Q&A; : New Police Chief: A Compton Kid Who Made It to the Top

Hourie Taylor, 46, took over as chief of the Compton Police Department on Jan. 1. He had been acting chief since April.

Changing of the guard: Taylor (whose first name is pronounced Hy-ear-e) replaced former Chief Terry Ebert, who was placed on administrative leave in April after an audit of department bank accounts revealed that funds were missing. His leave began, coincidentally, the first day of the riots. Ebert was granted stress disability leave in July and retired shortly afterward.

Background: Taylor grew up in Compton and is a 24-year veteran of the department. He worked extensively with gang units, becoming a national expert on the subculture of the Bloods and Crips.

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Q: You have been an officer in Compton for 24 years and spent a lot of that time on the streets. What are the most pressing needs of this community?

A: A significant part of our population is under the age of 25. Secondly, we have a substantial number of our people that are on some form of assistance, be it county aid, Social Security or whatever, and there are a large number that are unemployed.

We need jobs in this community, we need businesses, places for people to shop, and better, more affordable housing. We need a more positive environment, one where people feel they can live and raise their children without the fear of being victimized by some kind of crime.

Q: What do the citizens need of their Police Department?

A They need to believe in us. We’re a small agency, and I think we have a unique relationship with our community. A lot of us on the force grew up here. A lot of us are minorities who perhaps have a unique understanding of our environment and the people.

Especially in a small community . . . if you live and work here, you conduct yourself differently because the very person you may have a confrontation with on the street is the same person you’re shopping with the next day.

Q: So do you look for officers who live in Compton?

A: Oh no. We just look for people who are sensitive to the needs of the community. That can be anybody. We don’t want someone who escalates situations, we want someone who can handle it in a low-key fashion with the least amount of friction and difficulty possible.

Q: You grew up in Compton. When did you move away?

A: In 1974 I moved to Inglewood. I would not have moved, but it’s difficult to live in the community you work in as a police officer. I was working narcotics at the time and I started getting death threats, even against my family. I was married and had two very small kids. There was supposedly a contract out on me. It might have been just a rumor. But it can get uncomfortable when, say, you’re out watering your lawn and here comes a guy driving down the street who you arrested.

Q: How many years did you lead Compton’s gang unit?

A: From about 1985 until I made chief. About seven years.

Q: How did your experience in the gang unit prepare you to lead the Police Department?

A: It gave me a fantastic opportunity to meet other people and be exposed to other police agencies. As I became involved in public speaking, traveling around the country to talk to other agencies about gangs and exchange information, I got a good overview of policing.

The experience of traveling around and speaking also did something for my communicative skills and my self-esteem.

Q: Has the truce between black gangs decreased violent crime in Compton?

A: Yes it has, based on what we see in the streets, but we also see it statistically. In 1991 we had 87 homicides. In 1992, we had about 59. Since the civil unrest, we only counted one black-gang related homicide.

Q: But you’ve also said that the gang truce is unraveling. Are you now seeing an increase in black gang violence?

A: Yes. We’re seeing an increase in activity. But there also seems to be a change. A lot of these guys are gone. They’ve moved on to other things or they are incarcerated. A lot of the older gang members are just tired of it, and they’re trying to change their lives. They’re looking for some positive direction, going to school and getting jobs.

Q: How about Latino gangs? Have you seen a decrease in violence there?

A: No, it’s the opposite. There’s been much more violence. Part of it is the changing demographics. We’re getting a lot more Latinos here: from Mexico, Central America, South A:merica and all over. It’s not that they’re all in gangs, but just as we saw a proliferation of black gangs in the early ‘80s, now we’re seeing a proliferation of Latino gangs.

Q: Do you believe the truce between black gangs will have a permanent impact?

A: Yes, I do. I don’t think the violence will ever again reach the level that it was. They’re still battling; don’t get me wrong.

What I would like to do is change things from a preventive standpoint--try to impact those kids who are at an impressionable age, like 8, 9, and 10. We need to stop them at the point where they are being recruited by gangs.

You know, we had a very successful anti-smoking campaign in this country. I used to be a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker. The only reason I stopped smoking is because my kids were being bombarded with this anti-smoking stuff in school. I would light up a cigarette and my kids would start crying, saying how I was going to die. So I promised to stop smoking and did. Jan. 1, 1978. I haven’t touched a cigarette since.

I don’t see why we can’t do that from a gang and drug standpoint. Take these kids at an age where they start developing bad patterns and bombard them with anti-gang, anti-drug information. Start in the third and fourth grades. We can’t depend on them learning this in the home.

Q: It sounds like you’re placing a lot of responsibility for prevention on the schools. What can the police do?

A: We have to be part of the process. All the community organizations--schools, police, everyone--need to behave like one entity. We must work together. For far too long, police departments have been isolated. Our job was only to handle crime and watch while all of society’s ills and failures were heaped on the poor police, whose resources and personnel have been strained. A police department is only as good as its citizens.

