Conal’s Gates Poster Pours Gas on Political Fire

Robbie Conal, the “graffiti artist” who has made a career of attacking people with art, does nothing more than throw gasoline onto an already burning political fire in our city. His latest work is that of Police Chief Daryl Gates on a poster with a bull’s-eye for shooting superimposed over his body.

If Chief Gates is rightfully the target of condemnation and public fury for the actions of some police officers in the Rodney King incident, does the illegal placing on city property of Chief Gates’ image on a pistol target achieve anything? I think not!

Chief Gates’ picture on a target (shown on Page 1 of Calendar last Wednesday) is a mere symbol of a growing and rather frightening trend in this city of special-interest groups using an incident to further their political agenda and quest for power. In this case, it is the desire of many special interest groups to gain political control over the police department and to be able to hire and fire the police chief. Total control of the police department is their ultimate goal.

These special interest groups have lost interest in the real victim, Rodney King, and have instead focused their efforts on turning back the clocks to before 1938 when the police chief was a political appointee of the mayor.

Conal’s posters are no different than the blight from graffiti that we see when gang members and taggers spray paint walls and freeway overpasses to call attention to their gang affiliation. If Conal’s posters were truly art, he would sell them at gift shops or buy legal outdoor signs to have his message displayed. Instead he decided that he is above the law and that he would illegally post his work on street corners around this city. The deplorable polarization of the people in Los Angeles continues and is escalated by the actions of people like Conal.

I as everyone else in this city share the public’s outrage with the officers who participated and those who stood by and watched the beating of King. While I am shocked at the violence we witnessed during the videotape, I strongly reject the call that Chief Gates step down. In our quick rush for justice in this case, we must not make Daryl Gates the scapegoat.

The question that the citizens of Los Angeles must ask themselves now is--do we want a police chief subject to political control by the mayor, or do we want a police chief who is free from political influence? I don’t think we want a police chief who is a cronie of the mayor.

Our current problems call for positive leadership. Placing Chief Gates, a symbol of the Los Angeles Police Department, on a pistol target will not lead to the healing process this city so desperately needs and that Mayor Bradley says he wants. Conal’s work is very divisive and only helps to feed the frenzy that has occupied this city’s attention for the past five weeks.

What does this poster really accomplish? It is just another symbol of the violent hatred that some people have toward the LAPD, using Chief Gates as a symbol of our police department.

Conal’s posters are not only in poor taste, they are another means of escalating the tensions in our city and at the same time defaming the entire Los Angeles Police Department.

The citizens of Los Angeles must band together to begin the healing process. We must not make this a political issue, or an issue of blacks versus whites. We must put the political motives of those who are trying to force Chief Gates out of office behind us and help heal the wounds in our city.

Finally, we must remain resolved to support the men and women of the Los Angeles Police Department who risk their lives daily for our public safety, for they are our real heroes.