Standing Between Community and Chaos

At the end of this month, my children and I will attend the Los Angeles Police Department’s academy graduation. Among the soon-to-be police officers will be my nephew, Tom Chavez. It will be a proud day for his father, who works as an LAPD janitor, as well as his mother and grandmother--my sister and mother.

But Uncle Ralph has mixed emotions. I remember past LAPD discrimination and clashes with student and Chicano protesters a generation ago. Then there is the current disgrace of Rampart Division abuses.

Of course, the LAPD needs many officers like Tom, if only because the demographic face of Los Angeles is changing and those from emerging communities who are qualified need to be seriously considered. As a regent, I opposed the UC Board of Regents’ 1995 anti-affirmative action policies. Diversity is common sense. Affirmative action is needed because attitudes and habits of prejudice have worked to undermine common sense. Few remember that William H. Parker almost did not become police chief in 1950 because he was a Catholic. During the 1960s, Parker described Latinos as “not far removed from the wild tribes of Mexico.” And being African American would have denied Chief Bernard C. Parks his current job.

Much has changed with regard to the LAPD’s diversity. Latinos now make up more than one-third of the department. But the rogue behavior of cops like Rafael Perez, whose illegalities brought to light the Rampart scandal, makes clear that diversity is not sufficient. Character also is needed to work in what Parker once called the LAPD’s “thin blue line” between community and chaos.

Looking at a recent Times photo depicting Tom and other recruits training at the LAPD’s Westchester facility, I realized that the jailed Perez once was a clean-cut, upright-looking recruit. It is a disturbing revelation on how looks can be deceiving. “Crooks come in all colors,” a veteran cop reminded me. “They are rich and poor. Priests and cops can be crooks.” Like Tom, Perez began his career with ideals of public service. But, for Perez, those ideals drowned in a sea of corruption and greed. Perez found within that thin blue line the codes of silence that condoned his and other officers’ illegal actions. Preying on the fears of communities too willing to blindly embrace violations of human rights, Perez undermined any sense of human decency.

Like those in the police department, the Latino community also looked the other way. Blinded by fear, shame and uncertainty over lawless youths, it allowed the Perez types to fester. When that happens, gang profiling becomes a code word for racial targeting. Sacramento Police Chief Arturo Venegas once summed up a community’s responsibility when he said, “Any decent customer would not tolerate poor service, so why should law enforcement’s customers--the community--respond any differently to the abuses of a cop working the streets?”

That logic extends to police management. Venegas and others in law enforcement have emphasized that the best thing a higher-up can do for incoming officers like Tom is to come down hard on bad behavior. Instead, the Rampart scandal seems to represent a deafening silence that allowed the likes of Perez to crush rising crime among the underclass without any regard to human dignity or individual rights. “I’ve been wearing this badge for 25 years and it has been tainted,” Tom’s training officer recently told his recruits. “You can change that.”

What challenge does that represent in my nephew’s law enforcement future? With a more diverse police force in impoverished ethnic communities, he certainly will face mean-spirited tests of community loyalty. “Ethnic pride” insults from Latinos hostile to the police will try his attitude toward the barrio’s criminal elements. In contrast to Perez, Tom must show no tolerance for a police power that compromises his integrity because “others do it” or “no one’s watching.”

In struggling to bring civility to an uncivil world, he must always remember that there are two thin blue lines. One is a line that fights crime with a sense of justice and human dignity. The other is a line with walls of silence that finds favor with bad policing and Rampart-like abuses toward the poorest “others” in society. Knowing him, I have every confidence that Tom will work to restore the first.