Q: You said that Compton is changing demographically. Is it now 44% Latino?

A: Or higher . . . (perhaps) 50 or 55%.

Q: Is it strange for you to see the city change like that? When you were growing up in Compton, wasn’t it a mostly black community?

A: Oh, no. My family moved here in February of ’52. We moved from Watts to Alabama Street. It was a brand-new housing development. At the time, this was an upper-middle-class black neighborhood. Compton at that time was very segregated and most of the blacks lived west of Wilmington. It remained that way until about the late ‘50s when there was a little integration.

In the late ‘60s or early ‘70s, that’s when this community really changed and became predominantly black. That’s when the whites began to exit the community.

But it doesn’t feel strange to see the community change. I mean, the whole world is in a state of flux. I don’t see how anyone can expect things to remain the same. You just have to remain sensitive to the changes.

Q: Do you know what the racial demographics of your department are?

A: Right now, this is an estimation, we’re probably about 50 to 55% African-American, 30% white and about 15% Latino.

Q: Do you feel there’s a need to change the racial balance of the department? Should a police department reflect the racial makeup of its community?

A: Well certainly, if possible, I think it should. The department should reflect its community, throughout the ranks.

We’re trying to hire Latinos now. We’re running into a lot of situations where the person reporting an incident, or the victim, is Spanish-speaking and we are having problems with having available Spanish-speaking officers. But we just had four new hires and one is A:frican-American and three are Latino.

Q: New hires are unusual, aren’t they? You have said Compton has one of the lowest officer-to-citizen ratios in the state. How does that affect this department and its efforts to fight crime?

A: Ideally, I would like to have more people. But we don’t. We were originally authorized to have 145 people and we had 10 vacancies. Several years ago, our vacancies were cut to balance the city budget. With more people, we could do a lot more. We still know we have a mission, a responsibility, and we have to do it.

Q: While we’re on the subject of your budget, we know that your predecessor left after money was discovered missing from Police Department accounts. At least two audits were conducted. What can you tell us about the results of those audits?

A: That investigation is still ongoing. I can’t comment on that.

Q: What is being done to ensure that department money is spent properly?

A: We have restructured some oversight of the different bank accounts. We established some policy and procedures to ensure that those kinds of things don’t happen again. As a matter of fact, I called the other day for an audit of some funds--not because anything was wrong, but I want to make these audits of our cash accounts a regular, semiannual thing.

Q: Are you concerned that the secrecy, the silence kept by the city and police surrounding this investigation will affect the trust between the citizens and the department?

A: I don’t know that there has been any secrecy.

Q: Results of the investigation have never been made public. The citizens were never told how much money was missing, if it was stolen and by whom.

A: The investigation is still ongoing and it would be unfair to everyone involved to release any information.

Q: Like most departments, you sometimes get complaints from the community about your police officers. How do you resolve those and are you happy with the reputation of the Compton P.D.?

A: I would hope we have the reputation of being very aggressive with discipline. During my tenure, we’ve been very strict. I have attempted to make our disciplinary process more effective.

And most of our complaints are not about excessive force. They tend to be about procedural violations or an officer saying something that a citizen doesn’t like. But one complaint is too many. And officers do get suspended and, on occasion, terminated.

Q: You stepped in as chief, in effect, on the first day of the riots. What did you learn from that experience?

A: Well, it truly was a baptism by fire. But the people in this agency were all supportive of me and I really saw a strong bond in this agency--a true feeling of family and a willingness to work hard and get the job done.

We were here for three days by ourselves: 135 people trying to get a big job done. We might not have the equipment or personnel, but there was a real dedication. And I think the citizens of this community realize that, based on the severity of the problems out there, we did one fantastic job.

Q: Did you ever consider leaving Compton for another department?

A: I got hired here in 1969. I made sergeant in 1974--about the same time the DEA (federal Drug Enforcement Agency) offered me a job.

I was 27 years old--extremely young for a sergeant. I could see myself being a lieutenant at 32. It didn’t happen. I was a sergeant for 14 years. I got extremely frustrated. I toyed with the idea of going to the FBI. But I decided I had too much Compton P.D. blue in my blood. So I stayed.

In 1986, the gang unit started. It was a new discipline and I was told, “Hey, it’s your thing, go with it.” I was allowed some creativity and got to organize and plan. A:nd I got to travel a little.

In 1988, I took another lieutenant’s exam. I came up second in the scores and made lieutenant. And now this. Becoming chief like I did really surprised me. But boy, did it make my dad proud. I still feel real humble about this whole thing.

Q: Do you feel like you’re finally out of the “baptism by fire?”

A: Oh, no. There’s something different here every day. It’s been a very, very interesting 1992. But it proved one thing: A kid from Compton can make it all the way to the top.