Kroeker Is Widely Seen as Peacemaker, Good Listener : LAPD: His openness allayed anger over King beating. Critics accuse him of blatant self-promotion.

As he entered the Greater Community Baptist Church in Pacoima, Mark A. Kroeker readied himself for a crowd mad enough “to chew someone up and spit them out,” as he recalled later.

It was the deputy police chief’s debut in his new assignment in the San Fernando Valley, just a few weeks after Rodney G. King was beaten there by police, and Kroeker stood before about 150 black and Latino residents.

But after two hours of peppering him with questions and accounts of police brutality, Kroeker’s audience seemed “pleasantly surprised” and its anger abated, said the Rev. James V. Lyles, one of the meeting’s organizers.

Kroeker “melted away the hostility that would have been there if he had been an evasive and macho cop,” Lyles said. “He was not that. He talked to the people.”

A year after that pivotal meeting, Kroeker, one of six finalists for police chief, seems to have thawed a range of audiences in the Valley, where he has forged a reputation for sincerity, accessibility and even-handed management of about 1,500 Los Angeles police officers.

From the predominantly black San Fernando Valley Ministers Alliance to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith to his own officers, the 48-year-old fundamentalist Christian son of Mennonite missionaries is widely regarded as a good listener and an effective peacemaker, albeit a little too trusting.

He has drawn the largest criticism for his frequent news conferences, which Kroeker defends as keeping the public informed but which detractors consider self-serving.

Kroeker’s work in the Valley has in many ways foreshadowed the task that will face Los Angeles’ next police chief--boosting officer morale in the wake of the King beating while changing the department and working with the public.

Citing his apparent success in the Valley, Kroeker--the department’s youngest finalist for chief--says he has proved his ability for the bigger job.

“Coming out here to the Valley in a time of stress and distress and turbulence and all that negativity and turning it around--and it sounds very self-serving--but that doesn’t happen all by itself,” Kroeker said. “You need a leader to do that. I did it and I’m proud of it.”

Kroeker said his tenure in the Valley has been by far the most challenging of his 27 years on the force, a career of steady promotions and important, if less visible, assignments.

As commander of the department’s Personnel and Training Bureau, which oversees officer recruitment and the Police Academy, Kroeker supervised an unprecedented number of hires--more than 1,700 recruits--between 1988 and 1990.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, chairman of the council’s Human Resources Committee at the time, recalled Kroeker as a tireless worker who embraced affirmative action measures imposed on the department by a court order. The Valley-based Picus also praised Kroeker’s work there during the last year, especially his efforts to implement community-based policing.

Kroeker directed a yearlong study of hollow-point bullets that led to the controversial ammunition’s use by the department in 1990, and he served with Police Commissioner Jesse Brewer, a retired assistant police chief, on a three-member panel that reviewed the department’s controversial Public Disorder Intelligence Division.

The specialized unit was accused of spying on political activists, and the panel’s critical 1983 report urged an end to the practice and creation of an anti-terrorist unit.

“He has always shown a high level of integrity and is always looking for a better way to do things,” said former Police Cmdr. Lorne Kramer, who served with Kroeker on the panel and is chief of police in Colorado Springs, Colo.

But it was Kroeker’s assignment to the Valley that thrust the relatively anonymous bureaucrat into the public eye and enhanced his chances of becoming chief. Though he received the assignment weeks before the King beating, that milestone event influenced every day of the job and turned what would have been an ordinary post into a high-profile, almost political position.

After taking command of the Valley Bureau on March 11, 1991, Kroeker responded to citizens’ complaints by increasing the number of minority officers in the Foothill Division, the racially diverse patrol area where King’s beating took place. He also placed a black captain and later, a Latino lieutenant, in charge of Foothill’s predominantly white patrols and ordered that a Spanish-speaking officer be assigned to the station’s front desk at least 16 hours a day.

Kroeker has set up one committee to study relations between police and Latino immigrants who don’t speak English and is forming another to help victims of hate crimes.

