SOME OF THE recent stories from downtown Los Angeles have had a very familiar ring to them: "Tensions Flare Between City Council and Police Chief"; "Council Members Irked by Chief's Leadership Style"; "Councilman Demands Apology from Police Chief." And finally one that really brought back memories for me: "Police Chief Refuses to Apologize."
I no longer live in L.A., but I continue to follow city politics through friends, and of course through those still working in the Los Angeles Police Department, where I proudly served for 42 years, including 14 as chief.
I wish nothing but the best for the city, and most especially for its police officers. But when I read about the tensions between LAPD Chief William Bratton and some members of the City Council -- sparked by a proposed change in hiring policy -- I couldn't help but smile a little.
Given my own experience in such matters, I've found the disagreement between Bratton and a few council members, if a bit overheated at times, to be a sign of healthy political discourse.
Indeed, the airing of such disagreements often serves to inform the public about issues that might otherwise escape its attention. In fact, I think it's sad that such disagreements are as rare as they are and that the police chief's role has been largely relegated to the ranks of politicians, most of whom walk in fear of uttering even a single word that might offend someone, somewhere.
During my tenure with the LAPD, I operated under the terms of a City Charter amendment, adopted in 1937, that was aimed at curbing what was at that time seen as corruptive political influence on the department. Before this amendment was adopted, most LAPD chiefs owed their positions more to political patronage than to any actual qualifications, and the laws were often enforced with an eye toward how this or that constituency might be affected. The 1937 system allowed chiefs to continue in their jobs for as long as they wished, barring malfeasance, insulating them from the ever-shifting winds of politics and allowing the LAPD to become, despite its occasional scandals, one of the most corruption-free police departments in the country.
The pendulum swung back in 1992 with the passage of Charter Amendment F, reforms hastily crafted by people who, in my opinion, were more intent on seeing me replaced than on truly improving the LAPD. Politics was reinserted into decisions regarding the selection and retention of the police chief, and in my admittedly biased view, the cure turned out to be worse than the disease. What followed was a decade of instability in the department that saw four chiefs, much internal strife and a scandal that eclipsed any that had occurred in the previous 40 years.
