Police Union Changes Face of Charter Fight

At first, the campaign to amend the City Charter figured to be a clash of two powerful men and the different Los Angeles each represents.

On the side of change, Warren Christopher, the patrician liberal, speaks for the new, multiethnic city and its desire to have a greater say over its Police Department. On the other stands the embattled top cop, Daryl F. Gates, and a more traditional constituency comfortable with the department’s semi-autonomous relationship with City Hall.

But the dynamics of the campaign have changed. The powerful Police Protective League, armed with plenty of money and a major league political consultant, has joined the fight against Proposition F, the ballot measure that would grant City Hall more authority over the police force.

Suddenly, Christopher and his allies face another equally daunting foe: “Officer Friendly,” as one City Hall observer put it--the cop on the beat, free of Gates’ weighty political baggage, who can take the case against change to the merchants, the block clubs and neighborhood watch groups that police officers deal with every day.

Multiplied by the union’s 8,100 members below the rank of captain, this well-organized cadre of off-duty officers can be expected to tell voters that tampering with the Police Department not only will be bad for cops but for the city as a whole, particularly at a time when crime weighs heavily on the public consciousness.

With police union sources talking about their ability to spend $500,000, the effort promises to breathe new life into a campaign that had been underfunded and poorly organized.

“I couldn’t be more pleased,” said Peggy Estrada, spokeswoman for the citizens group that was first to oppose the charter amendment. “They (the Police Protective League) are a longstanding, very powerful, well-funded organization and their funds will help . . . reach areas like television.”

The campaign will focus on high-propensity voters all over the city and hopes to capitalize on the department’s extensive ties to homeowners organizations, civic associations, police booster clubs and neighborhood watch groups.

De-emphasizing its considerable resources, the union, which is planning a series of news conferences and rallies, is characterizing its campaign as a grass-roots, David and Goliath affair that pits “the average street cop against corporate firepower”--an allusion to the big companies, such as Atlantic Richfield, Southern California Edison and First Interstate Bank, which are helping to bankroll the campaign for charter change.

The charter amendment, says the union, casts the police as villains and the politicians as heroes.

“It’s a joke. It’s a sham,” said league President Bill Violante. “Police are not the enemy. Police are part of this community. The enemy is the quick political fix.”

Helping the league make this point will be the New York-based firm of Jerry Austin and Hank Sheinkopf, which brings a variety of political experience to this campaign, from handling Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign to representing police associations in political battles in cities nationwide.

For the proponents of charter change, the emergence of the police union as their most powerful opponent presents a tricky challenge: How to take them on without appearing to attack the average cop.

“Sure, they (the union) could be trouble,” said one organizer of Citizens for Law Enforcement and Reform (CLEAR), the group pushing for charter change. “Their effectiveness will depend on how much money they can raise and on how motivated their members are.”

For now, the charter change campaign is avoiding a direct confrontation with the union and the officers, letting television’s daily rebroadcast of the Rodney G. King beating make the case against the department. Instead, the proponents are developing a campaign theme that stresses accountability, maintaining that a Police Department that is more responsive to public officials is more accountable to the electorate.

Before the union entered the fray, the proponents of charter change had been cautiously optimistic about a campaign that pitted Christopher against Gates. Their polls told them that many people were growing tired of the outspoken chief.

“We are convinced that Warren Christopher has more credibility than Daryl Gates,” said one campaign strategist who asked not to be named.

The Police Protective League has also done some polling. Although its opposition to the June ballot measure will echo some of the chief’s concerns, union spokesmen say their campaign will operate independent of Gates.

Both Gates and the Protective League argue that the ballot measure, by enhancing the authority of City Hall over the Police Department, will politicize law enforcement and, for the first time since the 1930s, make it vulnerable to corrupt influences.

League officials described the King beating as a tragedy, but one that should not lead to destroying what is best about the department--its integrity and independence. Moreover, they said that the threat of politicization is sounding an alarm that police officers from around the country are hearing.

“Cops are offering to fly in all over to help out in our campaign,” said Violante. “If L.A., which is known for not being politicized, could fall by the wayside, that means something.”

Gates makes much the same point in his speeches. Last week, he told a group of San Fernando Valley business people about a police recruit from another city marveling at the independence of the Los Angeles Police Department.

