We’re Paying for Voters’ Haste in LAPD ‘Reform’

The showdown between Chief Willie Williams and the Los Angeles Police Commission is drawing near, as the commission considers Williams’ bid for reappointment. However, no one seems to be considering the key element of this drama: Williams’ uneasy situation is just one result of the “fix it fast” LAPD reforms of five years ago that are beginning to show long-lasting and negative repercussions.

If Angelenos are honest with themselves, they will admit that the structural changes made to the Los Angeles Police Department on recommendation of the Christopher Commission were done for one purpose: to remove Daryl Gates from the office of top cop. However commendable the motive may have appeared to some, the remedy is proving to be more painful than the problem it was intended to cure.

The combined effects of the Christopher Commission recommendations and the structural changes approved by the voters in Charter Amendment F in 1992 is that now the chief of police serves at the pleasure of elected officials and therefore the job is political.

Law enforcement decisions should not be based on political considerations. Yet the politicizing of the chief’s office has politicized many of the major changes in the LAPD that followed Gates’ departure and Williams’ hiring.

The structural changes proposed by the Christopher Commission were intended to make the chief more accountable. However, in the political leadership’s rush to force Gates to resign, the public was persuaded to swallow the Christopher Commission’s findings whole. The City Council should have considered whether the management problems in the LAPD could have been corrected internally without generating further rancor over the the incumbent chief. But, in order to appease certain community activists and despite the concerns expressed by many, the City Council hastily placed charter amendments on the ballot that fundamentally changed how the city selects and retains its police chief.

The council did not do as it should: exercise its legislative function thoughtfully, so that the impact of such recommendations could be considered. In particular, the council should have more closely considered the long-range effect of the two most important recommendations of the Christopher Commission: elimination of civil service protection and institution of term limits for the office of chief.

It was not surprising that the Christopher Commission found some unsatisfactory conditions within the LAPD, given the size of the investigation and the scope of its mandate in the wake of the Rodney King incident. No business or government entity could withstand such scrutiny without revealing flaws. But the LAPD’s imperfections should not have been addressed by throwing out the long-standing selection and retention structure for the chief’s office in the hope that its replacement would be better. Unfortunately, the Vietnam approach prevailed: “We must burn the village down to save it.”

Before Charter Amendment F was enacted, the LAPD was generally free from political influences. Sadly, that is not the case today. Now the department is run by well-meaning citizen volunteers who serve at the pleasure of the mayor, and by the 15 elected City Council members and the mayor, rather than by a professional law enforcement management team.

The mayor long has made it clear that he is not satisfied with Williams as chief and does not want his contract renewed another five years. Williams’ likely departure will be political, as Gates’ was. If he stays, his relationship with the political leadership will be as heated.

The voters have saddled the city with structural changes that can only get worse: How can Los Angeles recruit qualified nonpolitical candidates for police chief in the future? What sort of police chief will want to work under politicians’ control? What can be accomplished under the limits of two five-year terms?

In the final analysis, interference by outsiders has made the job of police chief the most political job in Los Angeles. This is no one’s idea of reform.