A Wake-Up Call for the LAPD

Enter the nightmares of Bernie Parks and Dick Riordan. . . .

Los Angeles, January 2001.

The new district attorney is professional police tormentor Stephen Yagman.

The new head of the MTA is bus riders’ advocate Eric Mann.

The new head of LAPD internal affairs is police union President Ted Hunt.

Tommy’s Burgers is taken over by Howard Lyman, the cattleman-turned-vegetarian, Caltrans is taken over by Ralph Nader and the new LAUSD board is taken over by the old LAUSD board.

Mayor! Chief! Wake up! Stop screaming! It was just a bad dream. It never happened; it couldn’t happen. Well, except for this part:

The feds are taking over the LAPD.

*

Maybe the Justice Department has been reading the papers lately--BP Amoco takes over Arco, Tribune Co. takes over the L.A. Times--and figured, hey, why not get in on this takeover thing?

Or maybe the feds started reading the papers years ago, not only since Rampart but since Rodney King, and not just the newspapers but the memos, the lawsuits, the reports about how the LAPD goes about its business.

In its “fix-it-or-else” letter to the LAPD this week--the closest the government gets to a hostile takeover short of sending in troops--the Justice Department set out its terms:

Shape up police conduct--and we’ll let you know whether you’re doing it right--or you’re looking at a lawsuit. And if you don’t think we mean it, ask a fellow named Bill Gates.

As I read about this I tried to imagine the reactions around the power table.

City Atty. James Hahn, bucking for mayor, dying to say, “I told you so.” Police Chief Bernard Parks, quietly seething, enough steam coming out his ears to power L.A. on geothermal energy for a year. Mayor Richard Riordan--but the mayor was not at the table. The master of corporate strategies, who would have had a strong hand to play in this game, was in Washington, D.C., on another bit of interminable MTA business. Had I known, I would have offered him my frequent-flier miles to get home.

Moreover, the Justice Department’s man at the table wasn’t just some Beltway bright boy who thinks of L.A. as beginning in Malibu and ending in Disneyland.

It was Bill Lann Lee, a onetime L.A. civil rights attorney, who had a hand in a class-action suit over police-dog bites, and who represented an African American detective in winning a federal discrimination suit against the LAPD.

So he’ll know when the LAPD is sleeping, he’ll know when it’s awake, he’ll know if it’s been bad or good, but he won’t be playing Santa Claus at the Parker Center Christmas party.

*

From time to time I’ve felt that, to some in the LAPD, the bad guy isn’t just the criminal, but the civilian. And even the criminal gets some smidgen of credit for knowing the rules of the game, and the stakes. The civilian can be meddlesome, and civilian oversight? A contradiction in terms.

Just as the feds are now getting under the LAPD’s skin by saying something like, “Step aside, let a pro take over,” civilians have been hearing that message for years from the LAPD: “Step aside, this is a job for a professional.”

Civilians are OK when they’re organizing Neighborhood Watch meetings or voting for bond issues for truly sorely needed stations and communications and basic equipment. But whether you call them inspectors general or police commissioners or the malcontents who go on about being the taxpayers who pay cops’ salaries, give them much of a say in discipline or enforcement techniques and watch things just go to pot.

For their part, civilians have not been too insistent about stepping in. Crime is down, the streets are safer and there may be a disinclination to ask how that gets done. But now 15 civilians--the City Council--will have the final say on the next step. Not only do most of them want to avoid a federal lawsuit but some of them are not displeased at being handed, courtesy of a federal consent decree mandating reform, an instrument of authority over the LAPD that they could not have had otherwise.

I suspect the mayor and the police chief will ultimately agree to a consent decree in lieu of a lawsuit. Neither wants to go into the history books as the guy on whose watch the feds saw fit to run the LAPD. Riordan may yet find a way to apply to this the considerable energies he brought to charter reform and remaking the school board.

So don’t dither or shilly-shally over this. To quote the motto of an athletic shoe company that had its own troubles with the feds: Just do it.

Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays.