Jewish Gay Cop Makes an Impression but Fails to Make Cut

So you’re Jewish, you’re gay, you’re a Democrat, and it’s time to make a career choice in Los Angeles.

No problem. Must be tons of options, and way, way, way down the list, somewhere beneath pro hockey player and Navy SEAL, is LAPD cop.

Against all reason, that’s the job David Kalish wanted 27 years ago at the age of 22, and nobody was going to talk him out of it.

“My family wasn’t thrilled,” he says, and at that point, they didn’t even know he was gay. There just weren’t a lot of young Jewish men holstering up for the Los Angeles Police Department. “They said, ‘Why not be an attorney, like your cousin?’ ”

Because all Kalish ever wanted to do was get behind the wheel of a black-and-white, even after he signed on in the mid-1970s and felt as out of place as a straight man in a seminary. Kalish kept his homosexuality secret and stuck it out, which wasn’t always easy (details in a minute).

He rose through the ranks to deputy chief, and last week, anticipation building, the man who once hid his true identity from 9,000-plus officers, and more than once had them gunning for him, waited nervously to find out if he might be their boss.

“They can take me or leave me,” he said over coffee at a Starbucks on La Brea the day before a field of 13 candidates was cut to three. “But I hope they take me.”

It wasn’t hard for me to find people in the know who thought Kalish was one of the best candidates, and probably the strongest of the six within the department. USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky said he was dazzled by the depth of Kalish’s reform plan, which begins with a redistribution of manpower.

For example, it makes no sense to Kalish that only 207 officers work gangs in a city with 407 gangs and 56,000 known gangsters who run drugs, terrorize neighborhoods and lure kids into a world where the bullets never stop flying.

Kalish has been everywhere in the department, too. Street patrol, terrorism, gangs, investigations, personnel, community affairs, South-Central, Hollywood, the Valley, LAX.

But some cops and civilians rolled their eyes when I asked about Kalish as a possible successor to Bernard Parks. It was as if I’d suggested that Tommy Tune ought to head up the invasion of Iraq.

Yeah, sure, they said. The LAPD might not be quite the macho Marine unit of old, but is it ready to fall in line behind an openly gay chief?

As alternative lifestyles go, Kalish does cover a lot of ground. He is the biological father of a 3 1/2-year-old son who essentially has two fathers and two mothers, as Kalish describes it. The second father is Kalish’s Asian Buddhist partner, and on the mom side is a lesbian couple that brings a Latina, white and Catholic perspective to Junior’s kaleidoscopic world.

All five members of the Rainbow Coalition went to a Dodger game last week, and if this isn’t L.A.’s postmodern poster family, the boy ought to at least get free Dodger dogs.

The leadership question is actually a fair concern, given the rock-bottom morale in the LAPD and the need to make the right decision this time on the top cop. So I asked Kalish if he thought a gay chief might have trouble getting the full support of the troops.

“Maybe I’m either incredibly naive or just not based in reality, but I believe they don’t care about it, to tell you the truth,” he said. “These cops today are too sophisticated to be concerned with my religion or orientation. What they want is a leader who knows them, understands them and respects them. I believe that in my heart.”

It wasn’t always that simple. When Kalish came out of the academy, he had no option but to keep his mouth shut about which way he leaned.

“It was a requirement,” he said. “It was survival. That was 27 years ago, and people were terminated for it.”

On what grounds?

“Fill in the blanks.”

Kalish would be cruising along with a partner who started in on some gay-bashing screed and have to make a decision. Should he try to broaden his pal’s horizons, or nod like a Neanderthal?

Over the years, he did some of both.

“There were some tough times,” he says, and it takes a few tugs for me to drag more out of him.

“Vice cops used to stake out my house to see who was coming and going at night,” he says. “And some false complaints were initiated against me.”

But that’s all he cared to say about it, partly because he wanted to be seen as a good career cop who wanted to be chief, rather than as the gay candidate.

“Look, I don’t like to play the oppression Olympics. A lot of people have had to overcome things, and I’ve never been one to let artificial barriers stand in my way. Being a cop was my lifelong ambition, and I just happened to be born gay. But this is a truly great job and I love this organization.”

Kalish said he quit hiding his private life about 10 years ago. He never held a press conference or anything, “but it’s been known within the department.” Anyone who missed it might have been clued in last month, when Kalish had sort of a coming out in a San Francisco Chronicle article.

“The chief of police is a critically important, high-profile job,” Kalish explains, saying he agreed to the story because he didn’t want to hold anything back. “I just thought it was the right thing to do, because this is who I am.”

The call on the final three candidates came Thursday afternoon.

Kalish didn’t make the cut.

Two members of the Police Commission have since called him, saying he made a big impression and has a bright future with the LAPD.

Kalish thanked them, but he’s upset that the commission picked three outsiders, showing no confidence in the applicants from within the department.

His department.

“It felt like being punched in the stomach,” he said, and in the next breath he repeated that he’s got to get over it. He wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.

The day before the decision, I asked Kalish a question. If he got passed over, would it be because he’s gay?

He smiled and said, “We’ll never know the answer to that, will we?”

*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.