PERSPECTIVE ON POLICE : Unwrapping the Chief’s Cloak of Immunity : Los Angeles is unique in giving its top cop freedom from accountability to the public. That’s not difficult to remedy.

On a recent talk show, ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson, discussing the Los Angeles Police Department, wondered why there appeared to be no public accountability for the chief of police. This is indeed a question that many city residents are now asking.

The incidents of public figures losing their jobs because of insensitive or intemperate comments, or official wrongdoing, are well known. A baseball executive was fired because of public outrage over his comments that African-Americans “lack the necessities” to be managers and lacks the special “buoyancy” to make them good swimmers. A gambler was dropped from his network job as a sports commentator when a public furor resulted from his suggestion that African-Americans are better athletes because they have been “bred” for those characteristics. A secretary of the interior was forced out because of public anger about his racial jokes. A judge lost his job over making sexist remarks about a rape victim. A President was forced from office over spying on his political enemies and covering up his involvement.

Here in Los Angeles, Chief of Police Daryl Gates has suggested that the anatomy of African-Americans is why they died more frequently from police chokeholds; that Latinos are lazier than other people; that casual drug users should be shot; that federal immigration authorities cause the murders of police officers by failing to keep undocumented immigrants from entering the country. He has spied on political opponents and ridiculed federal judges and juries when they found officers guilty of civil-rights abuses.

Despite this history, the people of Los Angeles have been unable to hold their chief of police accountable for anything--not his racial slurs or racial stereotyping; not his openly expressed contempt for the public, juries and the Constitution he is sworn to uphold; not his tolerance of police abuse; not his spying on his political enemies or the cover-up of that espionage. Nor has he been accountable for his provocative and intemperate comments presented under the guise of “free speech.”

These statements and attitudes, and the law-enforcement philosophy they represent, filter through the ranks and damage public confidence in the Police Department. Thus there appears to be mutual contempt between many officers and members of the public, undermining law enforcement. Los Angeles residents are routinely brutalized and many minority neighborhoods feel terrorized by police. Many innocent officers are tarred by those other officers who abuse the public, and the danger to officers is increased by a perceived warlike atmosphere. Taxpayers have paid many millions of dollars in legal costs, court judgments and settlements.

In spite of these continuing problems, Los Angeles residents and their elected representatives are helpless to take any corrective action. There is no recourse through the political system because of the city’s unique charter provision that gives a chief of police lifetime tenure and complete protection from any form of accountability to the public or constitutional checks and balances.

Virtually no other chief law-enforcement officer in California or elsewhere in the United States has the lifetime tenure that Chief Gates enjoys. Sheriffs are generally elected to terms of four years. Chiefs of police are most often appointed to office by the local chief executive and/or city council, and serve at their discretion; they in turn are subject to the democratic will of the people through regular elections.

Indeed, no significant policy-making or chief-executive official in the United States, whether in law enforcement or otherwise, is beyond the pale of the democratic process--except, it seems, the chief of police of Los Angeles.

Any solution therefore must begin with a charter amendment that would apply to Gates’ successors. Specifically, the amendment should provide for a fixed, renewable term of office for the chief of police, with substantial and formalized public input at the earliest possible stage of the selection process.

A five-year term would be sufficient to permit implementation of a management philosophy and to ensure that a police chief will administer the department in accordance with the public will and the Constitution. Making it five years would keep the process out of the normal election cycle and minimize partisan political influence.

The essence of our constitutional form of government is the system of checks and balances. The power given to an official by the people must be equaled by the power put into checks and balances to protect against abuse of that official power. A limited term of office would restore to Los Angeles some institutional and democratic checks on the enormous authority delegated to the chief of police.

Under such a charter amendment, the people could expect a chief who is disposed to respecting the Constitution and the public he or she is sworn to serve, and who would provide exemplary leadership to the entire Police Department and law-enforcement community. Equally important, the public could then expect a chief who is interested in providing sensitive and thoughtful comment, and who refrains from racially insensitive and senselessly provocative “free speech.”

Such a reform would also provide Los Angeles residents, through their democratically elected representatives, with the means to select a new chief of police at the end of his or her term of office, should the people’s will be ignored.