Another LAPD Crossroad: Think Hard, Chief

In the complex matter of Willie L. Williams and his tenure as head of the Los Angeles Police Department, it’s important to consider just what was waiting for Williams when he arrived in Los Angeles.

Chief Williams came to a city that had been traumatized by the famous videotape showing police officers beating and kicking the unarmed and unresisting Rodney King. Then the 1992 riots exploded. Williams came to a Police Department that had a long and ugly history of internal and external racial problems. He came to a department that had not had a leader from outside in 45 years. He came to a department racked with major management problems. The LAPD had failed to respond quickly and effectively to the riots, and in the previous year, 1991, the Christopher Commission had documented excessive use of force, lax discipline, unchecked racial and gender bias and questionable promotions in the department.

Williams came to a city that wanted him to get rid of these problems. He hasn’t been able to do it all, and his supporters say any expectation of miracles was unfair. That’s true. But most Angelenos did not demand miracles. Williams came to a city that desperately wanted him to succeed, even though not everyone within the LAPD shared that sentiment. He had public goodwill to spare. He ranked high, and continues to score well, in public opinion polls. Williams, as was evident yet again last week when he spoke to about 1,000 supporters at a breakfast meeting held to announce his intention to seek a second five-year term, has reached out to Los Angeles’ population and erased the distant-godhead persona promoted by his predecessor as LAPD chief.

In many ways Willie L. Williams has done the job that was most important for him to do at the moment in time when he arrived: restore public acceptance of the Police Department. He demolished the dangerous mentality of “us” (the police) versus “them” (the people). It is clear that the office of police chief is no longer seen as a major polarizing power in Los Angeles. Williams has accomplished that. He must not allow the job to again become a conduit for polarization.

Polarization, we fear, is exactly what will result if the chief follows though on his announcement that he will seek another term as police chief. While the chief has succeeded in giving the LAPD a more service-oriented and friendlier public face, he clearly has a contentious relationship with his (too) many bosses: the mayor’s appointed Police Commission and the City Council. There are many reasons for the bad blood, and it must be said that a key reason is that Williams has undeniably shown poor judgment in a number of sensitive decisions.

The momentum for police reform has largely been lost in political squabbling. Under Williams, the crime rate is down, as it is nationally. Police use of excessive force is down too. But in order for LAPD reform to take root and go forward, the chief must be positioned to take charge of the bureaucracy and lead it where it often doesn’t want to go. After more than four years, Williams should be positioned to do that, but he is not.

There’s blame to go around in this distressing situation: Charter Amendment F, the police reform passed by voters in 1992, properly limited the tenure of a police chief to two five-year terms and made the office of police chief more accountable to elected officials. But in retrospect it didn’t go far enough in effecting change; an LAPD chief has little power to bring his own team into the top command. Thus Williams took the top job surrounded by longtime brass who did not support him, and a few were not at all subtle about it.

Williams contributed to his own political problems. He failed to listen to informed well-wishers who tried to advise him on how to smartly maneuver around obstacles thrown up by those who resented the fact that the chief was an outsider, and an African American. There were little things that would have garnered him more support from the rank and file that he just didn’t do, such as spending more time reaching out to the troops and getting deeply familiar with the department and all of its procedures.

And then there were the many out-of-town trips. The controversy about the chief’s frequent trips to Las Vegas stemmed not so much from the allegations that he had accepted free hotel rooms but whether he had told the truth when questioned about the matter. The Police Commission reprimanded him last year for allegedly lying. The City Council overturned the reprimand without reviewing the facts of the case. Williams won that political battle, but that was the beginning of losing the war. After this newspaper published information related to the chief’s reprimand, he filed and then dropped a $10-million claim against the city for leaking his confidential personnel files.

Mayor Richard Riordan, who recently has had little to say publicly about Williams, made it clear repeatedly that he has problems with Williams’ management. Some African American leaders and others were already irritated by what they saw as Riordan’s relentless criticism of another top black manager, Franklin E. White, then CEO of the deeply troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority. They came to the chief’s defense, even as they privately puzzled over why and how Williams made some key decisions.

None of this conjures up the formula required for a police chief to be effective. There is obvious distrust between the chief and the Police Commission; commissioners didn’t even know last week that Williams would announce he intends to seek a second term. Despite that announcement, the chief added, significantly, “You always keep your options open.” Such options include Williams and the city settling on a compensation package and his taking a job in the Clinton administration. We hope the chief fully considers all of his options before committing to a “fight at any cost” path.

A prolonged and contentious battle--with undeniable racial overtones--over the merits and demerits of the chief’s tenure would not be helpful either to Williams or to the city. What would be useful is to acknowledge the part of the marriage that worked, agree to disagree on the rest, and make a clean, fair and speedy break in the best interests of Chief Williams, the LAPD and, most important, the people of Los Angeles.