It Takes a Chief

Am I alone here? Or are other people getting tired, too, of the center-stage soap opera that’s been playing at the Los Angeles Police Department for more than a decade? I keep waiting for the city to cut through a morass of false assumptions about its chiefs of police and see them in a clear light.

Consider last Tuesday’s dueling press conferences. The first featured Rick J. Caruso, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, explaining why his group had followed the lead of Mayor James Hahn--who, of course, hand-picked the commission--and voted 4 to 1 not to rehire LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks. By Caruso’s account, Parks’ greatest sin seemed to be his responsibility for the ever-plunging morale of the LAPD’s rank and file--rather than the Rampart scandal, or the chief’s complete unwillingness to transform the LAPD’s paramilitary culture.

It was enough to make one wonder if the city’s African American leadership hadn’t been right in charging that Mayor Hahn, and now his Police Commission, were jettisoning Parks as political payback to the white-dominated Police Protective League, which gave critical support to Hahn during his run for mayor.

At his own press conference, meanwhile, Parks was avoiding the real issues as skillfully as Caruso. The chief admitted to no failings or missteps and defiantly vowed to take his battle to the City Council. The Council, if it so chooses, could overturn the Commission’s decision by a two-thirds vote--a highly unlikely scenario.

Parks is rightly viewed by many African Americans in Los Angeles as an important symbol--a smart, successful black man holding down one of the most visible and powerful public positions in the city. But in the end, being a symbol was not enough. Parks was simply unwilling to institute the crucial reforms that would have provided the city with the police department it desperately needs and deserves. Consequently, he’s become the latest in a long line of LAPD chiefs whose tenures have ultimately been failures.

Although in perfect philosophical sync with Mayor Richard Riordan, who appointed him Chief in 1997, Bernard Parks never gave the people of Los Angeles what they voted for in 1992 and 1995 when they overwhelmingly passed a sweeping package of police reforms recommended by the Christopher Commission and designed to serve as the mechanism for rebuilding and reforming the LAPD. Training and discipline were to be placed under far greater civilian control, while monitored by a civilian Inspector General’s Office. And a Christopher Commision-endorsed computer system for tracking problem officers was to be installed. Underpinning all this was to be a new operating philosophy of community-based policing, in which officers would work with the community rather than ride herd over it.

Little of this, however, was on former Mayor Richard Riordan’s agenda. He wanted a big, tough, smoothly oiled crime fighting machine--a less-controversial, better-run version of the old LAPD. When Riordan’s Police Commission named Parks as the new chief in 1997, the mayor laid out the criteria by which he’d judge Parks’ success: crime stats and arrest numbers. That was what Riordan considered reform.

Parks embraced Riordan’s message. But he danced as well to his own tune. For nearly half a century the central tenet of all LAPD chiefs (save Willie Williams, the despised outsider) has been that the chief and only the chief ran the LAPD. And Parks, by instinct, training and character, is very much in that tradition.

In 1950, Chief William H. Parker was the first to recognize the astounding power granted a chief in the city charter, and he used it shrewdly to make the LAPD his own. Ed Davis, police chief throughout most of the 1970s, once summed up his and Parker’s attitude toward outsiders “interfering” with their department. “Parker,” said Davis, “found himself fighting off the evil forces from City Hall ... and various groups in the city. And it is absolutely vital that this department not be dominated by politicians.” Davis also understood the power of the office. Asked if he intended to run for mayor, he replied, “I don’t want to be mayor; I already have more power than the mayor.” And he was right. From 1950 to 1992, LAPD chiefs had ironclad civil-service protection and the same lifetime tenure enjoyed by federal judges. Mayors came and went, but a chief of police remained as long as he wished. That situation changed only when Charter Amendment F, passed in 1992, limited future chiefs to one five-year term, with the option of applying for a second and final five years in office.

One huge impetus for that change was the spectacle of Mayor Tom Bradley impotently imploring Chief Daryl Gates to resign following the 1991 beating of Rodney King. Gates simply refused. By the time Parks became chief, however, the power dynamic had shifted. A chief like Parks could no longer push the mayor around. But he still retained enough power to serve as the mayor’s equal, especially given that Parks, Riordan and their sycophants on the Police Commission were all on the same wavelength--and they weren’t focused on reform.

So Parks contemptuously dismissed community policing, forced the department’s first inspector general out of office and refused to share vital investigative information with the second, failed to implement a computerized officer-tracking system, denigrated the importance of the Rampart scandal and severely limited the department’s investigation into it, tried to cut the district attorney out of the Rampart-prosecution loop and launched an enormous number of investigations of officers over the most trivial of matters.

Parker, Davis and Gates had turned rigidity, intransigence and the arrogance of power into an art form. But times had changed, and Parks seemed not to have noticed. The Rodney King beating, the ’92 uprising and the Rampart scandal all helped destroy the once sacrosanct LAPD mystique, sapping the juice out of the department’s public support; while charter reform diminished its once unchecked power.

Parks had been a noncontroversial, even popular choice for chief. Other than some totally ineffective grumbling from the Protective League, he had no real opposition. Yet Parks is now leaving office with few non-African American defenders. Lawyer and political kingmaker William Wardlaw--who had literally helped Parks study for the chief’s test--turned against him. Parks’ friends in government, like County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, have failed to spring to his defense. The same has been true of the city’s corporate leaders, civil libertarians and police reformers. Parks began his tenure as a virtual co-mayor, and ended up out of a job.

Now we’re about to search for a new chief. And all the wrong questions are being asked: Will he be black? Will it cause problems if he’s brown? Should he be an insider? Can an outsider do the job? What about a woman? There are times when such criteria must be taken into consideration, as in 1992 after Gates’ departure. The African American community had suffered decades of racism, brutality, killings and humiliation at the hands of the LAPD. Simple justice demanded a black chief. Now Los Angeles has had two, and we’ve learned that, while symbols are important, race has largely been beside the point in fundamentally reforming the LAPD. And fundamental reform is all this selection process should be about.

The Police Commission should choose a chief who has stature, reform experience and an iron will in standing up to the command staff and Protective League, coupled with the leadership skills to bring officers and their union along during the reform process. Most especially we need a chief who recognizes that the mayor, through his police commissioners, is the boss. The new chief should be at the top of his or her game and look upon reforming the LAPD as a career capstone. He or she must be an outsider--someone who can see far beyond the department’s culture and who, unlike former Chief Williams, has the savvy to come into L.A. and form political alliances with like-minded political players. Whether Mayor Hahn has the desire, self-confidence or strength to urge the hiring of such a chief, remains, of course, an open question.

If he does, Hahn should not stop there. He should go on to push for a charter amendment allowing the mayor to directly choose his chief of police. The city must learn to regard its police chief as a skilled and very important department head--but one who is ultimately, and directly, responsible to the city’s chief executive. The argument that this will inject politics into the department is absurd. What have chiefs in Los Angeles been if not unelected, unaccountable politicians representing their own interests? A chief needs to be selected directly by the mayor and serve at the mayor’s pleasure. Tom Bradley should have had the right to fire Daryl Gates before he led us down the path to racial insurrection. Richard Riordan should have been able to fire Willie Williams if he felt he couldn’t work with him. And James Hahn should have a chief of police who shares his vision. Then we can hold the mayor--and only the mayor--accountable come election day.