COVER STORY : Questioning the Color of Authority : In Diverse Central Los Angeles, 79% of the Supervisors Running LAPD Stations Are Anglo

When then-Capt. Art Lopez supervised the Hollenbeck police station in the late 1980s, he was known for building bridges in the Eastside’s predominantly Latino neighborhoods. Residents say the Spanish-speaking Lopez was a familiar face at schools, community meetings and social functions from Highland Park to Boyle Heights.

Because Lopez is Latino, he was viewed by community members as one of their own, residents say, and his presence assured people the 240 officers under his command were sensitive to their needs.

But he was--and still is--the exception.

In Central Los Angeles, the captains and lieutenants who run police stations bear little resemblance ethnically to the people they serve, according to data from the Los Angeles Police Department. Of the 80 captains and lieutenants at the nine stations that cover neighborhoods from the Eastside to Koreatown to South-Central, 63--or 79%--are Anglo. Eight are black, eight are Latino and one is Korean.

The area, in contrast, is one of the most diverse in the nation, with Latinos constituting 54% of Central Los Angeles’ 1.4 million residents, blacks 28% and Asians 10%, according to the 1990 Census. Spanish is the main language spoken at home by 49% of the area’s residents, the census showed, and another 9% speak an Asian language in their homes.

More minority captains and lieutenants would help build trust at a time when the department is beginning community-based policing, the cornerstone of proposed reforms to reach out to the public and restore confidence in the department, residents and experts say.

“When a white commanding officer takes charge in a minority neighborhood, most people feel they are not going to get justice,” said Troy Smith, director of the Greater Watts Justice Center, a legal-aid organization.

But the prospect for change in the ranks of captains and lieutenants, which have remained more than 80% Anglo in the past decade, is not encouraging.

On the department’s current list of leading candidates for promotion to captain--rankings based on a written exam and an interview--there is only one minority among the top 19. At the lieutenant level, the city projects that Anglos will receive about 77% of the 72 lieutenant promotions expected by June, 1994.

The Christopher Commission, in its sweeping report on the department after the March, 1991, beating of Rodney G. King, said many minority officers cited “white dominance of managerial positions . . . as one reason for the department’s continued tolerance for racially motivated behavior.” And a recent Times Poll found that 75% of the people in minority areas throughout the city think racism is common in the Police Department.

Minority lieutenants and captains would help “promote a different attitude (in the community). That’s something (the) LAPD should recognize,” said Suk Young Choe, a business consultant who has lived in Koreatown for 20 years.

An absence of minority supervisors, however, does not mean relations with the community cannot be good. In South Los Angeles, residents speak highly of Capt. Pat Froehle, an Anglo officer who has reached out to the Latino and African-American neighborhoods in the department’s 77th Street Division. “Although it is desirable that you mirror the community, the most important thing is that you have a service heart,” Froehle said.

Other factors, too, will be needed to make community-based policing work. Residents say they would like to see more police substations and patrols in their neighborhoods. And law enforcement experts say the department will have to change its paramilitary methods and work closer with residents to fight crime.

But as Lopez, who was promoted to commander and is now stationed in South Los Angeles, pointed out about minority supervisors: “You immediately build a bridge with the individuals in your community because of what you are.”

In community-based policing, police and residents work together to devise the best ways to reduce crime. The idea is to give residents a greater voice and to develop a partnership based on trust and respect, which differs from traditional tactics in which officers deal with residents only after a crime is committed.

Experts say community-based policing requires a close relationship between police stations and their neighborhoods, which means the captains and lieutenants are key.

More than half the patrol officers in Central Los Angeles are minorities. But they do not have the authority to set the tone for their stations, determine priorities and hold other officers accountable for their actions, said Jack R. Greene, a Temple University criminal justice professor. Greene advised Police Chief Willie L. Williams on community policing when he was police commissioner in Philadelphia and will help with the program in Los Angeles next year under a $379,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice.

In the department, a senior captain oversees each police station and a junior captain runs the station’s patrol division, which can include 200 to 300 officers. Those patrol officers work on three shifts supervised by lieutenants. Other lieutenants run detective units of about 50 officers each.

Since 1982, minorities have made little or no progress breaking into those supervisory ranks, department data shows.

Citywide, there are 272 captains and lieutenants, compared with 289 in 1982. Ten years ago, there were two Asian lieutenants and no Asian captains--the same as today. There were three black captains and 16 black lieutenants 10 years ago, compared with four black captains and 15 black lieutenants today. There are seven Latino captains today, compared with four in 1982, while the number of Latino lieutenants more than doubled from 11 to 23.

Those minority captains and lieutenants were promoted because they placed high enough on eligibility lists, which rank officers based on their scores on a written examination and an interview. Every two years, the testing process starts over, and a new list is compiled.

Williams, who assumed command of the 7,800-officer force in June, has promised a more diverse department. Williams’ spokesman, Cmdr. David Gascon, said the chief’s recent high-level promotions show he is keeping his promise. Williams last month promoted a black to assistant chief, a black to deputy chief and two Latinos to deputy chief and commander.

However, at the captain and lieutenant levels, many minority officers say their promotional prospects are bleak.

Of the 98 officers on the current captain list, for example, a Portuguese-American is the only minority among the top 19 candidates. “At that rate, we’ll never catch up,” said one lieutenant who has taken the captain’s exam twice but failed to place in the top 30.

