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Disclosure Expose: LAPD's Political Police
By Leslie Dutton
December 13, 2002 Remarks before the
SANTA MONICA ROTARY CLUB, PACIFIC
PALISADES, CALIF
The following is a rewritten
and expanded version of a speech given by Leslie Dutton before the Santa Monica
Rotary Club on December 13, 2002. It has been supplemented with historical
background material necessary, for the purpose of providing the proper context
and perspective, for various references made during the presentation.
© 2002 All Rights Reserved
DUTTON: You
are probably wondering exactly what we won the Emmy Award for. Our multi-part
series was entitled “L.A.’s War Against Terrorism”. We interviewed Los Angeles Police Chief Parks the LAPD Union
leaders and elected officials about how they, the LAPD and Los Angeles in
general, were going to become part of the War on Terrorism.
This year, we have built on the original
series of programs, which won the EMMY.
Against the backdrop of the War on Terror, we set out to explore how a
relatively new public policy in L.A. – selecting a new Chief of the LAPD,
seemingly every five years – was working in these perilous times. We started by
interviewing Mitzi Grasso, the President of the Police Union; Bernard Parks,
the incumbent Police Chief; Jeffrey Eglash, the LAPD Inspector General; David
Cunningham, a current Police Commissioner who was involved in the selection
process; Al DeBlanc, a commentator on the Fox News Network, who served on the
Blue Ribbon Selection Committee which developed the selection criteria; and
Cindy Miscikowski, who is the President Pro-Tem of the Los Angeles City Council
and Chairperson of the Council’s Public Safety Committee. We also reached back in history a bit, by
interviewing Edith Perez, who was the Police Commission President at the time
former Chief Willie Williams was not reappointed to a second term; and
also we interviewed Senator Ed Davis, who was the LAPD Chief from 1969 to 1978
and was known as “the father of community policing,” an issue which was a big
part of this whole debate, which culminated in the selection of William Bratton
as the newest Chief of the LAPD.
Yesterday I interviewed Dennis Zine who
is a 33- year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, a former Director
of the Los Angeles Police Union for three terms, and who is now a City
Councilman. These were all full, one-hour
interviews, shown as “two-parters” on our Full Disclosure Network® programs. So you can see, this year has been a little
busy.
This time around, several issues seem to
dominate the new ritual of choosing a new LAPD Chief every five
years: First, the 3-12 plan - whether or not the police officers should work
for three days, for 12 hours and have the rest of the week off. Second, hiring: Chief Parks was criticized severely by all of his opposition
because hiring was down. People didn’t
want to join the force, and they were blaming him for it. Third, Police reform: Parks was under fire for the reforms or the
perceived lack thereof, at the LAPD.
And at the same time, he was being criticized for his strict discipline
process for errant police officers.
Also, “Community Policing” became a very
big issue. You remember there was a lot
of discussion about the senior lead officers, whether or not they should be in
an office or whether they should be out on the beat in a car. Former Chief Ed Davis wrote an opinion
article for the L. A. Times supporting Chief Bernard Parks. In the Full Disclosure Network® interview he
complimented Parks for the way he was implementing Community Policing in Los
Angeles. All this, however, was seemingly
overlooked by almost everyone, in a mad dash to usher in a new Police Chief to
match the tastes of the newly elected Mayor James Hahn.
How did we ever get to this point –
“musical chairs for police chiefs” – when Los Angeles had previously had a long
string of stable, long-serving chiefs, leading an LAPD widely regarded as one of
the finest police departments in the country?
Well, there was something called “the
Rodney King Affair” and its aftermath, and urban riot – some called it a
“rebellion” – said to be the worst riot or civil unrest in American
history. That’s debatable, but never
the less a commission was formed, as usual, to get to the bottom of the
problem. Warren Christopher, a former
L.A. Lawyer who later became Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton,
led this commission, which of course issued a Report. No, not the Warren Report – that was
named for Earl Warren, former California Governor and U. S. Supreme Court
Justice. This equally notorious report
was known as the Christopher Report- and it advocated that
things were wrong with the LAPD, that it needed – what else but – REFORM.
For a long time, LAPD Chiefs were
selected following a civil service exam and had civil service “protections” to
shield them from political influence.
From the three highest scorers on the civil service exams, the Mayor appointed
a new Police Chief, who generally served until he decided to retire. Politicians generally resented this
independence from their control, but could do little about it. This civil service protection was actually
put in the Los Angeles City Charter back in the 1930’s, ironically during an
earlier call for reform, to prevent corruption in the Police Department and to
make it a truly “professional” force, not dependent on currying “political”
favor.
