A City Divided From the Top Down

I stopped for gas the other day at a filling station on South La Brea. The station’s operators are Korean immigrants, who transact their business with a courtesy that is somewhere between brusque and hearty.

I walked over to the bulletproof glass cubicle to “pay first,” as the sign at the self-service island directed. At the window ahead of me was an African-American man of about my age. Our dress was virtually identical: gray Brooks Brothers suit, white oxford cloth shirt, striped tie, black loafers. Our cars, 20 yards away, were of the same make.

It was obvious to both of us--a black man and a white man--that his credit card was getting more than the usual scrutiny. He was asked for his driver’s license--which also was closely examined--and to write his car’s license number on the slip. Another attendant then was summoned to see whether the listed license number matched.

By now, my counterpart was fuming. As he brushed past me, crumpled receipt in hand, he muttered, “I am so ssssick of these damn rice eaters.”

As a I pushed my own card under the glass, the clerk hissed, “too much thieves, too much.”

Well, maybe they’ve had a lot of credit card fraud, I thought. Moments later, however, when I returned to the window, slip and card both were waiting for me in the tray. I was not asked for my driver’s license number nor for the license of my car. My transaction was over in seconds.

As I walked back to the car, a man in the garage waved and called, “Have nice day.”

At that moment, a black-and-white police car rolled to a stop at the corner. Its uniformed occupants, both white, looked stonily ahead. The black teen-agers waiting at the bus bench and the Latino day laborers leaning against the wall of the mini-mall across the street stared fixedly at the officers.

Suddenly, suspicion and mutual contempt were as chokingly thick as exhaust fumes on that corner; the glare that blinded came from something hotter than the sun.

This is the Los Angeles that could be: a place where mistrust turns the normal friction of daily intercourse between people of different races and cultures into a process so abrasive that it produces only angry wounds; a place where the agents of communal authority are not arbiters of equity and safety but a distant, alien army of occupation.

The Los Angeles that could be is a place where the optimism encapsulated in fashionable buzzwords like diversity and multicultural has given way to the rhetoric of conflict and despair, where the life of commerce and politics is a series of skirmishes and battles.

Thoughtful people have begun to discern the grim borders of this pit at the bottom of the slope down which the Rodney King affair has set this city tumbling.

I spoke with several of them this week, and it is clear that they, like many other white Angelenos, are deeply conflicted. They believe that Police Chief Daryl Gates ought to resign, but don’t think he will. They believe that Mayor Tom Bradley has dangerously escalated the controversy by turning it into a personal contest between himself and the chief before the police commission had a chance to act, as it did Thursday, by putting the chief on a leave of absence.

They have begun to wonder whether, in the end, Bradley, like Gates, will have to accept his share of responsibility for the crisis.

A veteran police officer with whom I talked told me that the Police Protective League’s leaders would like to see Gates go but had found in a recent poll of its members that 95% support the chief.

“Guys are saying this a railroad,” he said. “Whatever the chief may have done, at least there’s no federal grand jury investigating him personally the way there is with Bradley. There’s a real us-against-them thing happening, and there’s going to be hell over putting him this leave of absence.”

It is precisely this sort of sentiment, a longtime supporter of the mayor told me, that has made some business leaders begin to worry about a police strike--or worse.

“This is a law-and-order society,” he said. “The business community, which is to say the white community, has begun to wonder whether the department can deliver under this kind of strain.

“What if there’s a racial incident of some sort this summer? How could the department possibly deal with that if the perception is that the police are out of control and the chief doesn’t care? It’s a fair question as to what the mayor’s real responsibility is here.

“Under the charter, the mayor is technically weak, but morally he is as responsible for this situation as Gates is. This police commssion is hamstrung by the inactivity of previous commissions. Tom appointed every one of them and sat by while they did nothing.”

One of Los Angeles’ harder-nosed political strategists has similar thoughts. “Look, right now the polls show that this is entirely a black issue. It’s not even a Latino issue and it’s certainly not an Asian or white issue. Gates is not going to go. Why should he? His support is as low as it’s going to get. The department’s credibility may be at an all-time low, but Gates can get stronger. If this recall of him qualifies for the ballot--and I think it will--it’s going to lose. Think about how blacks are going to feel the morning after a campaign like that. Gates will be the most powerful man in the city, and blacks will feel abandoned.

“What makes this problem worse is that confidence in city government generally is at an all-time low. That’s why the ethics initiative passed. And that problem wasn’t created by Daryl’s mouth but by the mayor’s greed and cronyism. People may have temporarily forgotten that, but Daryl isn’t going to let things stay that way, particularly if he goes to court to save his job, which I think he will. This is a fight between them now. In the end, Tom may just make him into a folk hero.”

There is, of course, a blade equal even to this Gordian knot. Daryl Gates, who bears responsibility if not personal blame for his department’s racist conduct, should retire. Tom Bradley, who bears his own share of responsibility in the matter, should announce that he will not run for reelection.

Two men who have stayed too long in their jobs should step aside and let the future happen.