Before We Rush to Condemn the Department’s Leadership, Examine the Facts : LAPD: Rapid recruitment has strained system, but there is no institutional anti-black bias. Vast majority of officers are models of duty and valor.

Last week, all America--and much of the world--witnessed an apparently senseless and criminal beating of a suspect following a high-speed car chase. The videotaped beating administered by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department absolutely shocked every right-thinking citizen and officer who watched it.

Since then, a county grand jury has indicted four of the officers involved in the beating, and the district attorney’s office continues its criminal investigation. The LAPD is conducting its own internal administrative probe. The criminal-justice system can punish an officer who gratuitously wields a nightstick with the aim of disciplining a suspect. But there is no criminal law that clearly provides for the prosecution of officers at the scene who fail to intervene and stop a beating. Accordingly, the administrative investigation and determination are necessary, because these officers, though possibly not strictly criminally liable, may have to be disciplined or fired.

I have absolutely no doubt that justice will be done in this case. I am confident that the officers who beat Rodney G. King with their nightsticks, along with the policeman who kicked him, will be charged and convicted by their own videotaped actions. While the accused are entitled to a full and fair trial, we all realize that the videotape of the incident is quite compelling, probably compelling enough to vault its stars into state prison.

The question is not so much whether criminal acts have occurred or whether the actors will be punished. Rather, it is whether the whole Police Department should be criminalized as a result.

During my 34 years with the LAPD, I was occasionally presented with evidence of officer misconduct. As chief, I was required to terminate the most egregious offenders. On an equally sporadic but far too frequent basis, there were other spontaneous terminations. On these occasions, I delivered American flags to the families of officers killed in the line of duty.

Today’s officers are a very diverse group, comprising all shapes, sizes and ethnic persuasions. Interestingly, 38% of the officers in the LAPD, including two of the three who participated in the King beating, have fewer than three years of service.

Beginning about three years ago, the mayor and the City Council made a series of important decisions to allow the department to grow. Its strength, down from 7,500 when I left the department in 1978, was fewer than 7,000 officers. Staffing has been rapidly increased, to nearly 8,300, until recent budget constraints slowed growth. During this manpower expansion, the department has diligently selected new recruits and rigorously trained them to be officers. Even so, it is difficult to assimilate so many officers in such a short period of time.

Because King is African-American, some people have wondered whether there is an anti-African-American bias in the department.

My police academy classmate and the mayor of Los Angeles for 18 years, Tom Bradley, is African-American. Direct control of the personnel and training bureaus in the LAPD was held, until his recent retirement, by an assistant chief of police, Jess Brewer, a highly respected police administrator. He happens to be African-American. During the three high-growth years, the internal-affairs division, which investigates charges of police misconduct, was directed by three different captains, two of whom are African-Americans. The percentage of African-American officers in the department exceeds the percentage of African-Americans in the city’s population.

I do not thus believe there is any racially based institutional prejudice within the LAPD. For 18 years, Bradley has appointed the police commissioners, who actually run the department. In most cases, they have been social liberals, lawyers among them. They have paid close attention to racial concerns and to the problem of excessive force.

For the last 40 years, the Los Angeles Police Department has been a model for police forces across the nation. The problem that confronts us now is whether we are going to allow the vivid videotaped evidence of the misconduct of several officers to destroy citizens’ faith in the department. Will this incident ruin the reputation that the LAPD has enjoyed for many decades? Should we demand the firing of the chief of police or the vilification of the average officer?

I made a point of recently checking into whether LAPD command officers continue to do something that has always been necessary but distasteful.

Are they still getting up at odd hours of the night to drive to their districts of responsibility so that they may be the first officer to respond to calls?

Are they inspecting and reviewing how the calls are being answered by other officers?

I learned that these off-hour inspections are still numerous and vigorous. I have not, in fact, seen one shred of evidence that the department has suddenly declined from a position of generally conceded excellence to become a department of bad cops.

Furthermore, as chief, I never felt that community relations could be effectively taught in the classroom. Rather, community relations should be taught in the laboratory, that is, in the neighborhood. Accordingly, I created and established the Neighborhood Watch Program, which calls for officers regularly to meet, confer and have coffee with the members of the community they serve. These kinds of contacts can positively alter the attitudes of officer and citizen toward each other.

Before we condemn the whole department, perhaps we should examine the facts. Let’s see if there is any evidence at all that the LAPD, or its leadership, has fallen down on their jobs.

I have known thousands of officers during my career. Most were trustworthy and hard-working; some were downright heroic. More officers than the public can imagine are incensed by the dishonor brought upon the department by the videotaped beating.

All those men and women who have valiantly served in the past and continue to do so deserve better than to be condemned out of hand by actions of a few miscreants. Let’s keep the faith with more than 8,000 brave, honest and compassionate Los Angeles police officers.