Task That Remains for Commission

Reports of public commissions formed in crises usually wind up on shelves, their recommendations ignored and quickly forgotten.

That fate might well have worried the members and staff of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department as they listened to Chairman Warren Christopher answer reporters’ questions on their report Tuesday.

On the surface, they had reason to be pleased. The commission had been surprisingly tough in its investigation of the Rodney G. King beating.

Los Angeles, the report said, should begin looking for a new police chief. Texts of police computer messages showed evidence of racism, love of violence and hatred of gays and lesbians. “That’s our Serpico,” one staff member told me, comparing the damning messages to the testimony about corruption given by ex-New York cop Frank Serpico to an investigative commission in the ‘70s.

Major structural reforms were proposed, taking discipline of police abuse out of the hands of the police bureaucracy and giving it to civilians.

It was a landmark. But as they listened to the skeptical questions, they may have wondered if their investigation of the King beating will fade into obscurity, like the reports of other well-intentioned civic bodies hastily convened to lead cities out of unexpected disaster.

No, said Christopher. This report will not be forgotten. “We do not intend to wash our hands of this,” he said.

But if the commissioners are to leave a legacy, it will be up to them to work at it, to follow through.

It’s hard to get volunteer commissioners to stick around and slog through the hallways of City Hall, lobbying council members, nagging Mayor Tom Bradley, spending nights at neighborhood meetings soliciting community support.

But lack of follow-up is often the greatest failure of these citizen commissions. That was the case with the McCone commission, formed in 1965 to investigate the causes of the deaths, fires, and rioting of the Watts insurrection.

The McCone commission found “a deep and longstanding schism between a substantial portion of the Negro community and the Police Department.” It also criticized the way the department handled the many complaints of police brutality coming from minority communities.

But then, after a follow-up report six months later, the McCone commissioners dropped out. City Hall was left to its own devices.

With nobody nagging them, then-Mayor Sam Yorty, the City Council and the Police Commission resisted any change. The few changes that had been made in the Police Department were soon abandoned.

Christopher knows that story well enough. He was a staff member of the McCone commission and a principal framer of the report.

But Christopher also knows this effort has a lot more going for it.

McCone was pretty much a rehash of well-known facts. The Christopher group came up with previously unknown information. McCone ended up praising the racist old police chief, Bill Parker. The Christopher report showed Chief Daryl F. Gates the door and invited him to step out.

Gates snarled at that recommendation when he met with the press--no questions allowed--later in the day. But he may have been outflanked politically. The Christopher Commission member he personally selected to investigate the department, retired Supreme Court Justice John A. Arguelles, solidly supported the recommendation. The report, he said, showed “blemishes that cannot be masked.”

Finally, the commission is in excellent shape to lobby the government body that will have the greatest say in approving the reforms, the City Council.

Christopher is a World War II Navy buddy of John Ferraro, the president of the City Council and the single most influential member of the city’s governing body. They maintained that friendship in the postwar years.

If Christopher can persuade Ferraro to support the commission reforms, other council members may follow, even those who’ve declined to attack Gates, especially those who have received complaints of police abuse from constituents.

Gates is a tough foe, as he has shown throughout the King controversy. He’s beaten the mayor and the police commission and humbled the council. He’ll get support from some council members who fear the more massive structural reform proposals.

Christopher had it right when he said the commission won’t wash its hands of the matter. But he didn’t go far enough. He should have said the commissioners and their staffs are going to have to get their hands dirty--covered with the mud of one of the city’s most vicious political fights.

It’s either that, or the library shelf.