Outspoken Black Officer Tells of Threat : LAPD: Chalk figure in front of his locker is like those drawn at murder scenes. Department is investigating the incident.

Garland Hardeman, an outspoken black officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, came to work on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to find a chalk figure on the floor in front of his Southwest station locker, similar to those drawn around victims at murder scenes.

On the figure’s head were two X’s, mimicking the designation for where a victim has been shot.

Hardeman, 35, also a city councilman in Inglewood, believes the drawing to be a threat against his life from fellow officers and has reported it to superiors. Department officials said Friday the incident is being investigated.

Although Hardeman said he has been the target of verbal abuse for his outspoken views, the 10-year LAPD veteran said he was shaken by the sight of the drawing Monday.

“I guess I’m not very safe right now,” he said in a telephone interview. “I have friends at Southwest station and it’s probably as safe an environment as anywhere else. But not even friends can save you when you’re shot in the back.”

Capt. Garrett Zimmon, commanding officer at the Southwest station, was away from the office Friday and could not be reached for comment. Police spokesman John Dunkin confirmed the incident and said police investigators are looking into it.

Dunkin said it was too early to say what the intent of the chalk figure was.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as anything until we’ve fully investigated it,” Dunkin said. He said it was not known how long the police inquiry might last.

Some of Hardeman’s fellow officers in the Southwest Division, headquartered about a mile from the USC campus and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, agreed to speak about the incident on condition that their names not be published.

“I don’t agree with what happened,” said one officer, “and I don’t know who did it. But he can’t expect to walk around like nothing’s going on, given what he’s said about the department in the past.”

Hardeman has been outspoken in his view that blacks and other minority officers have not advanced within the department. He has accused officials of blocking his chances of promotion to sergeant because of his outspokenness.

He was widely quoted on that subject in the aftermath of the Rodney G. King beating last March 3. He testified before the Christopher Commission, which was formed after the King incident to look into the Police Department.

He was one of two black officers who recently failed in bids to win election to the board of the police officers’ union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

“I know I’m not liked from the top down,” Hardeman said. “People don’t like the fact that I air the department’s dirty laundry out in public but I have 1st Amendment rights.”

According to Hardeman, last Monday’s incident was not the first threat against him.

In 1989, after newspaper articles identified him a supporter of Don Jackson, the former Long Beach police officer who cooperated with an NBC-TV news crew in an effort to illustrate racism in that department, a picture of Jackson appeared on a bulletin board at the Pacific police station with an arrow drawn through his head and blood dripping from the arrow.

Hardeman’s name, as well as Jackson’s, was scrawled on the picture.

Although an internal Los Angeles police investigation failed to turn up the culprits in that incident, Hardeman said the same sentiments by the same type of officers were being expressed in the chalk drawing.

“It’s definitely white people who don’t like the fact that you’re black and that you’re outspoken,” he said. “But I won’t be run out of LAPD.”