Mayoral Hopefuls Air Clashing Views on LAPD Reforms

Debating before a roomful of police officers, the five leading candidates for mayor of Los Angeles disagreed Tuesday night about what kind of deal the city and federal government should cut over the future of the LAPD, but agreed that they dislike many of the most controversial policies of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.

The chief has stripped senior lead officers, a once-popular vanguard of community policing, of their special roles. All five candidates said they supported restoration of those officers.

The chief also strenuously opposes a so-called compressed work schedule that would allow officers to work just three days a week, in 12-hour shifts. Without exception, the candidates--Rep. Xavier Becerra, City Atty. James Hahn, businessman Steve Soboroff, Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa and City Councilman Joel Wachs--supported that schedule, which they said would help boost sagging morale that they believe is contributing to attrition in the 9,300-officer force.

All but one of the would-be mayors also said they would favor allowing police officers, who are prohibited by law from striking, the right to seek binding arbitration in salary and benefit disputes. And all five took shots at the LAPD’s disciplinary system, which the chief oversees and which many police complain is too harsh and unfair to the rank-and-file.

Those positions were warmly greeted by a mostly polite group gathering at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City, where the Los Angeles Police Protective League hosted its first-ever mayoral debate. The election is set for next April, when voters will choose a successor to Mayor Richard Riordan, who has served two terms and cannot seek a third.

If those topics featured the candidates relishing chances to demonstrate their loyalty to the police union, however, the more contentious debate over the Rampart police scandal and negotiations with the federal government offered more clear distinctions between the politicians.

Two candidates, Becerra and Villaraigosa, were the most emphatically open to entering into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, which would pledge the city to implement reforms and then give a federal judge and monitor the authority to force the city to abide by its promises. A decree would avoid a lawsuit charging that the LAPD has engaged in a pattern or practice of violating the rights of residents.

Villaraigosa, who in this debate and two previous face-offs has demonstrated a willingness to tell his audience things they don’t always want to hear, emphasized that although he does not relish the idea of a decree to govern the LAPD, he believes it’s necessary to force real reform of the beleaguered department.

Becerra framed the issue differently, saying there simply is no longer any alternative.

“It’s coming,” he said. “Whether we want to admit it or not, it’s coming.”

Two other candidates, Hahn and Wachs, did not directly endorse or predict the adoption of such a decree. Wachs argued that actions by the mayor and chief--specifically their resistance to the appointment of an independent commission to study the Police Department--have helped make such intervention likely, but did not say whether he welcomed it.

Hahn, meanwhile, said it was too soon to endorse any specific agreement, since no deal has been made. But he, echoing the consensus of many legal observers, added that signing an agreement with the federal government would be preferable to waging a long legal battle that many lawyers think the city would lose--only to then have reforms forced on it by a judge who would not need to seek the city’s agreement.

The lone outspoken opponent of signing any deal that includes the appointment of a federal monitor was Soboroff, who repeatedly equated such a proposal to a “federal takeover” of the Police Department. His opposition to that idea initially won loud applause from the audience of police officers, but as he reiterated it time and again, the applause steadily faded.

“I am opposed, I have been opposed from Day 1 and will be opposed . . . to federal takeover,” Soboroff said.

Soboroff argued that the appointment of a federal monitor would represent an abdication of local authority and thus would be unacceptable to him. As he produced newspaper clips which he said suggested Hahn was open to the appointment of a monitor under certain conditions, Hahn shook his head.

“I never said that,” he muttered.

“The federal government has never talked about having a federal monitor take over the Los Angeles Police Department,” said Hahn, who is the city’s lead negotiator in the discussions with lawyers from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “It’s wrong to try to turn this into a political football.”

Hahn’s forceful response to that charge by Soboroff underscored another defining aspect of this meeting of candidates. The most recent polls have suggested that Hahn is the early favorite in the race, and he has treated the past two debates cautiously, seeming to take more care to avoid mistakes than to venture strong views.

Tuesday, however, Hahn was markedly more confident and even risked alienating his audience by breaking from the rest of the pack and opposing binding arbitration for police. Binding arbitration, the city attorney said, would give an un-elected arbiter authority to set wages and benefits for police, effectively giving that person authority over a portion of the city budget.

Every other candidate disagreed. Villaraigosa, a former union organizer, was particularly outspoken, saying that because police are not allowed to strike, they must have some other way to resolve their contract disputes.

Despite their many disagreements with Chief Parks over Police Department matters, none of the candidates on Tuesday would bite at the question of whether they would give the chief a second, five-year term when his current one expires in 2002. They were less reticent on the question of the city’s police commissioners: Every candidate said he would dump the current panel.

Only Wachs, however, said that was because of a fundamental policy disagreement with the current five-member board that oversees the Police Department. Wachs has been angered by the commission’s refusal to force adoption of the compressed work schedule and its unwillingness to order the chief to return senior lead officers to their former positions.

The other candidates said they also would replace the commission, but only because they believed a new mayor should bring a new team.