All Commanders Need Term Limits : Police reform: The weight of reason favors greater accountability for the chief.

The issue of limiting the police chief’s term of office and making the chief more accountable to elected officials (and therefore the voters) was important before the verdict in the Rodney King beating case came in. Now, with the riots still fresh in our memory, it is crucial to the future of Los Angeles that we pass Charter Amendment F, the police-reform initiative.

History has proved term limits a good idea. The consuls who ruled Rome were limited to one year in office. Presidents of many colleges are limited to seven years. The president of Mexico has one six-year term, the President of the United States may serve only eight years, California state elected officials now serve under term limits and there is serious talk of placing the same kind of limits on Congress.

In the military organizations that the LAPD uses as models, commanders usually serve two or three years in an assignment. These arrangements are a powerful expression of the idea that a top officeholder who remains too long on the job has a tendency to become wedded to the office in ways that can be harmful to the organizations’s mission. This is so, regardless of a leader’s virtues. Unlimited tenure also frustrates the upward mobility of those further down the ladder.

The argument that the reforms will politicize the chief’s job misses the fact that it is already one of the most politically engaged jobs in the city, and that effectiveness and longevity on the job already depend in large part on the chief’s skill in maneuvering among shifting political balances. Those who argue that we will return to the widespread departmental corruption of the bad old 1930s should know that we are living in a different world. Even if this should happen again, I am confident in the city’s ability to deal with it.

The ballot measure sends the right message to the minority communities of Los Angeles. A very substantial number of people in the community believe that nothing they do will make a difference, that their concerns will always be brushed aside in the end, that the political process has always been stacked against them and always will be. This disaffection is dangerous to a functioning democracy. For the sake of the city and the nation, these are the people who must feel empowered enough to channel their feelings into peaceful discourse and voting. If the measure should fail, however, its defeat, like the King verdict, would be grist for the mills of the opportunistic demagogues who capitalize on feelings of rage and victimization. For the sake of reducing division, then, the measure should be passed.

Collaborative government would be advanced. The ballot measure contains the recommendations of the citizens panel called the Christopher Commission, not of public officials. The panel included, among other leading lights, a former U.S. deputy secretary of state, a former justice of the California Supreme Court, a retired chairman of Lockheed Corp. and the president-elect of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Some of the members of the panel, including its vice chairman, were appointed by the chief of police to another investigative body that was folded into the commission. Its members agreed to participate with no hidden agenda, no aim except to seek what was best for the city of Los Angeles.

From top to bottom, the venture was a prime example of what I call “collaborative government” It is what I believe could be the city’s salvation: tapping the best minds and most dedicated people from the ocean of private-sector talent that is Los Angeles and putting their critical eyes to work refashioning the city’s operations.

Would I have done anything differently from what the commission did? Certainly. So would most of us. But that isn’t the point. This blue-ribbon group, assembled from widely varying professional and political backgrounds, studied the evidence and unanimously called for these specific changes. At this date we should not be second-guessing them. We should also keep in mind that that there is room for refinement and fine-tuning in the future.

In supporting Charter Amendment F, we should not lose sight of the fact that we have the best police force of any large American city. We also have to keep in mind that the reforms will change only the conditions of the chief’s employment, not the conditions facing police on the street. That’s the bigger issue to be addressed.