Decision That Haunts Hahn

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn’s dramatic decision in 2001 not to rehire then-LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks is coming back to haunt him. It will certainly lose him votes in the May 17 runoff -- and potentially could cost him the race. In a sign of desperation, the mayor is accusing his rival, Antonio Villaraigosa, of having talked out of both sides of his mouth on this very issue in the 2001 mayoral race (despite the fact that Hahn ducked the issue entirely at the time).

All this is a shame because firing Parks was Hahn’s finest hour in office; a moment in which he did the right thing for the right reasons. But today, no one seems willing to acknowledge that.

Since last month’s election, leading African American politicians such as veteran South L.A. Rep. Maxine Waters and county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke have almost gleefully announced their support for Villaraigosa. They give a number of reasons for their change of heart, but the subtext is always Parks’ firing. This means trouble for Hahn; African Americans have been his bedrock of support in all five of his successful citywide elections. And if it were just the leaders of the black community who were angry, Hahn might have a manageable situation. But it’s ordinary voters too. In 2001, Hahn received 71% of the black vote. During this year’s election, he got just 23%. Worse yet, in an even stronger, more direct message, 54% of the black vote went to now-Councilman Parks, who had no realistic chance of winning. Those numbers are disastrous for Hahn, and he knows it.

The genesis of the black community’s anger at Hahn goes back before the Parks firing to the 2001 campaign itself, and to the nasty political fight with heavy racial overtones that raged between two of Hahn’s key constituencies -- African American voters and the LAPD’s politically potent rank-and-file union, the Police Protective League. The league despised Parks and wanted him gone. Black leaders, including two congresswomen and three City Council members, blasted the league and announced their undying support for the police chief.

Facing a tough challenge from Villaraigosa, Hahn needed a huge margin of victory among black voters, and just as desperately needed the union’s campaign money and endorsement, which he knew would have a powerful effect on conservative white voters in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside. He got the support of the league by promising to support 12-hour, three-day workweeks for police officers; of conservative white voters by making Villaraigosa appear dangerous; and of black voters by promising its leaders a seat at his administration’s table. Along the way, he was even more noncommittal about Parks’ future than Villaraigosa -- which many blacks took as a signal that Parks would stay.

When Hahn fired Parks anyway just a couple of months after taking office, African American leaders were outraged. As they saw it, Hahn had done three unforgivable things by not rehiring Parks: capitulated to a white-dominated Police Protective League that they perceived to be racist, taken them for granted and played them for fools. Hahn is now paying for that decision at a time when he needs every possible black vote.

But what has gotten lost in all this political intrigue is one simple fact: The people of Los Angeles owe Hahn an enormous debt of gratitude. Parks was a bad chief. Reform was moving at a snail’s pace, officer morale was plummeting and officer attrition mounting. Community policing was nonexistent, and a federal consent decree that Parks detested and was philosophically opposed to implementing was hanging over the city’s head. The survival of the LAPD as a credible and effective law enforcement institution depended on Parks’ departure.

Hahn was the first mayor in 50 years with the guts to bite the bullet and fire a police chief who was part of a cycle of small men with narrow vision who for decades had headed a broken police department they were unable or unwilling to fix. Hahn then challenged a police culture rooted in concrete and hired a successful, outside police reformer who understands that a police department must be accountable to elected civilian authority, not just to itself.

To get it all done, the mayor braved the racial politics that he knew would come back to haunt him and stood up to a core constituency that he might just as easily have pandered to.

So if he fails to be reelected next month, let it be because he’s all about the past and Villaraigosa is about the future, or because he’s plodding and uninspiring at a time when L.A. needs big answers to big problems. And not because he stood up when everybody else kept sitting.