Saluting a Creator of Modern LAPD

To the tune of bagpipes and roar of helicopters, Tom Reddin was remembered Friday as the man who helped create the modern Los Angeles Police Department.

The ceremonies honoring Reddin, the city’s 45th police chief who died Dec. 4 at age 88, were held on an athletic field at the Police Academy, where he once trained young recruits.

About 200 people attended a service that included three of Reddin’s successors: Chief William J. Bratton, Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks and former Chief Daryl Gates.

“We are here to celebrate the big man in the middle,” said Bratton, referring to Reddin’s leadership and basketball prowess. “He was a fierce competitor who said you checked your rank at the gym door.”

“He played aggressive, but he was always a gentleman on and off the court, and indeed is that not what the Los Angeles police officer is: a man or woman, an individual, who we expect to be aggressive but a gentleman or woman on or off the streets,” Bratton said.

Reddin rose through the ranks to serve as LAPD chief from 1967 to 1969, along the way landing on the cover of the July 1968 edition of Time magazine.

He quit the LAPD to become a KTLA news anchor and later a security firm owner.

“If his huge hands, barrel chest and easy Irish smile do not betray his occupation, his glib, salty speech is unmistakably that of the lawman,” said Bratton, reading from the Time article. “Yet in nearly every other way, Reddin is a very uncop-like cop.”

Taking command after the Watts riots, Reddin was known as a pioneer in community policing and was widely recognized as the chief who modernized communications.

Despite Reddin’s reforms, in 1967 his officers were accused of strong-arm tactics when they clashed with Vietnam War protesters outside the Century Plaza Hotel, where President Johnson was speaking.

In his later years, Reddin suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

“He met adversity with strength and dignity,” said Richard M. Mosk, a family friend and associate justice of the California Court of Appeal. “Tom loved the LAPD.... He rooted for his successors.”