How Los Angeles Voters Can Reinvent Their City : Elections: Passage of Prop. F would signify we trust ourselves again. Defeat of Prop. G would signal to the world that we are not afraid to compete.

In the midst of the Los Angeles riots, Mayor Tom Bradley remembered the Olympics of 1984 and, almost poignantly, brought the leadership of those Olympics once again to the fore in hopes that the magic could once again be made to happen. Perhaps it can, but it will take more than a rhetoric of optimism. The rebuilding of Los Angeles must be based on an awareness of what was going wrong at the time of the ’84 Olympics, as well as what was going right when the crowds were cheering and traffic flowed.

In 1984, when, thanks to the Olympics, Los Angeles last sustained the illusion that it was a community, two forces--police power and poverty--were already preparing the city for the worst urban disturbances since the draft riots in New York City during the Civil War. This Tuesday, these two fundamental, riot-provoking issues come before voters in the form of Charter Amendments F and G.

Proposition F would take from the chief of police his lifetime tenure. Instead, a chief would be appointed by the mayor, with the City Council’s approval, for a maximum of two five-year terms. He could also be fired by the Police Commission for inefficiency and/or misconduct. Of equal importance, the mayor or the City Council could veto the dismissal if either felt this necessary. Prop. F would also extend the statute of limitations for bringing misconduct charges against an officer, from one year after the date of an incident to one year after the incident was discovered.

Proposed by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, Prop. G--the so-called “Buy American” amendment--would give companies in California and Los Angeles County preference in bidding on city contracts. It would also establish minimum domestic- content requirements, in terms of ownership and material, for all city purchases. The city, in other words, would be directed to do its purchasing locally and to run domestic security checks on what it purchased.

Problems of police power and poverty--with us in and behind the feel-good days of Olympics ‘84, murderously present on the streets at the end of April ‘92, and now, dramatically, presenting themselves to the voters as Charter amendments. Prop. F is based on trust. Prop. G, unfortunately, is based on fear--and will exacerbate the very poverty it seeks to alleviate.

The question behind Prop. F is not whether the people of Los Angeles trust the Los Angeles Police Department--but whether they trust themselves. At present, the LAPD is an autonomous satrapy, a paramilitary organization unto itself, with the chief as Doge for Life. The LAPD was given such an exalted status because the people of Los Angeles, some 50 years ago, had grown weary of both cops on the take and meddling politicians. The people conferred on the Police Department an autonomy akin to that of the Department of Water and Power, because they valued proper police protection as something, like water and electricity, essential to civic life.

By making the LAPD a praetorian guard, ostensibly above politics, they succeeded in eliminating the kinds of corruption characteristic of the 1930s and 1940s. Not even its worse critics could today claim that the department is corrupt to any noticeable degree in the sense of being on the take. Far from it: When it comes to the grosser forms of corruption--bribery and payoffs--the LAPD is squeaky clean, or so it seems.

Fifty years ago, Los Angeles decided it could not trust itself to abstain from corrupting its cops. This Tuesday, it will be asking and answering at the ballot box a comparable question: Can the city trust itself to govern the LAPD in a responsible manner by strengthening the authority of the Police Commission, the mayor and the City Council, and by making the police chief answerable to the public for his conduct?

In the case of Prop. G, citizens face a similar issue of protection. A half-century ago, the city protected itself against police corruption and political meddling by transforming the LAPD into a Guardia Civil. Prop. G now seeks to insulate, in a similar manner, the economy of Los Angeles.

An insulated LAPD grew harsh, unfeeling, detached from its constituency while achieving its hard-nosed, high-tech, spite-and-polish image. So, too, would the insulated L.A. economy envisioned in Prop. G have, in the long run, a result diametrically opposite to what it promises. Saved from petty corruption on the beat, the LAPD succumbed to hardening of heart. Precluded from participation in world markets, the L.A. economy would, like the LAPD, lose its flexibility, its ability to respond to new markets and opportunities. Los Angeles would become the Albania of U.S. cities.

It is no accident that rigidly controlled economies--Cuba, Albania, the former Soviet Union--are also characterized by harsh and autonomous police power, as well as widespread poverty among working people.

The defeat of Prop. F would keep the LAPD in its current alienation from its constituency. Police power would remain inflexible and unresponsive. Similarly, passage of Prop. G would ultimately fix the L.A. economy into an Albanian torpor. Seeking to protect the local economy--hence, local jobs, hence to fight poverty on the local level--Prop. G will actually drive jobs away by driving from the L.A. national (non-Californian) and international investment.

Does Los Angeles trust itself to govern its police department in a fair, flexible, responsible manner? Does Los Angeles trust itself to participate fairly and freely in a world economy? Or does it prefer to continue to fear the relationship between itself and its police and hence keep the LAPD insulated from democratic responsiveness? And make its economy an insulated cottage industry?

Police power and poverty. Through passage of Prop. F and defeat of Prop. G, Los Angeles has an opportunity to reinvent its future.