According to Gates, the officer told him that where he came from, if he arrested the wrong person, he would be in trouble. But in Los Angeles, Gates said, “He told me: ‘I can arrest the mayor.’ ”

“Well, folks,” Gates added, “that will change” if the charter amendment is approved.

In other ways, there are contrasts in the campaign styles of Gates and the Protective League.

Gates sneers at Christopher as an elitist and derides the Christopher Commission’s report on the department for providing plaintiffs’ attorneys with ammunition to sue the city and bilk taxpayers.

The commission’s report is the product of an investigation of the Police Department authorized by Mayor Tom Bradley last year after the King beating. The report, which found evidence of racism and excessive force in the department, made more than 100 recommendations, among them the call for charter changes.

Unlike Gates, police union officials applaud the work of the Christopher Commission, saying they welcome many of the proposals. But they argue that the June ballot measure ignores meaningful reforms in favor of cynical political solutions.

“This charter amendment is no more than a smoke screen, a Band-Aid approach to a problem within the city of Los Angeles that requires major surgery,” said Violante. “It’s going to create a terrible wedge between the police and the city.

“The reforms that are necessary are not going to be put into effect,” the league president said. “You don’t see anything about training, or psychological testing or better supervision on the ballot. And you don’t see the council setting aside money for those kinds of things, either.

“That’s what we need, and that’s what we told the council. If you want reform, you better be prepared to put some money on the table.”

Violante accused City Council members of turning down repeated union requests for funding for more officer training programs, field supervisors and periodic psychological testing of police officers--all recommended by the Christopher Commission.

In a “rush to jam something onto the June ballot,” Violante said, these and more than 100 other Christopher Commission recommendations never made it on the ballot. The City Council had approved it over strong objections from the union.

“They came up with this sham on the public . . . a politician’s easy way out of dealing with a complicated problem,” Violante said. “We naturally had to take a position in opposition to this.”

Gordon Lawler, lead labor negotiator for the city administrative office, said Violante’s assessment of what happened behind closed doors was “correct up to a point.”

Lawler confirmed that city officials removed about 130 Christopher Commission recommendations from consideration for the ballot measure, but he said it was done because they did not require a charter amendment to implement.

He also agreed that because the City Council was facing a deadline to approve recommendations to be presented to voters in June, “we ran out of time to negotiate some of the meet-and-confer issues.”

However, Lawler said, “the impression that Violante gives is that we walked away with the pie and left the crust--that is not true. We are going to address all of the remaining labor issues, including Violante’s money items, in upcoming contract negotiations with the union.”

Proponents of the charter amendment, including Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, contend that the police union is not as pro-reform as it makes itself out to be, arguing that union officials took exception to the charter amendment because it would make it easier to discipline police officers who use excessive force.

“You need to understand why the Police Protective League is doing what they’re doing,” Yaroslavsky said. “They don’t want to change a system that makes it virtually impossible to discipline a police officer.”

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, a longtime advocate of police reforms in minority communities from South-Central to East Los Angeles, suggested that the union’s effort will only “further destroy the image of the Police Department.”

“They are going to lose because (of) . . . that videotape (of the Rodney G. King beating),” Ridley-Thomas said. “What happened on March 3, 1991, is indelibly etched in the psyche of the city and no high-tech campaign will ever undo that.”

But union campaign manager Jeff Garfield disagreed and suggested that the video has been played so much it has lost its influence.

“If people see this video over and over again, it becomes abstract,” Garfield said.

“We have a righteous cause,” Garfield said. “To have the mayor of Los Angeles select a police chief is a detriment to the department.”

For now, the most effective rebuttal to the Protective League may come from two former city police chiefs, Tom Reddin and Ed Davis, both of whom support the campaign for changing the charter.

Speaking last week to a group of senior citizens at a Van Nuys community center, Reddin described the King video as “perhaps the most frightening thing I have ever seen in connection with the activities of law enforcement.”

Reddin said that rather than politicizing the Police Department, the charter amendment would make it more accountable to city residents.

“This is not supposed to be the department’s department or the politicians’ department but the people’s department,” Reddin said. “And the department that works closest to the people will work the best.”