5 Candidates Say Chief Parks Must Be Ousted

Five candidates for Los Angeles City Council on Friday called for LAPD Chief Bernard Parks to be replaced, but two top candidates seeking the 5th District seat disagreed.

At a forum, Ken Gerston, Jill Barad, Robyn Ritter Simon, Laura Lake and Joe Connolly said removing Parks is essential to restoring the credibility of the Los Angeles Police Department in the wake of the Rampart Division corruption scandal and plummeting officer morale.

But two leading candidates in the district, which stretches from Van Nuys to Westwood, supported Parks. Not joining the chorus were former state Sen. Tom Hayden and former federal prosecutor Jack Weiss, who leads in fund-raising.

“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, at the forum sponsored by the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. “He has done a horrible job. He gets an F [grade].”

Just days after a poll in The Times showed public support for Parks sagging, Gerston and Barad faulted the chief on Friday for failing to implement reforms recommended a decade ago by the Christopher Commission, the task force that examined the LAPD after the Rodney King beating.

“We need a new chief,” Barad said during the forum at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City. “He has taken too long to bring about community-based policing and restore the senior lead officer program.”

Simon, a Beverlywood activist, said Parks has lost credibility with the rank-and-file police officers.

“His department has a lack of respect for him,” she said. “Morale is at an all-time low.”

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 in the 11-person race were also critical of Parks, but stopped short of calling for his replacement when his current five-year term ends next year.

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

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 citizen 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.

He said it is not appropriate to “prejudge” whether Parks will have earned another five-year term when his current term expires.

Weiss called for better recruiting, training and oversight of the LAPD.

The strongest support for Parks came from candidate Constantina Milonopoulos, a Studio City gun-control activist, who said the chief is “intelligent and well qualified” to continue running the LAPD.

The candidates also clashed over plans to expand Los Angeles International Airport, with Hayden and Milonopoulos opposed to expansion on the grounds that it would worsen traffic congestion and harm surrounding neighborhoods.

Other candidates said they would support an expansion of LAX only if there were mitigating measures, such as developing Palmdale Airport to shoulder some of the burden.

Meanwhile, Hayden loaned his campaign $150,000 on Friday, the day before his deadline to do so, as part of an effort to catch up with Weiss, Lake, Gerston and others in campaign funding.

The loan is in addition to the $21,000 he had previously loaned his campaign.