The Fuhrman Issue Clashes With Riordan’s Style

A satirist or a political enemy couldn’t have dreamed up a better way to poke fun at Mayor Richard Riordan than the news conference he is scheduled to hold Wednesday upon his return from a French cycling vacation.

It’s to promote a new television show called “LAPD” in which our cops will be shown performing true-life good deeds. A “Dragnet” for the ‘90s.

Think of the timing. Eight days after the playing of the Mark Fuhrman tapes in the O.J. Simpson case, six days after two LAPD detectives were suspended for falsifying evidence in another case, Riordan finds himself promoting a booster-type L.A. cop show.

The news conference, of course, was arranged long before the Fuhrman tapes surfaced. Riordan’s aides said he will now use the occasion to fully outline his views on the Fuhrman situation and the broad question of LAPD reform. After the news conference, he will visit police officers and speak at the department’s Medal of Valor luncheon--events designed to show that the mayor is back and in charge.

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That won’t be easy, given the influence of generations of LAPD cowboy cops who follow the “Dirty Harry” model of policing. Chief Bill Parker created the mold and it was left untouched by his successors, most notably by Daryl F. Gates, who wanted to be the toughest cowboy of all.

And although a 1992 City Charter amendment increased the mayor’s and City Council’s authority over the police chief and his department, political authority is limited. Making the situation worse, the politicians, bending with the winds, are unable to decide whether to shake up or praise an LAPD that is loved and hated, respected and feared.

Riordan himself is beset with the same conflicts. Elected with huge majorities from police-supporting San Fernando Valley and Westside neighborhoods, the mayor also must lead African American and Latino residents in Eastside and South-Central communities long suspicious of the cops. Not even the Valley is completely police-friendly, as anyone knows from visiting predominantly Latino and black Pacoima and a few other areas.

The difficulties Riordan faces in South-Central were clear Tuesday night when the Police Commission, which he appoints to supervise the Police Department, held a community meeting at the Martin Luther King Jr. High School auditorium.

The packed auditorium was steaming hot. Eight hours earlier, the Fuhrman tapes had been played in Judge Lance A. Ito’s courtroom--and over television and radio. People were impatient to express their own views on the Police Department.

Yet the commissioners, who serve part time for a small stipend, insisted on slogging through a pre-scheduled agenda, as if this were just another night.

Top police officials gave long briefings on the progress of community policing, the LAPD’s efforts to give residents a voice in how the cops administer law enforcement in neighborhoods. Instead of being an unfriendly presence behind the wheel of a patrol car, the police officers are supposed to be more like old-fashioned cops on the beat.

In a highly optimistic progress report, Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, who is in charge of South-Central community policing, said police stations there “are becoming more like libraries.” He got some cheers, as did Chief Willie L. Williams, who pledged that the Fuhrman affair “will not be swept under the rug.” City Councilman Nate Holden received a nice hand when he said there “are many good police officers and they need our support more than ever.”

But the speech that may be remembered longest came from a woman in the audience, who complained that the meeting had dragged on for two hours before anyone in the audience got a chance to talk. “You have taken up two hours of our time,” she said. The loud applause showed that everyone in the room, except perhaps the Police Commission, agreed with her.

“It was kind of bizarre in some respects,” said Anthony Thigpen, an African American community leader who attended the meeting. “The people were not particularly interested in show and tell . . . and there was not the opportunity for dialogue by the community itself.”

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The group headed by Thigpen, Agenda, wants more dialogue, including giving neighborhood groups a say in police deployment. If the neighbors favor closing down a prostitution motel, that’s what the cops should do, even if Downtown police headquarters has a different priority. Residents should also be told of charges of brutality and misconduct against individual cops--and be informed of the outcome of such allegations.

This is too radical for most of Riordan’s Valley and Westside supporters, and no doubt for the mayor himself. The department certainly would oppose such proposals.

What the mayor must do, an adviser told me, is maintain “a delicate balance. You can’t condemn the LAPD. If you do that, you are doing an extraordinary disservice to the town.” The issue, the adviser said, is “how do we invigorate confidence in the Los Angeles Police Department and also say this kind of behavior [Fuhrman’s] is totally unacceptable?”

This won’t be easy for the mayor. He’s a dollars-and-cents, bricks-and-mortar kind of guy. Dealing with the basic issue of the Fuhrman tapes--the extent of racist behavior in the LAPD--is not his style.

Rather, Riordan’s main idea for police reform is pure bricks-and-mortar thinking--put more police officers on the street. He hasn’t talked much about how you keep young Mark Fuhrmans out of the ranks of new hires.

It’s not known whether the new television show, “LAPD,” will deal with such issues, but the mayor certainly won’t be able to escape them at his news conference Wednesday.