Swimming Against the Mainstream

If Police Chief Daryl F. Gates has support anywhere in Los Angeles, I thought I might find it here, in this living room in the Crenshaw District, among these three African-American women.

Marie Collins has two sons in the Los Angeles Police Department. Lena Sumner has a brother who is an L.A. cop, and another one in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Odell Hollie just received a certificate of appreciation from the LAPD for her service in the 77th Street Community Block Club, which works with the department to fight crime in South-Central Los Angeles.

It was Monday morning. We were sitting in the large front room of Hollie’s apartment, drinking coffee and discussing the topic of the day--the beating of a black man by white LAPD officers, and whether Gates should be blamed for it.

I didn’t expect these women to be Gates’ cheerleaders. They were at a coffee for a City Council candidate who was calling for Gates’ ouster. But I did expect a certain caution, a wait-and-see attitude.

And so the vehemence and unanimity of their position surprised me.

Gates, they said, should resign.

“He says it’s an aberration,” Collins said, “but he’s responsible.”

Hollie was hosting a coffee hour for Kerman Maddox, who wants to represent the council’s 8th District. In his speech, Maddox told the 20 guests about his proposal to collect enough signatures to hold an election to recall Gates. That’s a long-shot maneuver permitted by a little-known provision of the City Charter.

Afterward, I asked the three women what they now thought about the Los Angeles Police Department and what should be done with the chief.

It was easy to see how important law enforcement is to their crime-ridden neighborhood. The brightly painted, neat bungalows and carefully trimmed lawns stood in stark contrast to the steel bars that cover the windows and front doors made of steel mesh, locked from the inside.

Ring the doorbell of one of those houses and your first words are addressed to a voice behind thick mesh. You don’t see a face unless you can convince the homeowner you’re not a danger.

Most of the working-class black men and women in the room this day live on similar streets. Their daily safety depends on the LAPD, on the beat cops, the detectives, the narcotics squads, the helicopters that clatter in the sky at night. As a result, they have been enthusiastic members of Neighborhood Watch-type block clubs and consistent supporters of police bond issues.

Now, sipping coffee, Collins, Sumner and Hollie explained how they could support the Los Angeles Police Department and at the same time want the chief removed.

They expressed complicated feelings, much different than the sound bites seen on television of protests made last week during public hearings on the beating. And far more complex than the simplistic attack on the LAPD made last week in newspaper advertisements by the American Civil Liberties Union: “Who Do You Call When The Gang Wears Blue Uniforms?”

They said the beating of Rodney G. King was a final affront to a neighborhood that has supported a strong police force while wincing at some of its excesses.

“I think it’s horrible, coming after so many other incidents,” Hollie said.

With two sons in the department, Collins said, “I don’t believe all police officers are bad. But I think the stress and strain and the overtime have some reaction on them. . . . And some police officers are racist. They recruit them from other places, like Orange County, where people say black people are inferior.

“I’ve always told my sons that when you get a ticket for speeding, you are in trouble.”

Sumner talked about the difference in policing in the West San Fernando Valley, where she works, and the Crenshaw District, where she lives. “Why is it,” she asked, “that in Crenshaw, when a black man is stopped, he has to sit on a curb? In West Hills, in the same situation, the man doesn’t sit on the curb.”

Chief Gates likes to say only radicals, rabble-rousers and cop-haters are after him. He’d like to keep it that simple, making it purely a political battle, the thin blue line against a bunch of lefties.

But that’s not the way it was in Odell Hollie’s apartment. After we talked, she pulled out the certificate of appreciation from 77th Street cops, signed by the precinct’s top officers. She knew those cops, appreciated them, liked them. She was proud of that piece of paper and of every signature on it. This was no rabble-rouser, chief. This was the mainstream.