But now, new “reform” was needed
according to the Christopher Report And in reaction to the 1992 riots, which
some felt the Chiefs of the LAPD had either somehow caused or failed to
prevent, reform meant amending the Los Angeles City Charter again. This was accomplished by passing Proposition
“F” which essentially erased the previous reforms that had been in place for
over 50 years. Sold as a vital part of
the solution to the LAPD’s problems, proposition “F” made the Police Chief a
political appointee of the Mayor, to serve one five year term and maybe be
re-confirmed for a second five years.
The Police Commissioners would have a hand in it – the Police
Commissioners appointed by the Mayor.
And then finally, for good measure, this last round of Charter Reforms
also made the LAPD Deputy Chiefs into political appointees too, because the new
Chief now can replace most of the incumbent Deputy Chiefs with people of his
own choosing. Thus most of the top LAPD
“command staff” changes when the elected Mayor and his appointees exercise
their new found powers over their police department.
So
following the 1992 riots, the Charter was reformed, Proposition F made the
Police Chief a political appointee and the Police Commissioners who were
appointed by the Mayor, would select the three finalist candidates for Chief. Previously the Mayor would pick the new
Chief from the highes scoring candidates who took the Civil Service test. And then finally, this last round of Charter
reforms made the Deputy Chiefs in Los Angeles political appointees, because the
new Chief now can replace the current Chiefs with people of his own
choosing.
Thus, our newest series of programs
sought to explore whether or not the process for selecting, LAPD Chiefs had
been politicized and if the entire Department was becoming politicized. After all since the most recent reforms have
been in place, we had two Police Chiefs who have only served one five-year
term, but were rejected from seeking a second five-year term.
There were many issues that made it
impossible for Bernard Parks to serve a second year term as Chief. These issues
were created by many forces in the City, not the least of which was the Police
Union. Many of our guests told us – as
a matter of fact, Commissioner David Cunningham made a very big point of it –
that the Police Union’s campaign to remove Police Chief Parks was very
effective and that this was the first time that such a thing had happened. He even went on to say that the union spent
an inordinate amount of money, estimated at around $1 million, for their
campaign. You might recall that when
Chief Parks made his parting address before the City Council, he warned of that
possibility – not really just the possibility, it was more of an accusation -
that the City itself had indirectly provided the money for that campaign to the
Union. It was given to the union
ostensibly for other purposes, but because that money was available in the
Union treasury, it created the distinct possibility that it was used to unseat
Parks.. So in the backdrop of
politicizing the Department, and in the context of all this, Mitzi Grasso told
us in our interview in January that the Union decided to endorse James Hahn for
Mayor because he had pledged to implement the 3-12 plan where the officers work
three days for 12 hours and have the rest of the week off.
Additionally, there were other issues,
like the senior lead officer and community policing. Significantly, there’s a
vast difference in interpretation as to what community policing really is so we
went to the source. We traveled to San
Luis Obispo and interviewed former Police Chief Ed Davis, who’s the Father of
Community Policing. He told us that he
felt that the way Bernard Parks was implementing community policing was just
right, and that he was a fine man with great integrity. And you should know Ed Davis was one of the
pioneers of the Police Union movement in the State of California. He was a representative in Sacramento for
the organization’s interest, and he was very upset during the interview that
the Police Union was inserting itself into the management of the
Department. In contrast, when we
interviewed Police Union President Mitzi Grasso, she indicated that she felt
that that was something in which the
Union should play a role-- in the actual management of the Department. Thus,
she felt they should have a say, in who the Chief should be. And obviously, they did. They were
successful in their efforts to remove Police Chief Parks.
Dennis Zine and Cindy Miscikowski had
some interesting comments with regards to the hiring problems that were and are
still facing the City of Los Angeles-- for which Police Chief Bernard Parks was
blamed. When I asked Chief Parks about
the problem, he said that it was the Personnel Department of the City that was
responsible for initial hiring and that it was largely a problem that he
couldn’t do anything about. Well, when
I interviewed Cindy Miscikowski, she said that the Personnel Department and the
LAPD had been at odds, and they didn’t agree on how the candidates for police
officers should be selected. She felt
that the LAPD had the right to declassify or reject certain candidates. But yesterday when I interviewed Dennis
Zine, remember, on the Board of the Police Union for three terms, an LAPD
officer for 33 years, and now a Councilman, he was a little more specific. He said the real difference between the
methodology in selecting candidates for officers between the Personnel
Department and the LAPD was that the Police Department was rejecting the candidates
that were being sent over from the Personnel Department. And I said, “Could you be specific? Can you give our viewers a chance to
understand just why they were being rejected?”
And he said, “Well, a lot of the officer candidates had minor arrest
records that should be – that the Personnel Department felt should be
overlooked, and the Police Department was adamant that they didn’t want to hire
people that had had arrest records.”
