Readiness of LAPD for Protests Is Questioned

High-level officials from the Los Angeles Police Department, including Police Chief Willie L. Williams, did not notify their superiors and colleagues that former Det. Mark Fuhrman would be back in court this week to enter a controversial plea. Although the Fuhrman appearance did not spark any protests, the communications breakdown has raised concerns about the LAPD’s preparation and handling of the delicate matter.

Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher has directed Williams, who was out of town at a conference when the plea was entered, to prepare a report on the issue and to present it to the commission next week.

Meanwhile, some officials outside the Police Department said they were worried that the LAPD did not adequately prepare for the possibility of protests following news of Fuhrman’s plea bargain, which resulted in him being convicted of perjury but sent home without jail time. Among other things, those officials said they were troubled by the Police Department’s decision not to alert rank-and-file police officers throughout the 18 divisions to be alert for possible trouble once the plea agreement was made public.

“If it weren’t for the media,” said one local law enforcement official, “those cops would have had no way of knowing this was coming.”

Of particular concern, Fisher said, was that neither he nor Assistant Chief Ronald Banks, who was acting as chief in Williams’ absence, were informed of the plans for the Fuhrman hearing until after they were prompted to inquire by questions from the press.

“I’m troubled that I, as the president of the Police Commission, was not told of this,” said Fisher. “I’m more distressed by the fact that the acting chief of police was not informed. I’m not sure how to excuse that.”

The issue of the LAPD’s readiness and its internal communications erupted in controversy during 1992, when the department’s reaction to the riots that spring was roundly criticized. Among the failings that came to light in the wake of those riots were breakdowns in internal communications. The department’s early response also was hampered by the fact that a number of high-ranking officers were out of town at a conference in Oxnard when the 1992 riots broke out.

Since the riots, the department has prided itself on its meticulous preparation for incidents that have any chance of sparking upheaval.

Most notably, it launched a major, widely praised departmentwide effort to prepare for the verdicts in the federal Rodney G. King civil rights trial. On a more modest scale, the LAPD prepared a detailed response plan in advance of last week’s disturbance at Cal State Northridge during a debate involving former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Fisher commended the LAPD handling of that situation, but he and others worry that the department’s careful work in Northridge was not matched by its preparations for the Fuhrman plea. Fisher said that had he known of the Fuhrman hearing, he and other commissioners would probably have asked for a Tuesday briefing on response plans so that the board could evaluate them. Instead, the commissioners were left in the dark.

Although Banks conceded that the notifications were handled imperfectly, he insisted that the department was ready for violence or protests, should they have erupted. In addition to the department’s Metropolitan Division, officials at the Central Division were alerted, he said. Central Division includes the downtown Criminal Courthouse, and would have been called upon to handle protests or crowd control problems outside that building.

Metropolitan Division contains the LAPD’s elite, rapid-response officers, as well as its mounted patrol and SWAT team. But it contains just a few hundred officers and is not equipped to handle wide-scale protests.

Still, as they inquire into the issue, commissioners want answers to a number of questions. Among them: When did Williams know about the hearing, and did he tell other top officials?

At first, Williams said he had no advance notice, telling a reporter Tuesday that he had no knowledge of Fuhrman’s intention to appear in court. A spokesman for the chief later said Williams changed his account. According to the spokesman, Williams said he actually had been told of the court appearance by the Sheriff’s Department on Monday afternoon.

But sheriff’s officials questioned that account, and Williams later amended it, too. He said through a spokeswoman Wednesday that he had learned of the court date directly from the state attorney general’s office, not from the Sheriff’s Department.

According to Banks, high-ranking officers overseeing the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division briefed Williams about the impending court hearing. That briefing apparently took place Monday, Banks said, but at that point it was not certain that the case would go forward on Wednesday.

When Williams left town Tuesday, he did not pass along the possibility of a hearing occurring to Banks, who was left in charge of the LAPD that day and who was meeting with the Police Commission that morning.

“Inadvertently, the chief forgot to mention it to me as even a possibility,” Banks said. “He apologized for putting me in that position.”

While officials expressed relief that there were no disturbances after Fuhrman’s plea, they worried that the LAPD lacked any meaningful citywide response plan.

Banks disputed that notion. The assistant chief said department officials had no intelligence suggesting that violence might erupt, nor was there any particular reason to believe that the Fuhrman hearing might spark a sudden uprising. As a result, he said putting Metropolitan Division and Central Area on alert was enough advance notice to handle anything that developed.

Fisher said he expects issues such as those to be addressed before the commission when it meets next week. So far, however, Fisher said that what he has learned gives him little comfort.

“It’s better to be prepared and have nothing happen than to have something happen and spin out of control,” he said. “I certainly would have expected that the chief or his staff would keep the Police Commission informed.”