Woodland Hills : Rabbi Explains Leaving Police Commission

Rabbi Gary Greenebaum received both applause and criticism Thursday from the Valley Jewish Business Leaders Assn. over his resignation from the city Police Commission.

“You stand tall in this community, be proud of what you did,” said Harry Sokol, an industrial realtor, after Greenebaum delivered a 30-minute explanation of why he had resigned a month ago, when the City Council overturned a reprimand of Police Chief Willie Williams.

“What troubles me very much about it is you had the opportunity to do good for a great number of people,” said critic Carol Rowen, a board member of the Jewish business group who is also on the city’s Harbor Commission. “I understand your principles, but the best way of fighting something is staying on the inside.”

Greenebaum attended the breakfast meeting at the Warner Center Marriott to explain his resignation. It was the first of several speaking engagements he has accepted related to his resignation.

“Power is a very difficult thing to let go of,” Greenebaum said. But after the City Council overturned the commission’s reprimand of Williams for allegedly lying about accepting free accommodations in Las Vegas, Greenebaum concluded that the commission had been stripped of real power to reform the Police Department.

That left him a choice between holding onto the trappings of power or telling the truth “and hoping some good would come of it,” he said.

“I could have explained [a decision to stay] 15 different ways,” Greenebaum said. “But I knew it in my kishkes [guts], it wasn’t right.”

As a rabbi, Greenebaum said he had a deeper responsibility to speak out when it seemed that the efforts to reform the department were floundering. “Rabbis are seen as role models,” he said. “I try to be a role model as much as possible.”

The rabbi was appointed to the commission in 1993. During his talk, he touched on how he had worked to represent minorities on the commission. He also told the group how he had explained to members of the black community that as a Jew, he understood through “historical memory” what it is like “for the police to view you as a suspect just for being who you are.”

But Rochelle Mende, another board member and a reserve officer for the LAPD’s Devonshire Division, defended the Police Department, saying: “The minute you put on that blue uniform, you are a target, too. I think we need to look at both sides of these issues.”