Working People : ‘The Diversity They Want, They’re Losing’

Yes, I’m thinking of leaving. Twelve classmates who I went through the academy with have left to go to other agencies. Some of it has to do with pay--I stopped showing my wife recruitment fliers from other (police) agencies because she sees how much more they’re paid. I hear the stuff going on with the City Council and the chief and it scares me--makes me wonder whether it’s time to get out of here.

There’s the question of litigation exposure. With the LAPD you get involved with a shooting and you have people who are going to bring up past shootings that were questionable or even bad--make this direct linkage between the past and the LAPD today. To be held accountable for 30 years of the department’s history, that’s a burden no police officer can work under. It’s not fair to keep beating people with the past when these aren’t the same officers. It’s not the same department. It’s almost half minority--women and people of color.

I grew up in South Central. I hate using the term because it’s become a kind of media shorthand for “bad neighborhood”. That’s not what I see. Crime has become democratic. There are areas in L.A. that have problems that need to be addressed but they’re not “bad areas” because there are good people in them and I understand their pain. I’m not some cowboy from the 1960s.

Post-academy training is important. I do a lot on my own--an officer’s safety course, a week in Arizona at a shooting course. Other agencies allow their officers to do some of that as training days or reimburse them for part of it. Every time you see what’s called a “bad shooting”--that’s lack of training. No one’s out there wanting to shoot someone; but we get scared just like anyone else.

Housing is a big issue. It’s ironic that here we are two, three months after the ACLU released its report talking about police officers living out of town and for the last year my wife and I have have been looking for a house. A lot of officers would love to live in the city; they just can’t afford it. On the Westside, a house is $279,000 and even though I’m a veteran I couldn’t afford that. Atlantic City, N. J., funded a program offering low-interest loans for officers living in the city.

There are people in the City Council who are very supportive but sometimes comments coming out of city government hurt. We work for them. We want to be the best. Most officers have a sense of fair play. The Christopher Commission had a lot of good things in it, but the implementation should be based on education, not just on negatives. The very cultural diversity they want, they’re losing. A number of my classmates who left were female and minorities.

The tangibles are much greater at other departments. The intangibles are greater here. There is a lot of opportunity and I’ve been very fortunate in that regard. But the thing that keeps officers at the LAPD is the pride in the people they work with and the pride in the badge they wear. People have to be careful when they attack officers’ pride. You can start pushing people to “think mercenary” and you don’t want to make officers think of the bottom line (in) dollars.

Give us a mission and if there’s a problem give us your ideas how to fix it. But just to keep beating up on us--that’s where people say, “Forget it, I’m leaving.”