Posted on 10/28/2002 8:25:31 AM PST by xsysmgr
Curious things are happening here in the City of Angels. At police stations all over town, and at the downtown police headquarters building, once-reclusive captains are emerging from their offices to attend roll calls, hang out in detective squad rooms, and otherwise mingle with the troops. "Hey," they say, "how about this Bratton guy?"
"Yes," we say, "how about him?"
These captains, like the guards in a P.O.W. camp, look to the far horizon and see the liberators approaching. When the tables are at last turned and the gates are smashed open, they most ardently wish for us to report that we were treated well in captivity and thus spare their precious necks from the noose. For some, the reports will be favorable. A few commanding officers did their best to shield their subordinates from the endless nonsense emanating from the chief's office for the past five years. Their careers have suffered for it, but their reward is in the offing as William Bratton, former commissioner of the New York Police Department, assumes command of the LAPD. As for the others, Bratton told the Los Angeles Times last week that he intended to make "extraordinarily sweeping" changes to the department, which we who toil in the trenches hope will mean some commanding officers will be swept right out the door along with Bernard Parks, our recently deposed and unlamented chief.
If you were to walk through some of these police stations and offices today, you would likely see here and there a few copies of Turnaround William Bratton's autobiographical account of his years spent overhauling several police departments on the east coast, most prominent among them the NYPD. And in reading this book, LAPD commanding officers have discovered that Bratton adheres to the belief that the opinions of police officers and detectives — the cops who go out and do the work people expect cops to do — should be solicited, respected, and whenever possible, implemented. Readers new to this column may find this unworthy of comment, so self-evident is the value of such thinking. But if you think this is the way the LAPD has been operating for the past five years you are sadly misinformed. Under the stewardship of Bernard Parks, rank-and-file officers were treated like some kind of malodorous rabble whose opinions surely weren't worth the time it would take for the enlightened beings occupying the sixth floor of Parker Center to hear them. It was these street cops, after all, who brought on the Rampart scandal, in which a handful cops assigned to one police station were engaged in all types of criminality, up to and including shooting and paralyzing an unarmed gang member, then fabricating a case against him and sending him off to prison in a wheelchair. (I make no apologies for the sins of those involved in this affair, but it is important to remember that the involved officers were not cops who became criminals; they were criminals who became cops.)
Bernard Parks's response to the Rampart scandal was to all but abandon law enforcement in those sections of the city most plagued by gangs and drugs. Gang units were scrapped, their officers sent back to patrol where their expertise quickly withered. Narcotics enforcement was slashed, both on the street and at the major-violator level. The result: a steady increase in crime and a steady decrease in arrests. (The recent allegation that Parks's protégé, now-retired deputy chief Maurice Moore, acted as a bagman and money launderer in his son's cross-country cocaine-distribution enterprise, even after the FBI informed Parks of their investigation, casts a new light on the former chief's laissez-faire posture on drug enforcement.)
William Bratton is a man who revels in the challenges of repairing broken police departments. He has yet to fail. But in the LAPD he faces what may be his most-difficult challenge to date. To begin with, he inherits a command staff that a prominent local jurist once described to me as "that wretched band of captains, commanders and deputy chiefs." An example: A few years ago, a young police officer was shot and killed by a teenaged gang member whom the officer was trying to arrest for stealing beer from a 7-11 store. The gang member was also killed in the exchange of gunfire. A sergeant in that division advised his officers to be "less confrontational" with the gangster's cohorts, essentially ceding control of the neighborhood to the thugs. Today, that sergeant is a captain, regarded by those in the Parks camp as a rising star, but by the rest of us as a coward. The reader should be unsurprised to learn that in this captain's command, homicides are up 46 percent from a year ago, while arrests for violent crime have declined by 21 percent.
As long as I'm venting, here's another one: While in command of a traffic division, another captain was such an ineffectual leader that officer productivity declined precipitously in every measurable category. This was predictably mirrored by a rise in traffic collisions in that part of the city. His punishment? He was promoted, of course, and put in charge of a patrol division in South Central L.A. where he set about crushing any signs of resurgent employee morale. This captain was highly regarded by Parks because he got his paperwork in on time. Well, if he looked up from this paperwork for a moment, he might wonder why the coroner's vans are passing his police station with such alarming regularity. As you read this, his division's 100th murder victim of the year may well be lying in some gutter.
I could go on and on, and often do when in the company of fellow sufferers. But William Bratton's arrival has buoyed our spirits. He has elevated into his inner circle two popular commanders, both of whom had languished in bureaucratic jobs under Parks, and he has sent a signal that many other senior commanders and chiefs should be packing their bags and looking for jobs elsewhere. He also required every officer at the rank of captain and above to turn in a résumé listing achievements and goals. What fascinating reading they must be, for I'd bet a paycheck that not one of these men and women thought to accept even a shred of responsibility for the LAPD's current state.
All of that is about to change. Hail to the chief.
— Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. "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.
To the elite, there is no crime. No good, nor evil. There is merely the morally relativistic redistribution of socio-economic circumstance.
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