Why Bratton Has Edge Over His Predecessors

Even before Mayor James K. Hahn picked former New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton as L.A.’s next police chief, the political climate surrounding the selection process indicated that the chances for genuine reform of the Los Angeles Police Department are better now than at any time since 1950. That year, the creator of the modern LAPD, William H. Parker, was sworn in as chief. He then began transforming a lax, brutal, corrupt and politically manipulated police force into a highly efficient crime-fighting machine that became the model for police departments throughout the Southwest.

Hahn’s decision not to rehire Chief Bernard C. Parks ignited a bitter and racially tinged political battle, costing the mayor support in the city’s African American community. Unlike previous LAPD controversies, however, the acrimony quickly dissipated, and the special-interest politics that marked the selection of a new chief over the last decade retreated into the background.

One big reason for the relative depoliticization of the selection process was sheer public exhaustion. Since four LAPD officers beat up Rodney King in 1991, the department has been mired in controversy, from the Christopher Commission’s condemnation of widespread officer misconduct to the questionable police tactics of the 1992 riots, from Daryl Gates’ ouster as chief to the selection of Philadelphian Willie Williams as its first black leader. Along the way, city voters passed a series of charter amendments to reform the LAPD, but 10 years after the King beating, outsider Williams and insider Parks, plagued by the Rampart scandal, had failed to reform the department.

But the racial tensions that had marred the selections and tenures of L.A. police chiefs in the 1990s gave way to a consensus: The time for symbolism was past. Race was no substitute for reform.

The low profile of the Police Protective League also helped to mute the politics of the selection process. The league didn’t even endorse a candidate. But union leaders may have concluded that there was little to be gained from pressuring Hahn. After all, the mayor had already repaid the debt he owed the league for its support of his candidacy by successfully pushing for a work plan that allowed officers to toil longer hours in exchange for more days off. Hahn’s decision not to rehire the disciplinarian Parks was also good news for the police union. In any case, it would have been a huge political miscalculation for Hahn to again be seen as doing the league a favor.

If the police union didn’t get what it wanted--a current or former LAPD insider--it also didn’t get what it least wanted: John Timoney. While head of the Philadelphia Police Department, Timoney had taken no nonsense from its union, which was accustomed to throwing its weight around and getting what it wanted. The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police may have gotten a measure of revenge when it told league officials that Timoney was bad news. “It was strictly a labor issue,” said a source close to the league.

Members of the LAPD command staff didn’t play politics, either, though many were said to be seething over the Police Commission’s decision not to include at least one of their number in the final list of candidates, a move they correctly interpreted as a slap in the face. “It’s like a morgue up there on the sixth floor,” a Parker Center veteran said of the department’s administrative nerve center. “People are angry, insulted and unhappy” at being excluded, said another.

But the most important reason for the politically muted selection process was the manner in which the Police Commission went about its business of drawing up a candidate list for the mayor. At first, its members appeared to be inexperienced dilettantes without the will, stature or knowledge to handle the job of overseeing LAPD reform. Now they appear to be heavy hitters. After the Parks controversy died down, the commission settled in and conducted a professional search for a new chief. This in itself was a departure from the previous selection process. In 1997, everyone knew that Parks was Mayor Richard Riordan’s choice to replace Williams, and the commission essentially rubber-stamped his wish.

This time, commissioners had other things on their minds, like the slow pace of departmental reform, flagging officer morale and mounting attrition, and a federal consent decree hanging over the LAPD’s head. Hahn also had made clear that the Police Department’s survival as a credible and effective law-enforcement institution depended on aggressively reforming it. To its credit, the commission’s three finalists--Bratton, Timoney and Art Lopez--tested Hahn’s seriousness.

By including Lopez as a finalist, the Police Commission had left the mayor with an exit strategy. Lopez spent 27 years in the LAPD before becoming Oxnard’s chief and was the choice of many Latino leaders to replace Parks. Furthermore, naming Lopez would have set up Latino support for Hahn’s reelection bid in 2005, not an insignificant consideration since the mayor can no longer rely on the loyalty of black voters. Finally, the Police Protective League would have received yet another Hahn gift, this time a man not known for a punishing hand.

By choosing Bratton, however, Hahn has demonstrated that he is his own man when it comes to reforming the LAPD. It will be ironic indeed if Hahn, by picking Bratton, turns out to be the man who finally transforms the LAPD. As city attorney during the 1990s, Hahn’s office defended LAPD officers in hundreds of police-abuse lawsuits whose settlements cost the city more than $100 million. Throughout, Hahn uttered nary a word about police reform. Only when the Justice Department threatened to sue the city for its police department’s “pattern or practice” of abuse did Hahn get involved in the reform process.

Bratton, to be sure, faces many challenges in reforming the LAPD. But because the selection process used to choose him was politically defused, he has a leg up on his predecessors in modernizing the LAPD that Parker created.