Eighteen months ago, I wrote a memo identifying long-term barriers to permanent transformation of the Los Angeles Police Department. I've written a lot of memos about the department over the years in preparation for lawsuits, but this one was prepared at the request of the LAPD's top commanders. That's something that never would have happened seven years ago.
Back then, in the pre-William Bratton era, I and my memo would have been summarily shredded. But under Bratton, not only was outside criticism invited, he assigned his first assistant chief to work through the issues. While the road to permanent transformation stretches a long way in front of us, there is a key reason that we are on it at all.
Bratton has been an extraordinary leader who has recast the LAPD's approach to policing. In my opinion, he and William Parker are the only transformative chiefs in LAPD history. With a talented team, a determined federal judge and an unusually capable Police Commission, Bratton has accomplished a remarkable turnaround of a department that had defied all previous interventions to rein in its behavior.
But no chief could completely alter the DNA of the LAPD in just seven years. Permanent reform will take much longer, and it will happen only if the next chief can continue to drive the mandate down to the squad rooms, where there are still holdouts itching to reverse course.
Bratton will leave behind a blueprint, but in some ways the next chief will have a more difficult job. He or she will need determination to make the changes stick, a deep knowledge of the LAPD, the ability to win the buy-in of the lower ranks and the courage to touch third-rail issues.
These must be the next chief's top priorities:
Making Bratton's "high-road policing" the LAPD norm
The main mission of the next chief of police should be to complete the LAPD's transition to what Bratton calls "high-road policing," a style of policing that reduces crime, wins public trust, heals racial rifts and attempts to solve problems that fuel crime. Still dismissed by some officers as social work, this problem-solving model of policing is not sufficiently accepted as effective crime-fighting or as a way of thinking. As a result, successful community initiatives are still dependent on exceptional LAPD individuals and too often collapse when those individuals leave. We saw this happen with the successful Rampart Division turnaround after LAPD innovators transferred to other divisions
