The Exception, Not the Rule

Until the moment he clammed up, invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, retired Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman had proved to be quite a talker.

There was, of course, his long-winded description of his racist, sexist, violent and corrupt ways to screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny. And before that, Fuhrman had told part of the story--his violence and hatred for “the citizens”--to the city’s Board of Pension Commissioners in his unsuccessful 1983 bid to secure an early retirement.

As part of that process, he’d also spoken with two psychiatrists retained by the city, as well as one referred by his attorney. And before that, when Fuhrman had successfully obtained a workers’ compensation leave of nearly two years, he had spoken with other medical examiners who found his claims of “psychiatric disability” more worthy than dubious.

The public record also shows that, before applying for workers’ comp, Fuhrman visited the offices on the fourth floor of a Chinatown bank building that house the LAPD’s Behavioral Science Services Section. This is where many officers go to work out their personal problems, and it’s where psychologist Debra Glaser has had confidential conversations with hundreds of officers over the past 15 years.

*

“Let me turn off my de-stress machine,” Glaser said as I sat down for my 9 a.m. appointment. She’d had an 8 a.m. session and had used the machine to provide soft sounds of nature that are said to soothe the nerves.

A police lieutenant had referred me to Glaser, and something she said on the phone had piqued my interest. No, she had told me, in all her years she had never heard a police officer express what may now be called Fuhrmanesque views.

In her office, she repeated that. And, Glaser added, she couldn’t recall an officer boasting or confessing to acts of brutality. Nor had she heard an officer describe the falsification of evidence.

One reason for this may be that the therapist’s task isn’t to investigate wrongdoing but to help officers cope with the pressures of their job. But Glaser suggests there’s another explanation.

The vast majority of cops, she says, don’t describe such attitudes or behavior simply because they are honorable men and women who don’t have such attitudes or engage in such behavior.

They’re not racists, they’re not brutal, they’re not liars. They have a difficult job and, for the most part, they give it their best, honest effort, day after day, night after night.

They may visit the Chinatown offices for any combination of reasons--a troubled marriage, alcoholism, problems with bosses--but they’ve definitely been coming in larger numbers in recent years, especially since the videotaped beating of Rodney King more than four years ago.

Since the King beating, the LAPD’s reputation and morale has suffered through a series of troubles--the slow response to the riots, the Christopher Commission hearings, the torturous departure of former Chief Daryl F. Gates, the controversies involving Chief Willie L. Williams and, now, the fiasco that is Mark Fuhrman.

As department morale goes down, the level of stress has gone up, and psychologists have been added to meet the demand. Glaser says that, while she’s heard very little concerning police misconduct on her job, she’s heard plenty of officers express their dismay and discouragement over how the public seldom expresses gratitude for a job well done, how the politicians use the LAPD to advance personal ambitions, how the media will devote more ink and air time to the alleged misdeeds of officers than to their acts above and beyond the call of duty.

It’s a sad coincidence that on the same day Mark Fuhrman dominated the news by taking the 5th, the LAPD had staged its annual Medal of Valor ceremony, honoring 17 officers for acts of heroism. Several put their lives on the line to save strangers.

Then again, the contrast provided an interesting news angle. This year’s Medal of Valor ceremony got more media coverage than some.

*

The good guys, we hope, are out on patrol. But with the O.J. Simpson trial approaching its conclusion, it is Fuhrman who remains the object of interest.

Until McKinny’s audiotapes were heard, Fuhrman could have passed as a poster boy for the LAPD’s ability to rehabilitate problem officers. When Fuhrman was denied early retirement, the prevailing view was that he was a malingerer trying to con his way to a lucrative exit.

It’s interesting, however, that the first LAPD psychologist who counseled Fuhrman had recommended that this was one officer who shouldn’t be allowed to carry a gun.

Such a recommendation, Glaser says, “is not something that is done lightly.”