Confirming the Stories of Brutality

When the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department concluded its public hearings, Chairman Warren Christopher felt uncertain about the testimony he’d heard.

The commission, created to investigate the Rodney G. King beating, had listened to many stories of mistreatment at the hands of the Police Department. These accounts dominated the hearings, especially those held in African-American and Latino neighborhoods.

But Christopher’s experience in the law, politics and as a top State Department official had made him skeptical of the kind of emotional testimony he’d heard. “I got to thinking after the public sessions that I wanted to get a cross-check on what we were hearing there,” he told me.

Where could he go for confirmation? His career in the loftier reaches of law and government certainly hadn’t introduced him to the kind of people familiar with the tactics of L.A. street cops. So this very traditional downtown attorney asked for help from a very traditional source--the clergy, especially those from inner-city congregations. He was curious about what they had heard from their flocks about the police.

“I thought that would be a way to find out what responsible people, living and residing in the community, thought,” Christopher said. “You worry you get only an activist sentiment at the public hearings.”

He talked to one of his O’Melveny & Myers partners, a man familiar with the local church community. The partner suggested that Christopher solicit help from Episcopal Bishop Frederick Borsch, a member of an interdenominational organization of religious leaders.

Borsch set up meetings at two inner-city Episcopal churches, St. Barnabas in Echo Park and St. John’s on West Adams Avenue. The sessions, held two weeks ago, were closed to the media. Only Christopher and a few staff members sat around long tables with the pastors, who represented a number of denominations. Christopher took notes.

“I tried to keep the discussion going by asking them to relate the feelings of their parishioners,” Christopher said. “I sat back and they told stories. One would lead to another.”

I talked to some of the pastors this week.

Episcopal priest Phil Lance from Echo Park said he told Christopher how an immigrant parishioner, an alcoholic, was hit in the head in a fight. The police didn’t call an ambulance. The man went home and was found dead of head injuries the next morning.

A black minister told of rude, threatening treatment when he was stopped for a traffic violation. A Latino priest whose ‘70s-vintage car looks ready for Friday night cruising in East L.A. said he always wears a clerical collar while driving so he won’t be pushed around if the cops stop him.

Even the Rev. Jim Conn of Santa Monica’s Church in Ocean Park had heard of bad experiences from his upscale, Westside congregation. “My congregation is 95% white,” he said. “A third of my congregation are gay and lesbian people. They have stories. Women have stories to tell about being abused by the police. . . . A woman got stopped for a ticket, she was blond, she was an actress. . . . The police officer said they probably can make some other arrangement.”

Father Greg Boyle of Dolores Mission in East L.A. put it to me this way: “I’m a pastor in the housing projects. It’s the poorest parish in the city. I talked about how poor folks, people of color, did not receive the same kind of service and protection as white people.

“We have nine gangs here,” Boyle said. “If you are the mother of a gang member, you are considered a gang fraternizer.”

This was the confirmation Christopher was seeking. These were the kind of stories he had heard about the Police Department at the public hearings.

Describing the clergy’s mood, Christopher said, “I felt not so much a sense of anger but of resignation.

“There was an amazing consistency of responses from the ministers. It gave me a perspective that tended to confirm many of the things we have heard from the public hearings. . . . The stories were quite poignant and moving and some of them will find their way into the commission report.”

A few days after his meeting with clergy members, Christopher sent his staff back to the housing projects in Father Boyle’s parish. He wanted to know more about Boyle’s story of how the frightened mothers in the projects had organized a patrol to monitor the way the cops treat their young men and women--in effect, to police the police. The mothers felt the police brass had been rude and uncooperative.

No doubt that story will also find its way into the Christopher Commission report.