Clashes Over Union’s Role Reflect Divisions in LAPD : Police: Critics call league a white male bastion that blocks reforms. Backers cite efforts to widen constituency.

If there is a window on the soul of Los Angeles’ police union, it might be the newspaper called the “Thin Blue Line.”

On the pages of the Los Angeles Police Protective League’s monthly publication, cops are the righteous and beleaguered few.

Pitted against increasingly brazen and violent criminals, commentaries by union leaders say, they are also tormented by a host of other villains: a “lying” police chief, “leftist” City Hall politicians, a district attorney hellbent on putting good cops in jail, those “hemorrhoids of society”--the press--and, of course, the “lugubrious egotists” at the ACLU, who bash police to protect the “lawless barbarian members of our society.”

Such sharp feelings may mirror the bedrock conservatism of many of the union’s 8,000 members, but they also fuel increasing criticism, from both inside and outside its ranks, that the Police Protective League is out of touch.

With the release of the shocking tape recordings of retired Detective Mark Fuhrman, pressure is mounting for the league to modify its traditional position as purely an employee advocate, with a platform that also responds to bigotry and brutality.

In a department where women and minorities are now a majority, critics say the union leadership represents the “cowboy” days of white male dominance and tough-guy policing. They claim the PPL, as it is known, foments negativity, fails to represent the needs of its women and minority members, and obstructs reforms designed to reduce excessive force.

League directors say their biting commentaries merely reflect a membership that itself feels under attack. They say recent actions prove they are willing to reach out to a wider constituency, both in the ranks and in the community at large: For the first time ever, a woman last month joined the PPL’s board of directors. A “Thin Blue Line” commentary welcomed gay and lesbian officers attending a conference as “brothers and sisters.” And full-page advertisements last week in three newspapers condemned the racism of Fuhrman, whom the union once embraced and supported with $15,000 in legal fees.

The fight for the soul of Los Angeles’ police union, though, is far from over. The organization is yet to elect a black to its board of directors. It recently was hit with a lawsuit from black officers that accused the union of being a “bastion of white supremacy.” It has been left to explain positions in which it appeared to back white, male officers over their minority and women counterparts.

In interviews, several league directors conceded that the organization is grappling with how to represent officers and still appeal to the larger public.

“Some of our members don’t want a dime’s worth” of outreach to the citizenry, union president Cliff Ruff said in an interview last week. “That struggle politically goes on right here as we speak,” said Ruff, a 31-year veteran, who faces reelection to the league board next month. He said his own future as head of the PPL may depend on how well he can balance tough union boosterism with an outreach that improves the department’s standing in the community.

The most recent test of the league’s leadership came with the release of the tape recordings in which Fuhrman denigrated women and boasted about abusing minorities and fabricating evidence. The league’s strong backing of Fuhrman prior to release of the tapes threw the organization into a “grave crisis” over what its response should be, said one union leader who asked not to be named. The steadfast defender of individual officers was faced with a loss of credibility if it did not speak out forcefully against one of its own.

While many police officers were clamoring for quick and unequivocal condemnation of Fuhrman, two or three conservative board members felt it was not the league’s place to criticize its members. They argued that proposed newspaper ads were too defensive, casting a shadow of complicity on other officers.

“The feeling was, we are not a P.R. firm for the Los Angeles Police Department, we are a labor union,” said Gary Fullerton, a league director elected by the membership, who said he voted for the ads. “We don’t get involved in P.R. hype for the employer. We, the board, don’t work for the public. We work for the men and women of the LAPD.”

But despite those reservations, a majority of the eight-member board approved full-page advertisements in several newspapers. Titled “Trust Betrayed,” the ads called Fuhrman’s statements “vile” and “deeply offensive.”

“If the league does not become more progressive in solving problems of concern to police officers and the community, we will hurt ourselves,” Ruff said later. “We have to participate in weeding out . . . the Fuhrman types, the people who disrespect female officers and those who are heavy-handed.”

What may be more challenging to the union’s leadership, though, is to improve its standing among members who have been alienated by a series of actions the board of directors has taken over the last two years:

* In 1994, the board agreed to pay $27,000 to cover the legal costs of a group of white officers who challenged the department’s affirmative action policy. The league’s lawyers warned years earlier that the appeal would likely fail. Yet when the group known as “Officers for Equality” was hit with its legal bill and judicial sanction for lodging a frivolous claim, the league picked up the tab.

“They were messing with something that benefits 55% or more of the department,” said Rick Barrera, vice president of the LAPD’s Latin American Law Enforcement Assn. “When an issue like that pits one member of the department against another [the union] should stay out of it.”

* Fullerton labeled an investigation of sexual harassment at the department’s West Los Angeles station “a witch hunt.” The statement came early last year after department investigators concluded that male officers harassed female counterparts and then tried to cover up the wrongdoing.

Although many women officers were infuriated by his position, Fullerton stood fast this week, saying he worked in the station for 15 years and knew from personal experience that many of the allegations merely involved women being subjected to the “cold shoulder.”

* A recent board endorsement of Pete Wilson for President alienated Latino officers. “I told some board members, the majority of the members are minorities and women and here you are supporting the guy who wants to do away with the program [affirmative action] that helped many of these members,” said Al Ruvalcaba, president of the Latin American Law Enforcement Assn. “And he supported Proposition 187, which was also an affront.”

* Continuing legal support has been provided for Sgt. Stacey Koon and Officer Laurence Powell, who are appealing their federal civil rights convictions for the beating of Rodney G. King. Over $1 million in officers’ dues (less than 1% of gross salary) have gone to defending the white officers who beat the black drunk-driving suspect, not including fund-raisers that have paid for the officers’ families to visit them in prison.

