A New Face at the Fore of Police Union

With her 11-year-old daughter’s head leaning on her shoulder, Mitzi Grasso ate a Cobb salad in a Sherman Oaks cafe and calmly talked about fistfights with criminals, escaping gunfire and meeting with distraught Los Angeles Police Department colleagues who had shot and killed suspects.

Grasso also discussed the need for residents to understand their police better during a major corruption scandal and a push for reform.

But Grasso, the first woman to serve as president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League in the union’s 78-year history, barely talked about her own shattering of gender stereotypes in a department in which women constitute 18% of the force.

Grasso, 39, was recently elected to a one-year term as head of the 8,000-member police union. It promises to be a challenging year.

She will not have to negotiate a new contract, because officers approved a three-year pact last summer.

The LAPD is, however, expected to begin implementing the police reforms negotiated in a consent decree with the federal Department of Justice in the wake of the Rampart scandal, and rank-and-file officers continue to push for more flexible work schedules despite their chief’s opposition.

The city will also elect a new mayor, half of the City Council, a city attorney and a controller--all important figures to the politically active police union.

“I think the union is realizing, for the first time, that we need to reach out to the community,” Grasso said. “I’d really like to put a face on our department and make the community realize we are people just trying to make a living in a very honorable profession.”

An LAPD officer for 14 years, Grasso is described by colleagues and bosses as tough, prepared and decisive. Even reasonable.

The last adjective is not one typically applied to her predecessor, Ted Hunt, who was viewed as confrontational by department brass, or to another former union president, Bill Harkness, who was called “In-Your-Face Bill” by both sides of the negotiating table. And the union’s newspaper, the Blue Line, once compared LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks to the Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein.

Grasso “can see the big picture,” said LAPD Cmdr. Sharon Papa, the department spokeswoman. “Sometimes [union presidents] can be very narrow in their thinking. . . . She brings a different dynamic to the table.”

Cmdr. Dan Koenig, who was Grasso’s captain when she patrolled the Rampart Division, called her a consensus builder and a tremendous asset to the league, particularly given the complexities facing the department today.

Among her most important goals, Grasso says, is to raise rank-and-file officers’ morale. Unlike her predecessors, she doesn’t put all the blame at Parks’ door, but she says the chief does hold some responsibility.

The police force today, Grasso says, is better educated, and the department needs to do more to retain and promote officers.

The officers, she said, must consider their jobs more as careers than as a three- or four-year layovers en route to smaller, suburban departments. She views some of this situation as the union’s responsibility as well.

Focusing on Family Demands

Grasso said the department needs to be more family-friendly. Officers need special schedules to accommodate family concerns, even if that means a workweek with fewer days and longer hours. Parks, in the past, has rejected those ideas, but Grasso said she believes he is becoming “a little more approachable” on the subject.

Grasso is the first member of her San Fernando Valley family to become a police officer. She graduated from Cal State Northridge with a degree in art history and chemistry, but said she always had a law enforcement career in the back of her mind. She went on ride-alongs and researched the department. After graduating from the Police Academy, she worked in the 77th Street and Rampart divisions for a decade.

She loved it. “I couldn’t believe they were paying me,” she said.

Her husband, Michael Grasso, is an LAPD officer who teaches tactics at the department’s Granada Hills training center. He was awarded the LAPD’s highest honor and was recognized by President Clinton four years ago when he rescued two people from drowning in the Pacoima Flood Control Wash. The Grassos have two daughters, ages 11 and 7.

Four years ago, Mitzi Grasso decided to leave regular police duties and become a full-time director of the Police Protective League. When Hunt’s term as league president was up this year, Grasso was encouraged to run and easily won the board election.

Grasso knows she should have expected the surprised calls and letters she is receiving as the league’s first female president. She has received invitations to speak at police conventions as far away as New Zealand. But she does not think of herself as a novelty.

Advocates for female officers hold high yet cautious expectations for Grasso’s tenure as league president. Abby Leibman of the California Women’s Law Center said she hopes that Grasso will place greater emphasis on recruiting, hiring and retaining female officers. “She has to carve out a set of priorities that include these kinds of concerns,” Leibman said.

Kathy Spillar, president of the West Coast chapter of Feminist Majority, said that while it is important to have a strong, visible woman as league leader, she must be committed to examining such thorny issues as sexual harassment policies and the promotion of women throughout the department. For years, Spillar said, the league has been viewed as male-dominated without great interest in those concerns.

Grasso said that although she doesn’t consider herself a feminist per se, she is committed to addressing the issues that will affect women as well as the entire league membership. She especially wants to improve the image of police officers in the city.

Grasso has succeeded in persuading her colleagues to hire a public relations firm, BSMG Worldwide. She has written several opinion pieces for local newspapers and she said she will meet frequently with community leaders.

To Grasso, the minimal public outcry over the Rampart corruption scandal is an indication she might be on the right track. “I believe there is a silent majority in this city that’s very supportive of the police,” she said. “I think people see it in shades of gray, not just black and white.”