L.A. Parks
A police department in disarray.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
January 22, 2002 8:45 a.m.

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 .)