The ‘New’ LAPD Has Taken Reform to Heart : Police: Within the ranks, the reaction varies from support to longing for Gates.

Today’s Los Angeles Police Department is definitely not the department it used to be. Reforms recommended by the Webster and Christopher commissions still echo in the halls of Parker Center. Police Chief Willie L. Williams has turned much of the talk about proposed change into reality.

One of his most notable achievements is political. Relations among the LAPD, the Police Commission, the City Council and the mayor’s office are friendly and supportive. Williams is perhaps the only LAPD police chief in history to have had breakfast with a police union and lunch with the American Civil Liberties Union in the same day.

The new chief has also moved to aggressively implement other Christopher proposals. He has hired and promoted more women and minority officers; implemented tough sexual-harrassment and anti-discrimination policies; assembled a command staff that keeps a watchful eye on incidents involving the use of force, and has dramatically improved police-community relations.

But Williams’ ability to bring about other commission recommendations, especially in personnel and equipment, has been constrained by a lack of money. With the number of sworn officers below 8,000 and with the near-term prospects of adding to the force dim, community policing in Los Angeles seems less and less an option. The LAPD’s civilian staff, meantime, dwindles and is on the verge of collapse. Officers continue to drive vehicles with more than 140,000 miles on them. And dispatchers still must use obsolete communications equipment, though passage of Proposition M last November will alleviate that problem.

Yet, the publicly applauded organizational changes imposed from the top have produced quite different responses as they have trickled down through the ranks. LAPD officers are actually marching to three separate beats.

* Hail to the Chief . These officers welcome and genuinely support Williams’ changes as sensible responses to what they perceived to be a racist and sexist department harboring an “us vs. them” mentality toward the public. Recruiting more women and minorities into the officer ranks is a necessary step toward improving departmental equity and community relations. These officers are strong supporters of community policing, because they believe that the community, not the police, should orchestrate peace in Los Angeles.

* Obla di Obla da Life Goes On . Although Williams means well, these cops believe that changes at the top produce relatively few changes in the way the cop on the street does his or her job. Parker Center is an ivory tower run by people who come up with special programs that are here one day, gone the next.

* The Way We Were . There remains a segment of the LAPD that laments the passing of Daryl F. Gates and the hard-nosed professional image he carried to the public. They can quickly produce statistics indicating that Operation Hammer suppressed just as many homicides as either the gang truce or the mayor’s neighbor-to-neighbor program. Among other things, they warn that community policing and the hiring of more women patrol officers will further diminish criminals’ fear of the LAPD. In general, these officers can hardly wait until they have put in their 20 years so they can retire.

At present, there is no reliable way of determining just how many LAPD officers fall into each of these categories. All that can be fairly said is that there is less unity of opinion about the “new” LAPD coming from within the ranks than there is coming from the community. But even those officers who scoff at Williams and his reforms will concede that having the community on their side is a change for the better.

The LAPD is unlikely to become all that the Christopher Commission would like it to be. But if Williams can secure a dependable revenue source and persuade the public that reform takes time, he will come a lot closer than most people would have dreamed a year ago. He has already proved, in his preparations for possible civil unrest following the verdicts in the Rodney G. King civil-rights trial, that he can turn operational mistakes into organizational lessons.