Sheinbaum’s Part in Picking Chief and PLO Talks

As Stanley Sheinbaum spoke at the press conference introducing Los Angeles’ new police chief Thursday, he again found himself a major player at a decisive moment of history.

Sheinbaum is president of the Police Commission, the panel that picked Willie L. Williams, L.A’s first chief from out of town in 40 years and the first person of color to head the department.

“The city is about to turn a corner,” said Sheinbaum, a big, slightly stooped man of 71. With his black and gray beard, glasses, bow tie, gray suit and blue and white shirt, Sheinbaum looked like the academic he once was.

His last appearance on history’s stage was far in distance and ambience from the dark hallways of L.A.’s old City Hall. It was in Washington and Stockholm in 1988 where, as a member of an American Jewish delegation, he was instrumental in persuading Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization to recognize Israel’s right “to exist in peace and security.” That helped open the way to negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.

Last Friday, I asked Sheinbaum if there was any comparison between the two efforts. He recounted the eight months of negotiations with the PLO, and the conferences with then-National Security Adviser Colin Powell and the State Department.

“These were not difficult,” he said in his dry, humorous way. Then, after he paused to contemplate every hour of City Hall combat, Sheinbaum said: “Dealing downtown is different.”

He took a moment to share another of his meetings with Arafat, one that pointed up the immensity of the task Sheinbaum and the other commissioners faced in selecting a new chief for a city torn apart by the Rodney King beating.

Last year, Sheinbaum, who also is publisher of New Perspectives Quarterly, a political journal, talked with Arafat from midnight until dawn and then shared breakfast with him.

“You’re from Los Angeles?” asked Arafat. “What about this beating of this black? So cruel. So brutal.”

There was, of course, the irony of an architect of terrorism like Arafat being appalled by the King affair. But more important, Arafat’s comment showed that the world was watching Los Angeles and its reaction to the beating.

That was one of the pressures on the commission members as they interviewed candidates around a table in a sunny corner of Sheinbaum’s large Brentwood home.

It was an unusual gathering for this particular house. It’s best known as the place where Sheinbaum and his wife, Betty, preside over one of the Westside’s most famous liberal salons.

Political candidates, peace and human rights activists and scholars are among those invited to speak to the Sheinbaums’ friends and acquaintances. Often, the candidate or cause leaves with a large amount of money and the Sheinbaums are usually at the top of the donor list.

The vistas of this Westside crowd extend around the world, but seldom down to City Hall. “None of my friends ask me a damn thing about the police,” Sheinbaum said.

Even so, Sheinbaum had wanted to be on the Police Commission for a long time. In the mid-’50s, he ran a program in Vietnam that taught police administration. The late Police Chief Bill Parker of Los Angeles helped recruit personnel for him. In the ‘60s, when Sheinbaum was with the Center for Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, Parker, driven by young cop Daryl F. Gates, attended conferences there.

Last year, Sheinbaum picked up the paper and read of two vacancies on the Police Commission. He knew Mayor Tom Bradley, but not well. His contributions to Bradley, he said, have been “inconsequential” compared to his other donations.

So he called a friend, the late Sol Marcus, an influential Bradley fund-raiser and insider. Sheinbaum placed another call to Maury Weiner, a Bradley confidante and a former deputy mayor. By chance, the King beating took place the night Sheinbaum made the calls.

“About 10 days later, the mayor called,” Sheinbaum said, “He said: ‘Are you interested?’ I said yes. He said: ‘Good, I’m appointing you.’ And that was the sum total of the conversation. . . . Two weeks later, I called him. I said: ‘Don’t you want to have a discussion with me?’ He said: ‘No, you come well-recommended. You’re busy. I’m busy.’ ”

With that, Sheinbaum became a dominant force on the Police Commission. Under his leadership, it launched an effort that on Thursday ended an era in the LAPD that began with Bill Parker.

In its own way, picking a new chief set the city on a course as uncertain as the peace process Sheinbaum helped initiate when he sat down to negotiate with Yasser Arafat.