But Larry Niles, chief analyst for the city’s personnel department, predicted at least two African-Americans and a Latino will be in a position to be promoted to captain from the current rankings, which will be in effect until June, 1994. On the current lieutenant list, which expires in June, 1994, Niles projected that promotions would go to 56 Anglos, 11 Latinos, five blacks and one Asian.

And on the sergeant list, which expires in July, 1993, he projected that promotions would go to 139 Anglos, 44 blacks, 39 Latinos and six Asians.

To increase minority promotions, a U.S. District Court judge in August approved an affirmative action plan for sergeants, lieutenants and detectives. But because of the life span of the current promotional lists, the hiring plan will not take effect until June, 1994, for lieutenants and next July, for sergeants.

But the plan has a major drawback: It will have no impact if minority candidates do not score high enough to be promoted, said attorney Theresa Fay-Bustillos, who represents Latino officers whose discrimination complaint four years ago led to the plan.

In the past, the main stumbling block for minorities has been the written examination, which has accounted for 70% of the overall score, Fay-Bustillos and others said.

The new hiring plan will require the department to base 60% of the overall score on the written test, but there is no way to know whether the change will remedy the situation. If minorities do not score well in the next round of tests, then the city could change the testing so that a candidate’s rank on the promotions list would be based solely on the oral interview, said Niles. They would still have to take the written test, but it would be on a pass-fail basis.

Not surprisingly, the affirmative action plan has angered some Anglo officers.

Sgt. Dan Pugel, an Anglo and co-founder of Officers for Equality, said his group is appealing the plan in U.S. District Court because “it is discriminatory in nature against non-minorities.” He said about 20% of the group’s approximately 300 members are women and minorities.

Gascon said the department has no plan to deal with tensions that might arise between Anglo and minority officers over promotions, but he stressed that everyone will be evaluated fairly. “It’s very important that (officers) understand there’s always room for performance, regardless of race or gender,” he said.

Minority officers say they have done poorly on the written tests because the exams place more emphasis on memorizing facts and figures than on leadership skills. They also complain of an informal grooming process in which coveted positions, such as personal aides to the two assistant chiefs and two deputy chiefs, have gone largely to Anglo officers.

“When you get these positions, you’re always working with the same (commanding officers) who sit on the (interview) boards,” one Latino detective said. “You automatically have an edge on the next guy.”

Gascon said the department sponsors seminars to teach test-taking and interview skills to help officers improve their chances for promotion.

The promotions Williams made in November to his command staff will influence the department as it moves toward community-based policing, Gascon said. “We definitely have diversity in impact positions,” he said.

Some veteran officers, however, maintain that real change will not occur without more diversity in the lieutenant and captain ranks.

Racist behavior by some patrol officers, for example, would be less likely if there were more minority supervisors at the stations, said one black officer. As an example, he cited the Christopher Commission report, which included transcripts of computer messages sent by some officers that made offensive remarks about Latinos and blacks.

“You can bet if you had more minority captains and lieutenants, the people working for them would be less likely to make those types of remarks,” the officer said.

One Anglo lieutenant who works in South Los Angeles said the racist computer exchanges resulted from bad attitudes on the part of individual officers rather than a lack of minority supervisors. He supports diversifying the department’s command structure, but said it is more important to have a higher percentage of minority patrol officers because their faces are seen in the community most often.

“Sure, captains and lieutenants run the show . . . (But) we aren’t the ones walking the streets,” the lieutenant said.

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents portions of South-Central, supports the idea of the Police Department mirroring the community at all levels. But he said the involvement of residents in community-based policing is more important than the ethnic makeup of police supervisors and that the department should focus on what the “community is saying.”

But Greene of Temple University said residents would be more willing to work with police if they have a bond with the supervisors who run the police stations. “Community-policing starts with a very fundamental premise,” he said. “The police are the public, and the public are the police.”

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Commanders and Their Communities

One goal of community-based policing is to have the ethnic makeup of the Los Angeles Police Department’s supervisors resemble that of the area they serve. That command structure in the Los Angeles Police Department remains overwhelmingly Anglo while Central Los Angeles grows increasingly diverse. The department has no data on how many of its officers speak foreign languages.

The Wilshire police station, which is in the West Bureau, patrols a small section of Koreatown and a portion of City Times’ Southwest area. At the Wilshire station, there are two captains (one white and one black) and five lieutenants (one Korean and four whites).

South Bureau

Community Latino*: 36% Black: 56% Asian**: 2% Anglo: 5% Other: 1% * Spanish is spoken by 34% of Latino residents. ** Asian languages--primarily Tagalog, Chinese and Korean--are spoken by 1% of Asian residents.

8 Captains: 6 Anglos 2 Blacks

24 Lieutenants: 20 Anglos 1 Black 3 Latinos

Central Bureau

Community Latino*: 65% Black: 8% Asian**: 16% Anglo: 11% * Spanish is spoken by 59% of Latino residents. ** Asian languages--primarily Tagalog, Chinese and Korean--are spoken by 14% of Asian residents.

10 Captains: 8 Anglos 1 Black 1 Latino

31 Lieutenants: 24 Anglos 3 blacks 4 Latinos

Source: Los Angeles Police Department and 1990 U.S. Census Researched by ROBERT J. LOPEZ and MAUREEN LYONS / Los Angeles Times