being more involved in investigations into the 39th-and-Dalton drug raid scandal and seeming to condone Gates’ controversial remark that casual drug users should be “taken out and shot.”

Lomax is replacing Talcott, who leaves the commission on Dec. 1 after five years as president. The panel will then select one of its members to be the new president.

At Tuesday’s commission meeting, Talcott disputed allegations that the panel has not been aggressive in its oversight of the LAPD.

“We want the public and the community leaders to know that this commission has nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about,” he said.

“We are concerned about drugs. We are concerned about gangs. And we’re concerned about the delivery of police services.”

Lomax has been a large contributor to Bradley’s campaigns for mayor and governor. Since 1985, she has given at least $27,000 in support of Bradley. In August, she was named to the Los Angeles Airport Commission.

But she denied that she was being rewarded for backing Bradley, noting that she has known the mayor since she was a child and he was a Los Angeles police officer patrolling her neighborhood.

“My mother and Tom Bradley went to high school together,” she said. “They go back 55 years.

“He was the cop on the beat on Central Avenue in the early ‘40s, where my grandfather owned the Dunbar Hotel. In the ‘40s, 10 years before I was born, he used to regularly arrest my grandfather’s bookies in that hotel, including my grandfather. He used to climb up on the roof and break in and arrest the bookies.”

Bradleysaid in a written statement that Lomax “will ensure that the Police Department upholds the high standards that we have come to expect from these public servants.”

“Mrs. Lomax’s commitment to Los Angeles’ minority communities is unparalleled.” the mayor said.

Lomax said she has long hoped for an appointment to the Police Commission, adding that she was not well-suited to work on the Airport Commission. “I think I was dead waste at the airport,” she said. “Aviation and big business are not exactly up my line. As a matter of fact, I’m a white-knuckle flyer.”

Her Airport Commission appointment was closely scrutinized by some City Council members, who questioned allegedly anti-Semitic remarks attributed to her. But Lomax, a former vice president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP and a former member of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, convinced the council she was not prejudiced against Jews.

On the police panel, Lomax would join Garcia, a Latino, and Samuel L. Williams, a black and longtime Bradley confidante, as members from the minority community. The other members, Reva B. Tooley and Herbert F. Boeckmann, are white.