COLUMN RIGHT : Keep Police Protected From Politics : Civil Service rules insulate the chief and his department from the political maelstrom.

The disturbing spectacle of Rodney King being savagely beaten by a pack of Los Angeles police officers while he was prostrate beside his car raises many questions. Chief among them: What should be done in the wake of this horrific incident?

Nearly everyone agrees on one point: The men involved in the King beating should be criminally prosecuted, because police officers who break the law should be treated as common criminals. In addition, many people think that Chief Daryl Gates should resign and that the Civil Service protection that prevents Mayor Bradley from firing him should be removed from the Los Angeles City Charter.

Those calling for Gates’ resignation apparently believe that the King beating is directly attributable to the chief’s leadership. Their calls for charter revision seem to be based on the belief that Civil Service protection allows Gates to run the department in a manner that promotes violent disregard for the limits of police power.

The clamor for prosecution of the individuals involved is clearly correct; police officers must be held accountable to the rule of law. Where Gates and the City Charter are concerned, however, calls for a change in leadership are inappropriate; such changes would not eradicate the problem of police violence and would ultimately reduce the efficacy of the department by politicizing the delivery of police services.

Unfortunately, some Los Angeles officers use excessive force. But the physical abuse of citizens at the hands of police officers is not unique to Los Angeles. Nor are efforts to stamp it out. No current big-city police chief, Daryl Gates included, condones it. What Gates does is fiercely defend his officers’ right to use force in the face of resistance and to defend themselves when attacked, but he is just as firm in his condemnation of officers who use excessive force.

Los Angeles officers are sternly disciplined when it is evident they have overstepped the bounds of reasonable force. Neither Gates’ resignation nor a charter change that would allow Bradley to fire him would do anything to address the source of illegitimate police violence in Los Angeles--the stresses and strains common to police work.

In addition to failing to address the problem at hand, such changes would have extremely adverse long-term consequences. Gates’ forced resignation or a revision of the charter would bring the department into the maelstrom of big-city politics that tends to corrupt the police enterprise. The more politics intrudes in policing, the more police services become a commodity to be fought over and manipulated by local politicians. Notions of equity and justice take a back seat to political infighting and the police department suffers.

At the individual level, men and women become police officers to protect and serve a community at large, not to be someone’s political lackey. When politics intrude, officers feel that their noble calling is subverted; this leads to cynicism and low morale. Compared with caring cops having high morale, cynical, demoralized officers provide far less quality service.

For the last several decades, the Los Angeles Police Department has largely avoided these troubles because of insulation from Los Angeles politics through the Civil Service protection afforded the chief. With protection from politics, the police department has been able to focus on providing equitable, professional service to the citizens of Los Angeles.

An additional positive consequence of the department’s insulation from the gamesmanship of local politics is a spirit of innovation--perhaps the most precious thing a large bureaucracy can possess. Over the past several decades, no major police organization has developed as many innovative practices as has the Los Angeles Police Department. For example, the department developed the now-ubiquitous special weapons and tactics teams that greatly reduce police-citizen violence in many high-risk situations. In a less martial vein, Los Angeles is at the forefront of the current nationwide move toward closer community-police ties--a number of the department’s programs have been held up for other communities to emulate.

The King affair is evidence that the Los Angeles Police Department has problems. But there is much on the positive side of the ledger, a good deal of which can be attributed to the department’s insulation from politics. Not only would Gates’ resignation or a charter change fail to solve the problem of excessive police violence, such action would jeopardize those elements of the department’s organizational culture that have produced one of the finest law-enforcement agencies in our nation.