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 magine
if you will, gentle readers, that you're leafing through the pages
of the Wall Street Journal or Barron's, or, even better,
clicking around over at NRO Financial. You come upon a story examining
a company that not long ago was a recognized leader in its field
but has lately come upon hard times. Worker productivity has declined,
valuable employees are fleeing in droves, and the overall bottom
line is off dramatically. Now imagine that in reading further you
learn that the CEO of this failing company is seeking to have his
contract renewed when the matter comes up for consideration by the
board of directors. You might well remark to yourself something
along these lines: What sort of chump is this CEO fellow? He has
steered a once proud company into the ditch and now has the crust
to come and ask to keep his job? The shareholders will take up torches
and pitchforks and run him out of town!
And so they
would if this scenario indeed depicted an organization governed
by the unchanging law of the private sector: Get the job done or
get out. Instead it describes the current state of my own Los Angeles
Police Department, where Chief Bernard Parks will soon ask the police
commission to reappoint him for a second five-year term. As the
commission weighs its decision it is politics as much as performance
that will determine Parks's fate, and a particularly odious brand
of politics at that. Bernard Parks is black, you see, and in the
eyes of some he is therefore unaccountable to the customary standards
of competence and effectiveness. As proof of this, Congresswoman
Maxine Waters has added her shrill voice to the campaign to have
Parks reappointed, illustrating the odd dynamic of recent history
that one blessed with sufficient melanin in his skin — or one
who professes sufficient sympathy for those who do — can bungle
his job and still find no shortage of support among those who cling
to the belief that race is determinative. For that matter, he can
pull off all manner of mischief, up to and including double-murder,
and the no-justice-no-peace crowd will nonetheless queue up before
the television cameras to profess his innocence. I'm reminded of
a line from The D-O-D-G-E-R Song, recorded some forty years
ago by Danny Kaye: "Well, they may be bums but they're MY bums."
The city charter
mandates that Parks inform the civilian police commission of his
desire for reappointment by February 13, after which the commission
will have three months to decide whether to grant the request or
hand the chief his cards. Parks has yet to formally announce his
intentions, but last month he told a group of supporters at a private
meeting that he will seek a second term. He has also engaged the
internal machinery of the LAPD in the effort to burnish his image.
Last month he issued a press release that appeared under the headline
"Employee Organizations Representing the Men and Women of the
Los Angeles Police Department Offer Their Unwavering Support to
Chief Parks." Putting aside the Castro-esque tone of the headline,
the substance of it is misleading. The only employee organization
with any real clout in town is the Police Protective League, the
labor union representing officers up to the rank of lieutenant,
and the number-one item on its agenda is Parks's ouster. The League
recently took the unprecedented step of calling for a vote of no-confidence
in Parks, and two-thirds of the membership returned their ballots.
I predicted a landslide, but the results surprised even one as disaffected
as I: 93 percent of the voters want Parks to be replaced. It's hard
to be a leader if no one wants to follow you.
"Dunphy,"
you ask, "Why all this venom? What's your beef with the man?"
My space is limited, so I'll try to be succinct. You may be under
the impression that the mission of the LAPD is to decrease crime
and the fear of crime, thereby enhancing the lives of those who
live and work in the City of Angels. Would that it were so, as it
once was. The mission of the LAPD under Chief Parks is now the movement
of great stacks of paper from one pile to another and from one office
to another, precious little of it having anything to do with fighting
crime. There are audits of this, audits of that, even audits of
the audits. And, most galling to the troops, investigating personnel
complaints, the great majority of which are transparently false
from the outset, has taken precedence over investigating crimes.
Indeed, there are thousands of unsolved murders in Los Angeles,
yet even Homicide detectives have been pressed into service to investigate
trivial complaints against officers. If you get robbed, even shot,
in L.A., unless you provide a solid description that might produce
an arrest your case will sit on some detective's desk for a few
weeks before being completely forgotten. Ah, but if you call to
report that some officer gave you a dirty look as he drove by, the
LAPD will move heaven and earth to find the perpetrator. The result
of all this has been a demoralized department that has lost all
faith in its leadership.
All of this
is reflected in the raw numbers by which Parks's performance should
be measured: Over the past two years violent crime in Los Angeles
has increased by 17 percent, with homicides up a horrifying 34 percent.
During the same period arrests for violent crime have declined by
16 percent, total arrests by 29 percent, and arrests for weapons
possession by 36 percent. During the Giuliani administration, the
New York Police Department demonstrated what a motivated and dedicated
force can accomplish in reducing crime, but the LAPD is headed in
the opposite direction. The department is about 1,100 officers short
of its authorized strength, and given the current atmosphere it
is finding it difficult to attract qualified applicants. And there
are hundreds of officers like me who are now eligible to retire;
the only thing keeping us on the job is the hope that new leadership
may be in the offing.
In the face
of all this Chief Parks refuses to acknowledge his department's
troubles. In support of his bid for reappointment, Parks last week
held a press conference and released a publication that highlights
his accomplishments since being sworn in as chief in 1997. The publication,
awkwardly titled Fourth Year in Office Report, is similar to a corporation's
annual report, filled with splashy graphics and florid prose that
trumpet accomplishments and downplay disasters. I'm sure a visitor
to the Enron offices could have found a similarly optimistic publication
on the very day the company went belly-up. Of the report's 50 pages,
less than a page is devoted to issues regarding recruitment and
retention, which gives you an idea of the priority Parks has given
to these problems.
A prediction:
If Parks is reappointed there will be so many people mobbing the
personnel office to quit that they'll, well, they'll have to call
the cops.
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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