5 in Council Race Join the Call to Remove Parks

Five candidates for Los Angeles’ 5th City Council District called Friday for Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to be replaced as part of an effort to restore the credibility of the department.

Other candidates, including former state Sen. Tom Hayden and former federal prosecutor Jack Weiss, also criticized the chief but did not call for his replacement.

At a forum, Ken Gerston, Jill Barad, Laura Lake, Joe Connolly and Robyn Ritter Simon said removing Parks is essential to restoring the credibility of the LAPD after the Rampart police scandal and a plummeting of morale.

“One of the first things I will do if I’m elected is to negotiate the retirement of our police chief,” said Gerston, a Sherman Oaks businessman. “He has done a horrible job. He gets an F.”

Days after a poll in The Times showed Parks’ public support sagging, Gerston and Barad faulted the chief Friday for failing to implement reforms recommended a decade ago by the Christopher Commission.

Lake said Parks’ removal is “an important part of the solution” to the LAPD’s problems, but also said reforms must be implemented.

Other candidates stopped short of calling for his replacement when his five-year term ends next year.

“My preference is not to keep changing chiefs every couple of years,” Hayden said.

But he voiced concerns about a report this week by the LAPD’s inspector general that said the chief misled the public when he said the department had been cooperating with county prosecutors in investigating allegations that Rampart Division police officers beat, shot and framed innocent people.

Parks denied the accusation, but Hayden said that, with the report, Parks “really has a credibility problem and he may have to bow out. It’s not my preference.”

Instead, Hayden called for an independent civilian oversight board to handle citizens’ complaints of police misconduct and for the City Council to implement reforms contained in a federal consent decree negotiated with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Weiss said the LAPD’s problems go back more than a decade and were not solved when the city replaced former chiefs Daryl Gates and Willie Williams.

“Those who have a knee-jerk desire to run the chief out of town ought to ask themselves whether that will be enough to solve the department’s problems,” Weiss said.