For the Good of the LAPD
Chief Bernard Parks should resign.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
February 14, 2002 9:20 a.m.

ho woulda thunk it?

Until the other day, I often wondered how Los Angeles mayor James Hahn managed to walk upright all these years without the benefit of a spine. So imagine the gleeful astonishment here in the Dunphy house when Mr. Hahn at last took his place in the phylum Chordata. At great risk to his political future, Hahn held a press conference last Tuesday to announce that he would not support Bernard Parks in his bid for a second five-year term as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Parks is held in high regard among blacks in Los Angeles, and it was the near-unanimous support of black voters that provided Hahn with his margin of victory in last year's mayoral election. Most predictably, notables such as Congresswoman Maxine Waters were quick to express their "shock and outrage" at the mayor's decision, and a recall effort against Hahn is being discussed by those still too shocked and outraged to string together a coherent sentence. Los Angeles cannot as yet rival New York in the arena of racial hysteria, but the battle over Parks's future promises to be most amusing for those of you fortunate enough to live somewhere else. It will less amusing for those of us living here. I like the circus as much as anyone, but I suspect living in the center ring would soon grow tiresome. We can expect Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to arrive any day now.

It might be said that James Hahn inherited his base of support among blacks from his father, Kenneth, who for 40 years represented South Los Angeles on the L.A. county board of supervisors. In last year's campaign Hahn knitted that traditional base with more conservative voting blocs by portraying his opponent, former California assembly speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, as a dangerous radical. To that end he secured his right flank by courting and winning an endorsement from the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents LAPD officers up to the rank of lieutenant and whose members, myself included, overwhelmingly wish to see Parks replaced. In the current debate over Parks's future, Hahn found his coat sleeves being yanked in opposite directions by cops and constituents who each felt they were owed a debt.

In weighing his decision to turn his back on Parks, Hahn no doubt made the sort of calculations that politicians ceaselessly and almost instinctively make: Which constituency can I stab in the back and still have a shot at winning the next time around? By opposing Parks's reappointment, Hahn risks losing support among the black voters who so reliably turned out for him in the last election. But supporting Parks would have been politically dangerous for Hahn as well, particularly to any aspirations beyond City Hall he may be entertaining. In addition to carrying South Central L.A. with the help of black voters, he also won in the more conservative precincts of the San Fernando Valley, where the Protective League's endorsement carried more clout. The Valley is currently threatening to secede from Los Angeles and take a huge portion of the city's population and tax base with it. Hahn does not want to be the mayor of a disintegrating city, and a major issue driving the secession effort has been the LAPD's failure to respond to the frightening increase in crime in Valley neighborhoods. Over the two-year period that ended in December, homicides increased by 39 percent and robberies by 20 percent in the five patrol divisions that make up the LAPD's Valley Bureau.

I have often written of the disorder in the Los Angeles Police Department, but things are growing more desperate with each passing day. Even at its budgeted strength of 10,000 officers the LAPD is undermanned, with one of the lowest police-officers-per-capita ratios among the country's major cities. But the problem is especially pronounced in the Valley, where the five police stations cover much more territory than those on the other side of the hill. And the department is currently about 1,200 officers short of that authorized strength, forcing those who remain to shoulder a load that grows more burdensome as crime increases and officers leave the job more quickly than they can be replaced.

And why are they leaving? To put it simply, under Bernard Parks the LAPD has become a lousy place to work. Police officers everywhere are well accustomed to dealing with the physical dangers and psychological challenges inherent in confronting crime and villainy. But, reflecting the chief's apparent beliefs, the attitude among many in the upper ranks of the LAPD seems to be that we poor wretches who toil in the streets and do the dirty work exist on only a slightly higher moral plane than the criminals and villains we confront. Criminals and their sympathizers have taken advantage of Parks's draconian disciplinary system by burdening the department with an avalanche of personnel complaints, to which the department devotes an outrageously inordinate amount of resources. Imagine working for a company whose internal policies are dictated by those who wish to see it out of business.

According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, last year there were nearly 6,000 personnel investigations in the LAPD, or about two for every three officers. But the majority of those investigations of course focused on patrol officers, who make up only about half of the department. I certainly had my share, all of them frivolous. Chief Parks defends this policy by citing the most egregious examples of officer misconduct. No one argues that serious misconduct should not be punished accordingly, but if I had the mind to do so I could go out today and pull off all sorts of shenanigans because I know my supervisor isn't out on the street keeping an eye on me. He is sitting at some computer in the police station writing a 20-page report about someone who parked a black-and-white in the red zone at the courthouse. And, guilty or innocent, it generally takes over a year for an accused officer to have his case adjudicated. All of this has had a corrosive effect on morale and caused an exodus of officers to departments governed by more common sense.

The resultant increase in crime in Los Angeles has of course fallen most heavily on minority neighborhoods, where residents would benefit most from the presence of a motivated yet disciplined police department. That unpleasant fact goes unrecognized in an op-ed piece by Maxine Waters in Friday's Los Angeles Times. In railing against Hahn for his decision on Parks, Waters expresses no outrage over the spike in crime in her district and makes no concession that the police chief might in some way be responsible for it. I would remind the gentlewoman from California that in South Central L.A.'s 77th Street Division homicides have increased by 57 percent in the last two years. How many of your constituents must be killed, Ms. Waters, before you recognize that Parks has failed?

In a further blow to Parks's ambitions, on Sunday the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy editorial asking him to step down. As with Daryl Gates and Willie Williams before him, Parks's political support has washed away beneath his feet. Before making his decision public, Mayor Hahn met privately with Parks and invited him to retire gracefully for the good of the LAPD and the city. In a move emblematic of his tenure as chief, Parks refused. Instead he has chosen to engage in a fight he cannot win. I hope it ends quickly.

(*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 .)