Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Black leaders are rallying behind the ousted LAPD chief. But his tenure marked the triumph of identity politics over reform, and his departure is good news for the city.
Apr 17, 2002 | The decision to remove Bernard C. Parks as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department met with the outrage you might expect from an embattled minority community when it loses its most prominent public official. And it met with outrage from Parks himself, who delivered a two-hour defense of his record to the Los Angeles City Council Tuesday as scores of supporters -- most of them African-American -- looked on.
But drowned out in the clamor was the long sigh of relief shared by advocates of police reform across the racial spectrum, in a city where the police department has been a problem -- especially in the black community -- for more than 30 years.
It was in the black enclave of Watts, after all, that pervasive and sometimes brutal police misconduct gave rise to the devastating riots of 1965. And it was the reforms that arose from the police beating of black motorist Rodney King that gave the Los Angeles Police Commission the authority, and the responsibility, to move against Parks last week.
Parks, who is African-American himself and has strong ties to south L.A., has rallied many of the city's black officials and church leaders to his side. But on Wednesday, the L.A. City Council voted 11-3 to reject Parks' request that it overturn the 4-1 vote of the police commission against Parks, denying the chief his last chance for a final term.
From the outset, Parks' appointment by tough-on-crime Republican Mayor Dick Riordan represented the triumph of identity politics over the more painstaking business of true institutional reform. Parks was no crusader for reform; he was an LAPD insider with 34 years on the force when he took the job, and he never acknowledged the endemic problems and paramilitary culture identified by the Christopher Commission after the 1992 riots.
Yet if the removal of Chief Parks is clearly the right decision for the city and for the police department, it is one that carries sad irony for black Los Angeles. In a city led for two decades by the late Tom Bradley, who was both African-American and a former cop, Parks is among the last important black public figures, a reflection of both black flight and the increasing clout of Latinos in L.A.
The sense of frustration at Parks' demise was sharpened by L.A. Mayor James Hahn, whose bald political pandering to the black community during the last election -- he was the lone major candidate who didn't call for Parks' ouster -- left him open to black leaders' charges of betrayal. Hahn's father, Kenneth, was considered a beloved benefactor during the 20 years he served as a county supervisor for much of south Los Angeles; the same was expected of the son.
James Hahn did little to diminish those expectations. During a crowded primary race last year in which the Rampart police scandal was a front-burner issue, Hahn stayed mute on the question of Parks' LAPD tenure. And in the runoff election, pitted against a popular Latino liberal, Antonio Villaraigosa, Hahn promised to give Parks a fair chance at reappointment, sealing his deal with the city's south side: Blacks voted for Hahn by an 80-20 margin.
Once in office, Hahn took a direct hand in the affairs of the police department, siding with the police union in its successful bid to introduce a three-day, 12-hour workweek, which Parks firmly opposed. Some analysts believe Hahn's ultimate decision to move against Parks was dictated by simple politics -- the mayor was trading his constituents in black L.A. for the 8,000-member police union. But that doesn't wash, because it's a losing proposition: More than 90,000 black voters went to the polls during the last mayoral election, meaning that Hahn enjoyed a 70,000-vote cushion before any other votes were counted.
Sure, Hahn will get a political boost in some quarters from dumping Parks. But by any political calculation, it was a losing move. The fact is that, however belatedly, Hahn made a principled, even courageous stand -- though now he'll never get credit for that.
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