This is a very, very important point to explore fully. Not only have we
interviewed the people from the Unions, from the Police Department and the
elected officials, but I’ve also interviewed prominent civil rights activists
such as Steve Yagman, who’s filed 1600 lawsuits against the LAPD, and who
claims that the LAPD is so rotten and so corrupt that it should be done away
with.
All right. Now, you have a Personnel Department that’s sending over
candidates that have arrest records.
Not felonies, but arrest records none the less -- that they felt should
be overlooked. Now the Police
Department was trying to implement reforms, reforms that are mandated by a
Federal Consent Decree and reforms that were brought about because of the
problems generated by the Rodney King affair. And you have a police chief that
is trying to do the job he was told to do.
He’s trying to reform the Department; he’s trying to discipline the
officers: yet at the same time, you have a political element of the City that
is sending him candidates saying, “You have to use them.”
Let’s look at how that decision was made:
you have a new mayor elected with the support of the Union; you have a new
Police Commission appointed by the Mayor, only one hold-over remained – that’s
Bert Boeckman. The new commissioners
came on August of 2001. You remember
what happened in September? September
11th. And then in December,
Chief Parks decided to apply for reappointment.
I asked the new Commission President Rick
Caruso a week ago today when I interviewed him, how he evaluated the Chief,
considering the fact that he’d just been appointed, along with three other new
commissioners. “Oh,” he said, “We read
a lot. We had to read a lot.” I said, “Did you look over the evaluations
of the Chief?” And he said, “Oh, yes,
we read the evaluations, but the evaluations were done by a previous
Commission.” He said, “But you know,
those evaluations are not really – didn’t really give us a good sense of what
was happening,” and he said the major factor in his mind why he felt that Chief
Parks should be removed was because he was Bernard Parks. Cindy Miscikowski made comments in our
interview similar to that. So I came to
the conclusion that it was a
“personality factor” and not “merit” -- as well as politics – that ended Chief
Parks career.
When the Police Commission makes a
decision based on exposure only to a couple of months of working with a Chief,
and essentially completely discounts the previous Commission’s evaluations, it
makes one wonder, what’s really going on.
Under the new Proposition “F” system, we have a five-year term that’s
renewable if the Chief decides to reapply.
After the four years of Willie Williams, we started getting grumblings
and dissent. After four years of
Bernard Parks, we started getting grumblings of dissent. And now, we have a new chief: a new chief
who will be into his first term when we have another election for mayor. What is going to happen with that
election for mayor? Will things be
“politicized” or are we going to be prepared on the local level to help fight
the War on Terrorism?
Ladies and gentlemen, there are very serious
public policy issues now facing the Los Angeles Police Department, which will
impact, in effect, the entire region.
Such as: we know we’ve heard from the Federal government of alerts that
have been issued with regards to Middle Easterners coming across the southern
border, which is very porous. We have
policies: we have a Federal Consent Decree in place right now that restricts
racial profiling. We have Special Order
40, which was implemented 25 years ago by Chief Darryl Gates, which said that
the LAPD officers may not ask an individual if they are in the country
illegally.
I posed the question to some of the
guests I interviewed: What if – what if
we get an alert from the Federal government, from the FBI, that there are
suspected terrorists coming across the border, and they suspect they’re in the
Los Angeles Region, and our officers are prohibited from verifying whether or
not these people are in the country legally?
The bottom line is this: Police Commission President Rick Caruso
said, “We do not need to change Special Order 40. It needs to stay in place.”
In talking with Chief Parks last December, I asked him: “Do you foresee any public policy changes
necessary to deal with the War on Terrorism, such as Special Order 40? He said, “Yes, Special Order 40 needs to be
rewritten because of three major factors:
One, there’s a new international treaty that requires the LAPD or any
law enforcement agency to report, to the Consul Generals of the various countries
if a foreign national has been detained for more than two hours. Number two, there is the State law that was
enacted that prohibited – that required or mandated, I should say,
municipalities to cooperate with the
INS. And thirdly is the jails. It is absolutely necessary that in the jails
they determine whether someone is here in the country legally or not.”
There’s even another shocking aspect to
this. When I interviewed Sheriff Baca and L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich
and L. A. City Councilman Dennis Zine recently, I asked them about the Three
Strikes law. They were complaining that
criminal aliens who were coming to this country were being deported and then
returning five, six, sometimes even ten times, and committing more crimes. It’s called “recidivism” not just to the
same old crime but to the same jurisdictions – our state and our
communities. I said “What about Three
Strikes?” They say, “Well, in the
instances of the illegal aliens, they appear to be exempt.”
