Chief Williams Visits School for Questioning

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams faced a much friendlier crowd than his critics on the City Council on Thursday when he spoke to students at Monroe High School about his work to bolster the LAPD’s staff, its reputation and its morale over the past three years.

In a talk that was part inspiration and part public relations, Williams recapped his 32-year career in law enforcement from being a patrol officer in Philadelphia to chief of police in Los Angeles. He also made a pitch for his community-policing projects and for the positive work officers do that often goes unnoticed.

“When I graduated high school, I never in my life thought I was going to be a police officer,” Williams told a group of about 70 students and teachers at the school’s Law and Government Magnet program in North Hills. “I made the decision for economic reasons. I could make $5,000 as a police officer in 1963, double what I was making at my other job.”

Arriving in Los Angeles in June, 1992, after the city’s most devastating riots, Williams said he knew his honeymoon was over before it began. At the top of his agenda, he said, was repairing the damaged relationship between the department and residents of various parts of the city, dealing with internal tensions and implementing changes suggested by the Christopher Commission.

After his 12-minute talk, the students probed Williams about everything from the department’s racist and sexist image to his daily schedule, the O.J. Simpson trial and his five-year business plan for the department.

“Within the next two years we want to reorganize the department to get rid of the 17-level management, move more people into the field and maximize our resources,” he said. “I want to get to a level where the public feels comfortable that they’ll be treated with respect.”

One student questioned the success of the department’s new joint task force with the FBI to investigate 1,000 unsolved murder cases in South Los Angeles. Williams was quick to point out that the 2-week-old task force caught its first suspect in Chicago a few days ago.

Veno Myles, a junior at the school and a member of the LAPD’s Law Enforcement Explorers program for high school students, was convinced by Williams’ talk that a department as large as the LAPD could make significant changes.

“I learned that a newcomer can really come into the L.A. city Police Department and virtually change it around and make the negative image into a positive,” Veno said.