He has spent two Saturdays leading scores of volunteers in painting over graffiti and picking up trash, and even furnished the Valley’s five police stations with plants and used furniture for a homier look--a gesture some hard-core veterans have dismissed as “fern bars.”

But it is in community-based policing--the cornerstone of the Christopher Commission’s proposed reforms--where Kroeker invested his biggest effort.

He began community-based policing in the Valley six months before the City Council adopted a pilot program, assigning 31 officers to full-time community-relations duty and later signing up about 300 volunteers to be liaisons between their neighborhoods and the police.

Kroeker said that as chief he would expand community-based policing and conduct a thorough review of the department with an eye toward streamlining its bureaucracy.

He said he would work on officer morale by serving the needs of his subordinates; speeding up internal investigations to resolve personnel complaints more quickly, and being consistent in discipline to avoid the perception of favoritism, among other measures.

Whether his programs in the Valley will have a lasting impact--on public perception of the police and on the Valley’s rising crime rate--remains to be seen.

Lyles and other community leaders say that Kroeker deserves credit for maintaining an open-door policy, following through on his promises, and putting a human face on the Police Department at a critical time.

“What he has said he was going to do, he has done. And when asked to do something he didn’t have authority to do, he said, ‘I can’t make a commitment or answer that.’ And that’s just honesty,” said Lyles, past president of the Ministers Alliance.

Another black activist who has been critical of the police, Pacoima businessman Fred Taylor, said bluntly, “I did not believe the guy.

“But every time I’ve talked to someone who knows him they said this is the Kroeker of five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. He’s just a genuine human being. I have the utmost respect for him.”

Without question, Kroeker has been a vigorous advocate for community policing, never missing the chance to promote the theme that police and civilians must mine their “human power” and “synergy” to become “partners against crime.”

Tall and gangly with a ready smile, Kroeker somehow combines a missionary’s zeal with New Age, bumper sticker-style slogans to carry his message. “The we zone”--meaning a neutral ground where police and citizens can work together without hostility--is a common phrase.

“Let’s forget about words like us and them and focus on that zone that we call we ,” he is fond of saying.

Kroeker’s few detractors have accused him of engaging in blatant self-promotion--of inappropriately using a traffic officer for public relations and going on camera for the most mundane events.

But Kroeker defends his many news conferences, saying they were part of his plan--and part of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’ specific instructions--to counteract all the negative publicity that followed the King beating.

“He said to go out there and chronicle--I mean repeatedly he said this--go out there and chronicle the successes in the organization.

“So I plead guilty to doing what the boss wanted. And not only that, it was a very good instruction because it was exactly what the doctor ordered out here.”

More than one of Kroeker’s commanding officers agreed. Capt. Bruce Mitchell of the North Hollywood Division said Kroeker knew his actions would be perceived as political but nonetheless told staff: “There is no wrong time to do the right thing.”

One police source knocked Kroeker for having a “Boy Scout mentality” and said he was too naive to lead the nation’s second-largest police force.

But Mitchell, Kramer and others who have worked with Kroeker said his unguarded manner and perpetual optimism--the qualities that seem to hold so much public appeal--are mistaken for naivete.

Indeed, one unlikely proponent is the outspoken civil rights attorney and frequent police critic Stephen Yagman, who said of Kroeker: “Among the inside LAPD candidates, unquestionably he would be the best person to be chief.”

Another source of criticism has been Kroeker’s ties to Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon, whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs and alleged infusion of religion into the workplace have fueled continuing controversy. Kroeker belongs to the same church as Vernon--Grace Community Church in Sun Valley--and worked closely with Vernon as his adjutant and chief of staff.

Yet, a variety of sources inside and outside the department said they have seen no hint of Kroeker proselytizing or showing favoritism toward religious brethren.

“He was not the religious zealot I expected,” said one police union source who met Kroeker in connection with a pending federal lawsuit alleging that a lesbian officer was placed under psychiatric observation against her will. Kroeker, who was plaintiff Jacqueline Boyer’s commanding officer in the Personnel and Training Bureau, is one of several defendants.

