Police Handle Usual Crises and Ponder Their Future Under Public Gaze

They whispered in roll call and made grim jokes over lukewarm coffee and tacos at takeout stands, pondering their future as they answered the usual distress calls, processed perpetrators and maneuvered their black-and-whites through clogged city streets.

The officers of the Los Angeles Police Department had a job to do the day after the Christopher Commission sternly assessed their faults, and they did it even as they wondered what was to become of them.

Officers silently gauged the looks of motorists and merchants who stared at them as they drove past. Who was for them? Who was against them? The answers, some police sages sadly concluded, seemed to hardly matter. On the streets, they might be authority, men and women with voices as powerful as their guns. But these days, decisions are being made by people more powerful than they are, decisions that, good or bad, will make a street cop’s life more difficult, many officers said.

“Every officer makes thousands of choices every day,” said Sgt. Bob Teramura, a 77th Division supervisor, as he steered his police cruiser past ramshackle houses in South-Central Los Angeles. “If you scrutinize them, you won’t be able to do your job. I’m not saying misconduct is justified, but you’re walking a thin line when you (start making) a lot of decisions.”

Teramura’s morning unfolded as any officer’s typical day might. A drunk woman tried to break into a house. A deranged man harassed customers at a fast-food outlet. An attempted burglary was under way at a vacant stucco house on 99th Street. There were so many decisions to make so quickly, and yet even as those fleeting worries faded, the future still nagged.

“Things are going to change,” said Officer Bob Brophy, a 12-year veteran with the Hollywood Division. “Department’s got to change. . . . It causes some apprehension of what might be coming around the corner. You’re always waiting for that other shoe to drop.”

Brophy spent his morning at a laminated plastic counter that serves as the Hollywood station’s reception pod. His attention was divided between a bank of ringing telephones and a photocopy of the Christopher Commission’s executive summary. Brophy got his copy from his captain, who had taken his from someone else.

By late morning, Brophy had made it only as far as the fourth page and its discussion of rogue officers whose actions cause repeated excessive force complaints. Station phone lines were ringing so relentlessly with their usual barrage of calls that the 12-year veteran had no time to read further.

“Most of us haven’t had time to digest the report,” he said. “We have no idea what it says.”

But their opinions were already gelling. For some officers, the commission report--and its accounts of race-obsessed and violence-strewn police computer messages and case histories of patrol officer Rambos--cut so close to the bone that it was easier not to think or talk about the subject.

“I’ll send you a computer message,” one motorcycle cop snarled before roaring off on Wilshire Boulevard.

Many other officers, though, wore their feelings on their sleeves--proud to be cops and confident of their own straight-arrow conduct, yet taking pains to explain how some colleagues might be driven to extreme behavior by daily exposure to the worst that a city has to offer.

“A lot of young officers don’t know what you’re getting into when you take the job,” said Michael Morisseau, who patrols the impoverished neighborhoods of the 77th Street Division. “There’s a lot of abuse. You have to know what you get when you put on the badge.”

Inside the 77th station, where the lobby features portraits of six officers slain in the line of duty, some officers worried that if change sweeps the department, conscientious cops may be swept up along with the rogues.

“The biggest fear is that there might be a witch hunt,” said Officer Ed Palmer, who grew up near the station and serves as a “senior lead” officer. “You become so aggressive in getting cops that are bad that you get some that are doing a good job.”

Many officers seemed especially sensitive to the transcripts of police Mobile Digital Terminal (MDT) computer messages released by the commission.

“It’s the messages that really shake you,” one Ramparts Division officer said. “You read those and you know they’re going to shock the general public. They have no idea if these messages come from a few cops or a thousand.”

Some officers were afraid even to be seen discussing the report with outsiders. One black officer drove his car through the length of the Rampart Division, proceeding in a long, circuitous route past fruit vendors, grocery stores and storefront churches before finally parking in a secluded street near the Santa Monica Freeway.

“If I get seen, I get grief,” said the two-year veteran. He seemed to be almost in physical pain as he slowly tried to express his feelings.

“When you make racial jokes in public like that, it has to be dealt with,” he said.

At the Hollenbeck station on 1st Street in Boyle Heights, officers were bluntly warned to “be aware of your MDT messages,” said Officer Donna Alvarado. She added: “I’m proud to be an LAPD officer. I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I’m not ashamed of who I am.”

Several officers milling around the Hollenbeck reception desk said they had been bracing for the commission’s grim conclusions. Detective Rick Barrera, a 22-year-veteran, compared it to an attack in a boxing match. The Rodney G. King videotape was the first punch, the Christopher Commission report landed the second.

“At least we got a chance to duck the second one--we knew it was coming,” he said. “It was being telegraphed.”

Out on the streets of the 77th Division, Teramura had little time to dream up metaphors. He set out, as he always does, with the bulletproof vest that has become standard issue in the 77th, one of the city’s most crime-plagued police divisions.

Soon enough, he was in on the arrest of a burglary suspect, joining seven officers who surrounded a house on 99th Street. The officers drew their guns, covering the doors and windows.

After about 10 minutes, the suspect emerged--a 14-year-old boy in overalls and tennis shoes. Handcuffed, the youth said little as he was taken away.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s like this,” Teramura said. “You surround them, you corner them and that’s it. It’s peaceful. If you get excited, you lose your judgment.”

He slid back into the driver’s seat of his squad car and punched out a computer message to the station, informing superiors that he was leaving the scene.

“It would be sort of nice,” he mused, “to get a commission to figure out how to stop someone who is acting violent without using force. . . . I’d pay somebody $1 million for that.”

Times staff writer Sheryl Stolberg contributed to this report.