Tread Carefully, Chief Parks

There comes a time in the tenure of every police chief when he feels that his officers have been unfairly judged and sentenced before all the facts are in. This comes with the territory. It is precisely at such times that a chief must choose his words carefully. By all means, say that the incident and the officers involved will be judged squarely on the facts. Tell the public it can expect that and will receive no less.

Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks faces such a time now, concerning the two officers involved in the killing of a homeless woman, Margaret LaVerne Mitchell, who allegedly had lunged with a long screwdriver at the officer who shot her. An investigation is underway. At the heart of the controversy: Why was lethal force necessary against the small, 54-year-old mentally ill woman?

Parks said he wouldn’t declare his officers wrong “for political expediency,” as if those he must answer to really want that. The chief, apparently irritated by accusations, so far unsubstantiated, that the shooting was racially motivated because Mitchell was African American, said he wouldn’t place the burden of 200 years of racism on his officers’ shoulders. No reasonable person would want that either. Then, unfathomably, Parks criticized the victim’s family.

This is the most disturbing police shooting of Parks’ tenure of nearly two years. He mustn’t say or do anything that even hints of the revival of an us-versus-them mentality. The LAPD has seen that kind of thinking before, and it’s dangerous.