Kroeker bristles at the topic of his religion, saying he was raised on stories about the persecution of his Mennonite ancestors. Because of his pacifist upbringing, which took him to Africa and Europe with his missionary parents, Kroeker maintains he would never impose his beliefs on others.

“I grew up with an understanding about the treatment of other human beings that that was wrong,” he said.

Kroeker not only seems open to others’ views but to see himself through the eyes of others, a trait that has served him well in the increasingly diverse Valley. A favorite anecdote about his childhood in Zaire is how his nearly white blond hair was an object of fascination and pity for his African playmates.

“They said they felt sorry for me because God had overlooked me when he handed out color,” Kroeker recalled, smiling at the memory.

Kroeker remains on the board of the Christian literature publishing house his parents founded in Brussels and maintains an interest in underdeveloped nations, shunning the term Third World because “that conveys an arrogant posture on the part of our country.”

He received a master’s degree from USC in international public administration and founded a private, nonprofit organization in 1988, called the World Children’s Transplant Fund, that provides technology and training for pediatric organ transplants in underdeveloped countries.

His apparent enthusiasm for the charity led to the biggest blotch on his personnel record, according to Kroeker--a written reprimand from Gates for using his position as a deputy police chief to board a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to St. Louis.

Kroeker was traveling in the fall of 1988 with a former charity board member, bound for a series of fund-raising meetings, when they missed their plane. They found another flight preparing to leave, but Kroeker said his civilian associate--whom he would not identify--got into an argument over carry-on luggage with an airline employee, who finally refused to let them board.

He and his colleague proceeded to the Tarmac, where Kroeker used a mechanic’s radio to talk to the pilot in the cockpit and persuade him to let them board. He denied claiming there was a police emergency or delaying the flight, but acknowledged identifying himself as a deputy police chief.

He declined to release a copy of the resulting reprimand or any related documents, saying he did not want to tarnish his former associate’s reputation.

Kroeker lives in the Santa Clarita Valley with his wife of 27 years, Diane. Their children--Kent, 25; Kirk, 23, and Katrina, 20--are pursuing careers in international relations, literature and music.

He returned to school after joining the Police Department in 1965 and received a bachelor’s degree in police science and administration from Cal State L.A.

Kroeker said he doesn’t mind being called “Boy Scout-like” if his critics mean someone who is open and trusting. “I’d rather be burned than be distrusting,” he said.

But if the label was meant to convey an unsophisticated, “dewy-eyed idealist,” Kroeker continued, “all I have to say is . . . could a dewy-eyed daydreamer have turned this part of the Police Department around in the year 1991, or did that take some skewed strategic planning coupled with some energetic hard work and some realistic approaches to problem-solving?”

Profile: Mark A. Kroeker

Kroeker, who was tied for fourth with two others on a list of six finalists to become Los Angeles’ next police chief, has spent 27 years with the LAPD and is commander of the Valley Bureau.

Born: Feb. 12, 1944, in Dallas, Ore. Raised in Africa and Europe.

Residence: Newhall

Education: Bachelor’s in police science and administration from Cal State L.A. Master’s in international public administration from USC.

Career highlights: Joined the Los Angeles police in April, 1965; has directed the Personnel and Training Bureau and Detective Services. Briefly directed the South Bureau before assignment to the Valley Bureau in March, 1991. Wrote a report in 1985 for the state Bar Assn.’s discipline committee recommending revisions in the way the group investigated lawyers accused of misconduct.

Personal: Married 27 years to wife Diane. Three children, ages 25, 23, and 20. Enjoys jogging and travel. Lectures to private and religious groups on communications skills, and has been a paid consultant on that subject to the Downey and Glendora police departments.

Quote: “Coming out here to the Valley in a time of stress and distress and turbulence and all that negativity and turning it around--and it sounds very self-serving--but that doesn’t happen all by itself. You need a leader . . . I did it and I’m proud of it, very proud of it.”