Diversity, Reform Goals Should Be Maintained, LAPD Chief Says

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams told the Police Commission on Tuesday that the department can meet its goals of reform and diversity, but only if recruitment keeps up at the current breakneck pace, in which the Police Academy is graduating about 80 officers a month.

“If we reduce or delay or retrench on our hiring plan, then it’s very difficult,” Williams said. “If we stopped or reduced our hiring, it would have a crippling effect on our ability to expand the diversity of the department.”

The City Council last week delayed authorization of $750,000 for police recruitment, asking department brass to provide more detail about the implementation of the public safety plan to a joint committee meeting of the council next week.

Responding to some council members’ concerns that Mayor Richard Riordan’s plan to expand the LAPD might be sacrificing quality for quantity, Williams and Deputy Chief David Gascon reassured the commission that the department has enough qualified field training officers to handle the growing load of recruits.

They said, however, that retirements and promotions have allowed the number of officers on patrol to grow by only about 150 since the city’s public safety plan was adopted in 1993--a far cry from the more than 2,000 new patrol officers promised in the plan by 1997.

“Policing is not just putting people in black-and-whites,” Williams said. “Policing is having detectives available to go out on the street. . . . Policing is having people working narcotics. Policing is having officers Downtown on horses and bikes. Policing is having officers, right now, in the elementary schools, in the DARE program.

“We have to get away from the cop show [mentality] where there’s a black-and-white and that’s it,” he added. “What we have to do is really show what we’ve done with those resources.”