Kroeker Will Love L.A. From Afar

He wanted the seat with the view of downtown. He wanted to be able to look up from the lunch counter over the low buildings of Chinatown and see the gleaming towers beyond. But when Mark Kroeker arrives at Nick’s, he discovers that seat he wanted is already taken.

So the man who isn’t the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department settles for a view of Elysian Hills and then orders the French dip. He is smiling, comfortable at Nick’s, a cop hangout where several patrons, police and civilians alike, offer greetings, congratulations, best wishes. Everybody knows that Deputy Chief Kroeker will soon be leaving Los Angeles for an extraordinary challenge--a United Nations appointment to oversee a 2,000-strong international police force in Bosnia.

Soon Kroeker grows wistful pondering the city he policed for nearly 33 years. “I love it. . . . It’s twisted, but I love it.”

Kroeker points toward the hills. There was a triple homicide up there, he says, back around 1980. Three dead males. The name of a rival gang had been carved into their backs, post-mortem.

Odd what pops into the mind of a cop in a sentimental mood.

“Everywhere I go it’s like that in this city,” he says. Everywhere another crime scene in the City of Angels.

“Yeah, I care about this city.”

*

The chair Mark A. Kroeker wanted most dearly, of course, is now occupied by Bernard C. Parks, Kroeker’s longtime colleague and career rival. Months before the appointment became official, Mayor Richard Riordan had signaled his preference for Parks as the successor to the disappointing, discredited Willie Williams. But that didn’t stop Kroeker from campaigning hard.

The question of why Kroeker, who is 53, was passed over in favor of Parks doesn’t come up at lunch. That’s yesterday’s news. Certainly both men were eminently qualified, as was the lone outsider, Sacramento Police Chief Arturo Venegas Jr. Race is seldom not a factor in L.A. politics, and certainly it was interesting that Kroeker is white, Parks black and Venegas Latino.

Racial tensions--or more accurately, a desire to defuse racial tensions--has helped determine L.A.’s civic leadership since Tom Bradley was elected mayor in 1973. For 20 years we had a black mayor and a white police chief. A videotaped police beating in Lake View Terrace would lead us to try a black chief and a white mayor. Riordan’s choice of Parks extends the pattern through the year 2000.

But the racial factor can be overestimated as well. It could well be that Kroeker was judged as essentially too warm and fuzzy to be chief. Kroeker, the child of Mennonite missionaries who was raised in Africa and Europe, is the sort of man whose efforts to obtain medical care for an Argentine child ultimately led him to establish the World’s Children Transplant Fund, an international charity that promotes surgical training and organ donation.

Whereas Parks was known as a cool disciplinarian, Kroeker had the support of the police union--an endorsement that obviously cut both ways. Riordan’s selection of Parks also disappointed many community leaders and rank-and-file Angelenos who had been won over by Kroeker’s friendly manner. This was especially true in the San Fernando Valley, a turf he commanded in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating.

When I first met Kroeker in June 1993, the tall, rangy cop left me thinking he was the LAPD’s answer to Dudley Do-Right. The conversation we had then has more relevance today.

“That little S-word comes up from time to sometimes,” he told me then. “S” as in secession.

Kroeker said he understood that many Valley residents felt overlooked by City Hall. But to complaints that the Valley wasn’t getting its fair share of police services, Kroeker would politely but firmly argue that the Valley, with its comparatively low crime rate, was being treated as fairly as other regions. The real problem, Kroeker said, was that every region was underpoliced because the LAPD was staffed far below departments in other cities.

When Kroeker heard the S-word, he told me then, “I preach to ‘em. . . . ‘This is the City of Angels. Let’s act like it.’ ”

More than four years later, Kroeker says his feelings haven’t changed. A borough system “would be excellent for L.A.,” he says, but secession would be painfully divisive, perhaps disastrous.

Secession, he continues, “would be a sad thing. L.A. has a great history and has an opportunity for wonderful world status. And the thought of making it into a number of small cities. . . .” Here, Kroeker shakes his head in dismay.

It plainly hurts to think that the city he loves is so unloved by many of its residents.

“L.A. is a wallflower,” he says. “It needs more people to love it.”

*

So as Mark Kroeker packs his bags for the Balkans--”the Bosnia caper,” he calls it--he leaves behind a sermon against the balkanization of the City of Angels. He has more than just nostalgic ties to L.A. and its police. This year, his daughter Katrina graduated from the academy and joined the force.

While her career is just beginning, her father says he was eager to find “a cause” more than a job. Diplomats who were impressed with his police consulting work in Haiti wooed him for Bosnia by stressing that peace and justice cannot prevail without law and order. In Sarajevo it is hoped that the term “peace officer” will prove more than a euphemism.

And the retiring deputy chief offers a parting shot as well: Why can’t L.A. come up with a better slogan than “Together we’re the best. Los Angeles”?

Kroeker laughs as he offers his analysis: “The first word is ‘Together,’ which means we’re not. Then it’s ‘We’re the best,’ which means we’re not that either.”

What the slogan should be, Kroeker isn’t sure. But a good start, he says, would be for local manufacturers to place “Made in L.A.” labels on all their products.

“It would be a way of saying: ‘This is a good product. We’re proud of this.’ ”

But then, Mark Kroeker is biased. He loves L.A.

And he was made here too.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.