New Post Tempers Mack’s Advocacy

John W. Mack, brand-new president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, wore a wan smile as he stepped before the microphones to face the press last week.

“I’ve had a long honeymoon as a new commissioner,” the 68-year-old civil rights leader said dryly: “About 30 minutes or less.”

Mack, appointed to the board Aug. 17 by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and named its president days later, almost immediately found himself in what is arguably one of the most politically uncomfortable positions in the city.

Just two days into Mack’s term, Tony Muhammad, a well-known African American minister with the Nation of Islam, alleged that he had been the victim of an unprovoked beating by police officers from the 77th Street Division, unleashing a heated community debate. Muhammad, who had been attending a vigil for the victim of a gang shooting, appeared on television with a swollen face. Police said the minister provoked the confrontation, alleging that he defied orders and pushed an officer.

The controversy followed a string of other divisive incidents: the videotaped beating of black fugitive Stanley Miller in June 2004, the police killing of black 13-year-old Devin Brown last February and the accidental shooting of a Latina toddler by police during a shootout earlier this summer.

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Quasi-Judicial Role

As the only black member of the five-member civilian board that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department and as an exemplar of an older generation of African American civil rights leaders, Mack has quickly became the focus of protesters.

He is no longer in a position to lend his voice on issues in which he used to take the lead. His new, unpaid post puts him in what he described as a quasi-judicial role in some police disciplinary matters, and he and his fellow board members may be asked to rule on whether the police actions conformed to policy.

That means he cannot weigh in on any case prematurely, Mack said.

A Police Commission meeting earlier this week cast in relief what this means for the former activist:

Scores of protesters waved posters showing the bruised Muhammad, and one speaker after another seemed to make a point of gazing straight at Mack as he sat in silence.

In the past, as president of the Los Angeles Urban League, Mack often stood with the activists. Now he was the face of bureaucracy, guarding his words, working from within the institution and looking out at a sea of outraged faces.

Activists have high expectations for him, Mack said afterward, and some may be disappointed.

“The community views me as a strong advocate on the commission. They think I can come in and wave a magic wand,” he said.

One might wonder why the white-haired Mack, who just retired from the Urban League on a high note, feted and honored at every turn, would choose to put himself through this.

An early leader of the student civil rights movement in Georgia who worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mack later led the Los Angeles Urban League for 36 years.

He was credited with building ties across a broad spectrum of political interests. Some people, including family members, expected him to retire.

“I guess maybe I’m a glutton for punishment,” Mack said. “My family thinks I’ve taken leave of my senses.”

Asked if he had put himself in an impossible position, Mack made a show of trying to compose the perfect quote, finally settling on: “I’ve dreamed the impossible dream all of my life.” Then he grinned, amused at his own sound-bite ingenuity.

The message was clear. Mack is game and seems to relish the chance his new job offers to stand on principle.

“I will call it as I see it,” he said.

“My core principles haven’t changed,” Mack said. “As a young person, I made a commitment to do all I could to create a level playing field on behalf of my people and to devote my life not just to changing Georgia and the South, but America,” he said. “So this is not a play thing for me.... I’m not in this to win a popularity contest. I’m in this to bring about change.”

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‘Very, Very Wary’

Working in Mack’s favor is his reputation for independence, said LaWanda Hawkins, a black activist who heads Los Angeles-based Justice for Murdered Children, a group that works to improve police response to homicides.

Although she said she is troubled by the Muhammad incident, Hawkins said she believes that “something just went wrong that night. I don’t think it reflects the LAPD. I don’t even think it reflects the 77th, to be honest with you.”

But Hawkins said the incident has triggered strong emotions in many black L.A. neighborhoods.

Muhammad, she said, commands respect beyond the Nation of Islam. Young people, including many gang members, look to Muhammad for leadership, Hawkins said. “If Minister Tony calls down and says, ‘No killin’ tonight,’ there won’t be none. That’s how influential he is,” she said.