We have a serious problem with how our
governmental agencies are responding to all this. We have a lot of people at agencies not talking to each other,
and it’s time that they did. And that’s
what Full Disclosure Network® is all about. We
bring the people to the table, we ask the tough and hard questions, and find
out how they feel about it, what they think about it, and try to shine some
light on it. And then we’ll send our
tapes to the appropriate people and hope they watch and maybe bring them together
to work together to make our community safe.
If you would like to watch the Full Disclosure Network® program in this area, we’re on Adelphia Cable, Channel 75 on Monday and Thursday nights at 8:30 p.m., and on Channel 77, we’re on Monday mornings at 10:30 a.m. I’ve put some brochures on the back table with our telephone number and website address. www.fulldisclosure.net- where we list all the channels that carry the Full Disclosure Network® program. Or if you want to call us we’d be happy to send you a schedule. If you want to check our website, all the channels and the air times are listed there also, or if you want to call us, we’d be happy to send you a schedule. And I’d be happy to take some questions.
QUESTION: I’ve
heard there are 9,000 officers in L.A. and that 1,000 of these officers are off
duty on some kind of disability. What
is that doing politically to the new police chief or the new mayor?
DUTTON:
The question is asking
about the 1,000 officers that are currently on sick leave, which takes away
from the force. And they are trying to
do something about that, but it’s going to require negotiations with the Union,
and they’re pretty powerful, pretty powerful.
QUESTION: How
is your program and organization funded?
DUTTON: Thank
you for asking. Would you hand out the
envelopes, please. We are a non-profit
organization, and basically we have depended upon individual contributions and
some small grants to this point. So
there’s a number of people in this audience today that have helped us over the
years: John Bohn, Stan Johnson, and on
and on. And we are really a grass roots
movement, and, you know – do you know about public access? The facilities of public access are provided
free. The FCC, in creating the
Communications Act, provided public access for the people, and so we took
advantage of that, and so the studio crew, the cameras, the equipment,
everything is provided by the cable company, and then they provide cable
channel time. And what we’ve done is
really taken it to a science and distributed them and got it out, and it seems
to be very effective and appreciated.
QUESTION: What’s
the consensus about the new police chief, Chief Bratton? Does he look like he’ll be effective????
DUTTON: Well,
the honeymoon is not over yet. He is
definitely – people have high hopes for him, and it’s going to be very
interesting to watch because about two weeks ago he made a statement, which was
quoted in the L.A. Times about the 3-12 plan. Now, here he is wanting and needing more police officers and
already realizing the restrictions of the 3-12 plan when you have officers
working three days and taking the rest of the week off. It definitely does have an impact. When he sought the appointment, he said he
could do it with what he had to work with, but it’s going to be a
challenge. And all I can say is: Anybody that wants to be a police chief and
have to deal with all these forces and try to work with what they’ve got in a
city like Los Angeles, he needs a miracle, I’ll tell you. We’re going to keep our fingers crossed.
QUESTION: Has
there been any analysis made on the 12-hour days,-- the last three hours?
DUTTON: They’re
starting to analyze that now, and I just read something in the paper the other
day about that, so it’s – they’re really looking at it. But with the increased demands after 9-11,
it’s really a different ball game. And we don’t have all the answers in yet.
QUESTION: Are
you planning or have you ever thought of interviewing Mayor James Hahn?
DUTTON: Well,
you know, I’d like to do that. It’ll be
interesting if he will come in, and I would like very much to do that ‘cause we
would like to have his perspective. And
there’s another fellow that needs a lot of help, too.
QUESTION: My
son just applied for LAPD, he’s been accepted, but he’s not quite sure if he
should make that career decision, given the LAPD today?
DUTTON: Wow. All I have to say is: Your son must be a very special person
because it sometimes appears to be a thankless job. But we really need good people of good character, and I would
just highly encourage him to do it and to go out there and do the best that he
can to protect the people. But it –
it’s tough. We have all these competing
forces operating in Los Angeles right now, as you can see when you watch Full
disclosure. Are you suggesting that it
might be difficult for him to get on the force, or whether he should do it at
all?
QUESTION: Oh,
he’s got an invitation to start the Police Academy, but he’s looking at
smaller, outlying police forces, and he’s just not sure if he’s going to accept
the invitation. He’s trying to find out
more information about the LAPD from real people who know what is really going
on?
DUTTON: Well,
I definitely support the LAPD, and they need good people. That’s all I can say. And it sounds to me like your son is a very
fine person. I think we need him.
(Applause.)
CLOSING: On
behalf of the Rotary Club, this is a table book on Santa Monica, and we hope
you enjoy it. Thank you very much.
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