Ruff says Koon and Powell got “jacked up with a double jeopardy situation in two trials” and that the league has a long history of backing police officers, regardless of race.

“That is just way outside the mainstream,” responds Sgt. Leonard Ross, president of the black police officers group, the Oscar Joel Bryant Assn. “I’m appalled when they say they shouldn’t be in jail. That indicates blindness to a significant portion of their membership and a significant portion of the community.”

* A caricature of Chief Willie L. Williams in the August edition of the “Thin Blue Line” depicted Williams’ nose growing like Pinocchio’s as he declared, “I am not a liar.”

Union leaders have been unrelenting in their criticism of Williams since he took over the department in 1992. They kept up the assault last week by filing a personnel complaint against Williams, alleging he revealed confidential information when he announced that two officers had been suspended for falsifying evidence in a murder case. That complaint came even as Williams decried the disclosure of his own personnel record--the Police Commission investigation into charges that he lied about accepting “comped” rooms in Las Vegas, Nev.

Questions about the league’s sensitivity to the 15% of officers who are black has been an open question for years, as several African American candidates have tried and failed to gain seats on the league’s board.

Next month’s elections for three of nine directors’ seats will not include a black candidate, although current board members encouraged at least two African-American candidates to run. Sgt. Ross, president of the black police officers group, said he did not push any candidates in the election because he despairs of electing a black in what he said is essentially a racist institution.

Ross has become a favorite target of the “Thin Blue Line,” where he is depicted as an extremist who is himself fomenting racial tension. “Every time he pops off,” Ruff said, “it makes it more difficult to elect a more moderate black candidate to the board.”

Some black officers who failed to win leadership posts said it would be more productive to stop worrying about a “good old boys’ network” in the department and instead improve organizing among minorities.

Fred Nixon, a black lieutenant and one-time spokesman for Chief Daryl F. Gates, attributed his failure to win a seat in 1991 to his own lackadaisical campaigning. Officer Garland Hardeman, who is currently seeking a disability retirement partly related to claims of racial animosity, also lost in 1991. Hardeman now says: “It’s the responsibility of minority and women officers to come together and support and run their own candidates.” With the department now composed of 56% women and minorities, Hardeman said, “we have the numbers to do it now.”

Over the last five years, the union’s board has several times discussed filling vacant director seats with black officers. But so far no such appointment has been made. A young black motorcycle officer was considered a prime candidate for appointment last month, to replace retiring director David Zeigler. But the officer, U.S. Taylor of the South Traffic Bureau, was unwilling to run next month for a full term, leading directors to pick someone else, several union leaders said. (Taylor could not be reached for comment.)

Instead of Taylor, the police union board used the vacant position to score another first--naming 10-year veteran Mitzi Grasso as the first woman director in the league’s 72-year history. She will be running for reelection next month. A former defense representative for officers facing discipline, Grasso said women in the department consider her ascension “very significant.”

She believes she will have a unique empathy for women’s concerns--she cited maternity issues and child care as examples--but said she shouldn’t be pigeonholed as a women’s advocate. In an interview, she also signaled that she is attuned to the department’s conservatives on other issues--she questioned the fairness of affirmative action “quotas” and said racism among officers “sounds to me like more of a management problem. I don’t know if it’s a union problem.”

Another first apparently was achieved when Director Lenny Munoz led off his September “Thin Blue Line” column to welcome an international conference of gay and lesbian officers to Southern California. Officer Lisa Phillips, the department’s liaison to the gay and lesbian community, called the Munoz column “very, very positive” and a sign that league is making progress in being more representative of all its members.

With officers angry that their pay has slipped behind many other Southern California police departments, the union’s leadership has recently experienced its greatest turnover in history. Ruff is the only current league director who has served more than two years in office. There have been four league presidents in a little more than two years, after the previous incumbent served seven years.

The “Thin Blue Line” columnists mirror their members’ disillusionment--suggesting that it will not be surprising if underpaid, second-guessed police officers retreat from active crime fighting. For several months, the newspaper even printed listings of job opportunities with other departments.

Councilwoman Laura Chick, the chairwoman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, called in an interview for the union leadership to strike a more positive stance. “Don’t just be naysayers or deny the fact that problems exist that need solutions,” Chick said. “If they don’t do that I think that it can be very damaging not just to the league but to officers and the whole city.”

One police department policy-maker said a similar tack is needed in the union’s approach to reforms involving discipline and other issues. “I really feel they have been a major obstacle to reform in the sense that they tend to close ranks and defend themselves indiscriminately,” said the official, who declined to be named. “They have always seen the Christopher Commission recommendations as an intrusion into the department.”

The Police Protective League was the prime opponent to the portion of the commission reforms included in a 1991 ballot measure. The league’s primary complaint was that the removal of civil service protections for the chief of police would make him too vulnerable to tampering by politicians. (The union claimed that stand was vindicated when the City Council recently overturned the Police Commission’s discipline of Chief Willie L. Williams.)

But police union leaders insist they have not stood against reform, merely differed on how it should be accomplished. They supported the addition of a civilian, along with two command officers, to the Board of Rights panels that arbitrate officers’ disciplinary appeals. They have called for the department to move ahead with the Christopher Commission recommendation for occasional psychological re-evaluations of veteran officers. They have supported a change that would give the chief power to increase disciplinary penalties against officers, as long as a new avenue of appeal is also created.

Greater accountability for racial insensitivity, in the wake of the Fuhrman tapes, should apply to management as well as the rank and file, Ruff argues. “Let’s see which commanding officers had the most personnel complaints lodged against their command and take their merit pay away,” he said. “I guarantee, there would be some greater supervision taking place.”