So seeing Muhammad’s swollen face on television “makes everyone scared,” she said. Young men “are very concerned about this. They think if it can happen to him, they are all in danger.... It makes people very, very wary of the police, and we don’t need that in this town.”

But despite these strong feelings, Hawkins said, Mack need not fear high expectations. Many blacks are concerned, “but they know Mack, and they know he is going to be fair,” she said. “They expect him to sit down and totally evaluate it and be open-minded about the whole situation.”

In the end, she said, “we have to respect Mack’s decision. If he comes back against Minister Tony, he comes back against Minister Tony. If he comes back against the police, same thing.”

State Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) said Mack’s strength is a hard-won reputation for integrity that allows him to take contrary positions without losing his stature as an activist.

“It is a mistake to think of John Mack as an outsider or an insider. He is both,” Ridley-Thomas said. “He has been a critic of LAPD and a supporter. That’s where I think his power is. After all, this is a guy who has been with Minister Tony Muhammad at a march decrying the issue of Devin Brown’s death, and yet he was one of those who early on embraced Chief [William J.] Bratton” of the LAPD.

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‘Strong, Courageous’

Similar praise came from Danny Bakewell, executive publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel and president of the Brotherhood Crusade, who has taken up Muhammad’s cause.

Bakewell is harshly critical of the police actions toward Muhammad and of what he called Bratton’s “bravado.”

But Bakewell spoke very differently of Mack.

“He is the caliber of man who can rise to this occasion,” he said. “He is the best thing ever to happen to the Police Commission. He is strong, courageous and fair, and first and foremost a brother. He takes his blackness serious, but he also takes his duty, his obligations to the city, seriously, and that is all we can ask.”

Mack said he believes one of his challenges as Police Commission president is to communicate to people the ways in which the LAPD has changed despite problems.

The idea that the department has changed little over the years has considerable currency in Los Angeles and was voiced by several activists protesting the Muhammad incident.

But Mack said that recent events, including the firing of LAPD Officer John Hatfield, who was videotaped striking Miller with a flashlight, tell a more complicated story.

“For those who say nothing has changed in 40 years, I say it has,” he said.

Although misconduct by some officers and the slow pace of investigations remain problematic, he said, Hatfield’s firing is significant.

The LAPD, he added, needs to make sure the public pays attention, not just when controversial incidents happen but also when they are resolved.

Regarding the Muhammad case, Mack said, “I’m going to go with the facts and let the chips fall as they may.” The commission is “not going to whitewash anything, and any officer found guilty will be held accountable.”

Mack’s job is more difficult because the issues surrounding the LAPD today are more nuanced, said civil rights attorney Connie Rice, head of the Blue Ribbon Rampart Review Panel.

That’s especially true of the controversial question of how much the Police Department has changed. Black leaders who credit the LAPD with some measure of reform, including Mack and herself, are sometimes regarded skeptically, Rice said.

“I face this too when I say ... this is not Daryl Gates’ department,” she said, referring to the controversial chief who left the department in June 1992, 15 months after riots followed the racially charged case of the police beating of Rodney G. King.

The subtlety, sometimes lost on the black public, is that the department has changed at the top but not on the street, Rice said.

“This is tough for people who have been doing advocacy,” Rice said. “People say, ‘If things haven’t changed on the street, then why are we acknowledging the change?’ Our point is that if you don’t change the top, there is no hope of change on the street.”

Mack is well equipped to negotiate such complexities, Rice said.

“He is a statesman,” she said. “He can handle it.”

Mack said he doesn’t kid himself that the job will be easy.

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‘Old School’ Instincts

In July, a large, posh party was thrown on the roof of the Grove shopping center to mark his retirement from the Urban League.

This week, Mack jokingly asked reporters if they would throw a party when he retires from the Police Commission, because by then, he said, probably no one else would want to.

Far from being discouraged, though, Mack’s manner suggested that, in some way, he enjoyed the prospect.

The idea of taking unpopular positions on principle appeals to his “old school” civil rights instincts, he said.

“A long time ago, I gave up on having people love me,” he said. “I know that if you do the right thing, even your friends will sometimes criticize you.”