Ed Davis, the flamboyant and innovative former Los Angeles police chief who later defied stereotypes by supporting environmental issues and gay rights when he was a Republican state senator, died Saturday. He was 89.
A Morro Bay-area resident, Davis died about 7:15 p.m from complications of pneumonia. He was admitted to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in the San Luis Obispo area earlier this month when his wife, Bobbie, was unable to wake him up one morning.
Davis, who was chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1969 to 1978, gained notoriety for his many controversial public utterances, including his method for dealing with hijackers: Give them a trial, then "hang 'em at the airport."
He once asked the Los Angeles City Council to fund a submarine so the LAPD could bust drug smugglers at sea.
When he was under a court-imposed gag order not to discuss a legal case, he invited reporters to a news conference, tied a handkerchief around his mouth and mumbled: "I'm one of the few men in the country without freedom of speech."
But although some laughed at him or called Davis "Crazy Ed," his real legacy as chief was a series of groundbreaking reforms that were copied by police departments across the country.
"Ed Davis was a dynamic leader in law enforcement," said Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton in a statement. He credited Davis with helping to formulate the management principles of the LAPD, creating many successful crime-fighting programs and starting the Los Angeles Police Memorial Foundation to help families of police officers killed in the line of duty.
"He realized your true value and success depended on your relationship with the community," said Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who joined the LAPD in 1965 as a street officer and became chief in 1997. "He realized that if you cultivated the community and they were your eyes and ears and they were the ones that were taking an active role and called when they saw something suspicious, then the Police Department grew by thousands of people taking an interest in the community."
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who took police science classes from Davis at Cal State L.A. decades ago, called him "one of the most intelligent and innovative police chiefs in America."
Before Davis' tenure, the LAPD was known as an aggressive, remote, militaristic organization that efficiently rooted out crime but often created enmity in minority communities.
