Why Blacks Defend Chief Parks

The stunning decision by Mayor James K. Hahn not to back LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks confirmed the fear of many blacks that the Police Protective League calls the shots at City Hall.

Blacks never bought the league’s line that its beef with Parks is bad management, lousy morale, a rising crime rate and his take-no-prisoner discipline of officers. The bottom line for them is that Parks is an African American, and white officers just can’t stomach taking orders from a black police chief.

There are two reasons that blacks are so upset over Hahn’s refusal to back Parks. One is the deep distrust and hostility that many blacks feel toward the police. The beating of Rodney King, police shootings in New York, Miami and Cincinnati, racial profiling and the Rampart scandal reinforce the notion that police routinely beat, maim, lie and plant evidence on minority suspects. Prominent black and Latino entertainers, business leaders and even some politicians complain that police racially harass them.

To be sure, Parks is not the most avid police reformer. It took the Justice Department’s consent decree and pressures from the Los Angeles City Council to get him to grudgingly mandate that the Los Angeles Police Department collect racial data on unwarranted traffic stops. He also raised the wrath of many blacks when he reflexively defended the officer who gunned down a middle-aged, homeless black woman.

Yet black leaders remember the confrontations of years past with then-Chief Daryl F. Gates. They think that a black chief provides some insurance that police officers won’t brutalize the black community.

The second reason is that black leaders see the fight over Parks as a way to flex their atrophying political muscle. Parks was the immediate payback they expected from Hahn for delivering the black vote that did much to put him in the mayor’s seat. If they can’t even wring that concession out of the man who owes them so much and who has identified more strongly with the black community than any other white politician in Los Angeles, they’re in deep political trouble.

The fast-changing ethnic shifts in South-Central Los Angeles guarantee that trouble. In the next few years, the number of Latino residents in South-Central is expected to grow tremendously.

In addition, more Latino immigrants will become citizens and will become eligible to vote; voter registration drives by Latino political groups will translate numerical majority into a voting majority.

Long before that happens, term limits will force City Councilmen Mark Ridley-Thomas and Nate Holden out of office. Black candidates trying to succeed them will not have the money, experience or name recognition to ensure support from their districts’ core black voters.

The third black on the council, Jan Perry, was elected last year, and Latinos probably soon will be a voting majority in her district. So it is possible that blacks could lose all three seats that they currently hold on the City Council.

In the next few weeks, Hahn will get an earful from black leaders. They will accuse him of pandering to the police union and betraying the black community. They won’t be totally right, because Hahn must make any decision about Parks based solely on his performance as chief, not on political or racial favoritism.

But whenever race and politics meet in Los Angeles, duty is never enough to keep a politician off the hot seat. And that’s where Hahn now sits.