Parks Hasn’t Done Job No. 1: Reform the LAPD’s Culture

When former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates received the Christopher Commission report, he reportedly threw it in the nearest trash can. The question is whether anyone at the Los Angeles Police Department ever took it out.

To be clear: Today’s LAPD is not Gates’ organization. The LAPD has advanced significantly.

However, the department is as close to claiming the Christopher Commission mandate to end its insular, retaliatory, paramilitary policing culture as Mullah Omar is to embracing feminism. When confronted with the full Christopher agenda, the LAPD just said no.

Ten years later, the department faces federal supervision, yet another brewing gangster-cop scandal and the unmet Christopher Commission challenge. It also is facing a controversy over the reappointment of its chief.

Bone-level reforms are needed here, not the skin-level changes of improved complaint procedures, better public relations, computer tracking, senior lead officers and flextime.

The hard-core basics needed to end the LAPD’s bunker culture require:

* Civilian control. As recently as 1999, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks had to be officially reminded that the department is subject to civilian control and the rule of law.

* Systemic solutions. The Christopher Commission concluded that the LAPD’s problems are systemic, cultural and entrenched. LAPD brass concluded that the Rampart Division gangster-cop scandal was an aberrant “incident.”

* Eliminating the code of silence. The Christopher Commission concluded that this code was the foremost barrier to ending the abusive attributes of the LAPD’s culture. The department denies that there even is a code of silence.

* Perform a cultural transplant. Former Assistant Chief David Dotson puts this one best: “The problems at the LAPD’s Rampart Division are cultural in nature, the result of an institutional mind-set first conceived in the 1950s.... Unless this police culture is overthrown, future Rampart scandals are inevitable.”

* An overhaul of internal affairs. The LAPD’s self-policing apparatus continues to shred whistle-blowers and shield cowboys. Frank Serpico would be just as endangered in Los Angeles as he was in New York.

When Armando Coronado, a decorated LAPD veteran, blew the whistle on gangster cops Rafael Perez and Nino Durden in 1997, LAPD’s Internal Affairs Department turned not on the rogues but on Coronado. It destroyed his career.

When another honest cop also tried to challenge the dynamic duo, Internal Affairs again turned on the clean, whistle-blowing veteran. Both times, Internal Affairs enabled the outlaws.

As long as the Los Angeles Police Department continues to submarine the Serpicos and celebrate the Dirty Harrys, how can anyone claim that police reform has even started?

* An end to information stonewalling and the “outsiders-are-the-enemy” mentality. Outsiders still have to mount the Battle of Gettysburg to get useful information out of this department. How is it possible that in 2002, the district attorney had no clue that 60 additional Rampart investigations were in the pipeline?

As a former LAPD interim chief explains it, “It’s us against the world. We see ourselves as the last bastion of good people in a world that’s crumbling.”

The Christopher Commission tagged this G. Gordon Liddy aspect of LAPD culture as a major driver of community problems.

* Accepting the fact that the LAPD cannot reform itself. The Police Department still insists that it can reform itself, despite 40 years of failed efforts, two riots sparked by department misconduct and a devastating gangster-cop crisis that raged unchecked for years and was eventually stopped not by the LAPD but by a plea-bargained confession.

* Cooperate with the inspector general. Chief Parks and the LAPD deep-sixed the first inspector general; they barely tolerate the presence of the second.

Today’s heated discussions should center on the Christopher Commission mandate and these critical reforms.

Unfortunately, politics have hijacked the agenda.

Sparked by Mayor James K. Hahn’s rejection of the city’s black chief of police and a divisive campaign by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the fog of this war blocks the reform issue, and this latest battle crackles with misfires over race, power and political betrayal.

Chief Parks’ reappointment should be assessed on the realization of the full Christopher Commission mandate and on his approach to fighting crime--not on the level of racial comfort he inspires or personal relationships or a tacit quid pro quo understanding between the mayor and the city’s black leadership.

Neither should his reappointment rest on a grievance list from a hostile union.

Whether it’s Bernard Parks or someone else, the next police chief of Los Angeles will have to unconditionally accept and implement bedrock reforms. This goes beyond appointing more senior lead officers. The city needs a task force made up of a top group of LAPD brass, patrol officers, experts, community members and other “outsiders” to draft a transition/transformation blueprint for the department.

Then the city must get ratification by all those who have a stake in the department.

Absent these basic changes, community policing will remain a slogan and the Los Angeles Police Department will continue to crush the Coronados and celebrate the Durdens.

And the mandate to reform will remain in Daryl Gates’ trash can, along with his copy of the Christopher Commission report.