Bad Cops

If one can imagine Ken Lay's attorney forming an independent commission of Arthur Anderson accountants to investigate the Enron Scandal, one begins to grasp the fraud committed by the Christopher Commission upon LA residents.
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I watched the HBO mini-series Empire Falls last weekend; not because soap operas excite me, but because Sky-Fox didn’t broadcast any car chases that night. My sources said that the bandits, who were scheduled to lead cops to the Mexican border, were Paul Newman fans and had apparently called in sick to watch the series.

The story’s most interesting character is a house cat that tolerates everyone except Miles Roby (Ed Harris), who tries unsuccessfully to avoid it during visits to Francine Whiting’s (Joanne Woodward) home. Not only does the cat yowl, hiss, and slash Roby at every opportunity, but it also shreds the duct-taped upholstery of his car that was similarly trashed in earlier attacks. Roby’s an easy mark; and even as his wife breaks away like the town’s neglected signs, Roby is too paralyzed to leave his hamburger-flipper job of 25 years – for fear of failing at his next opportunity.

The only character with less distinction is Jimmy Minty (William Fichtner), another non-achiever who happens to be the local cop. Minty burns from a lifelong need for acceptance from Roby, whose reputation and character are far above Minty’s. When Roby’s teenaged daughter jilts his schoolyard-bully son, Minty is certain that Roby’s behind it. The conflict escalates until Officer Minty is found in possession of stolen VCRs and goes to jail.

My point is this: Why does Hollywood consistently portray cops as bumbling, corrupt, inept, racist, crass, under-achieving, doughnut-eating ne’er-do-wells?

Since the passing of Jack Webb, Hollywood has made cops the stereotype de jure. Like every other non-white stooge exploited by Hollywood to make itself the cultural beacon of our planet, police officers have become the scabs of the Earth – to be feared and reviled at every opportunity.

Hollywood doesn’t malign all cops. When one of Hollywood’s lowlife male white heterosexual cops reaches the bottom of depravity, Hollywood often sends female or ethnic police officers to rescue us from the villain.

To understand how and why this has happened, we must understand the evolution of the LAPD and city politics.

A Brief History

One hundred years ago, LA was known for its prostitution, gambling, drugs, kickbacks, and connections to organized crime. East Coast transplants drove LA’s rapid growth, industrialization, the movie industry, and labor protests. When more than 1000 unionists threatened to close down LA’s harbor in 1923, LAPD officers responded and arrested hundreds of strikers after they refused to disperse. Among those arrested was noted socialist Upton Sinclair, who later established the Southern California Chapter of the ACLU.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, organized crime figures insinuated themselves into LA politics. Hundreds of corrupt or incompetent police officers were fired, while the worst were often reinstated by politicians who needed them for their own machinery. One example was Officer Earl Kynette who, after being fired for extorting money from prostitutes, was reinstated and promoted to head LAPD’s Intelligence Division. Back then, crime bosses routinely bribed prosecutors and influenced political decisions – including who would lead the LAPD.

Reformers who exposed corruption learned to expect retaliation. When former LAPD Officer Harry Raymond exposed Mayor Frank Shaw in 1938, Captain Kynette’s men planted a car bomb that almost killed Raymond. With this attempted murder and other revelations, voters had had enough. Kynette was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison, voters recalled Mayor Shaw, and 45 of LAPD’s top managers quit to avoid prosecution.

Of the many reforms necessary to end the era’s rampant corruption, the most important was to codify Civil Service protection for all LAPD officers – including the Chief of Police. Voters passed numerous City Charter amendments that instituted reform in Los Angeles.

Beginning in 1939, the LAPD modified its hiring and training policies to employ officers untainted by corruption. Progress was slow, but policies were tough and misconduct was not tolerated. Like most large organizations, periodic scandals afflicted the Department, but they soon became the exception and not the norm.

When those within the movie industry leadership left to fight WWII, the Soviet Union set up front organizations (CSU and HICCASP) in an attempt to control media content and the 43 unions that ran Hollywood. With the leadership of Screen Actor's Guild President Ronald Reagan, the Communist takeover collapsed and the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) eventually blacklisted 324 writers, actors, directors, and technicians who lost their jobs. Hollywood’s resentment stems from what many still view as an act of repression and censorship by conservatives.

In 1949, actor and producer Jack Webb created the police drama Dragnet on radio and for television by 1951. His close relationship with now-Chief William H. Parker gave Webb an endless stream of story ideas while giving the LAPD story control. Weekly episodes presented a direct link to the public that explained policy and challenges facing police officers while captivating millions of fans across the country. Webb’s projects continued almost until his death in 1982. The LAPD’s unprecedented credibility made socialists, politicians, judges, and Hollywood uneasy throughout the 1950s-1970s.

Like much of America, discrimination still existed within the LAPD and city politics. During the height of the civil rights movement, Chief Parker passed over black LAPD Lieutenant Tom Bradley for Parker’s former white driver, Lieutenant Daryl Gates. Bradley quit the LAPD in 1963, was elected to the City Council, and became Mayor of Los Angeles in 1973. Daryl Gates became Chief of Police in 1979.

When I joined the LAPD in 1980, I’d hoped to become part of the City’s civil rights reforms. I had no idea of the political fight that pitted the LAPD against Hollywood, politicians, the judiciary, and the press.

When the LAPD introduced Community Policing to improve service to LA residents during the late 1970s, many judges were uncomfortable. Like today, liberal judges often hogtied police and prosecutors with irrational rulings that conflicted with case and statutory law. To derail the close relationship that existed between the LAPD and LA community, former Police Commissioner and left-wing Federal Judge Stephen Reinhardt (husband of ACLU President Ramona Ripston) told Mayor Bradley that Community Policing was a very dangerous system because officers might challenge judicial power by exposing liberal-activist judges (like himself) to the public. Reinhardt was correct. After a series of inexplicably bad rulings during the 1970s and 1980s, police and prosecutors convinced voters to remove California Supreme Court Justices Cruz Reynoso, Joseph Grodin, and Chief Justice Rose Bird in 1986 – sending a chill throughout the judiciary. Since then, LA’s community policing has been in name only.

Mayor Bradley and the courts went further by creating and imposing dozens of wasteful, unnecessary, and even dangerous policies that further degraded LAPD effectiveness. To achieve otherwise unattainable quotas, politicians forced the LAPD to accept applicants who had criminal records as well as drug and gang ties. While training marginally qualified and outright unsuitable recruits, many training officers (including myself) were ordered not to write unsatisfactory ratings against black or female recruits regardless of their conduct. I stopped reporting misconduct after being disciplined for reporting a black officer. The black sergeant who covered up the misconduct eventually resigned after being confronted with more than twenty unrelated allegations. He was later hired by another local police agency.

Through his handpicked Police Commission, Mayor Bradley also imposed policies that forced LA cops to routinely use excessive force against suspects. In 1983, all LAPD officers were ordered to no longer grapple with violent suspects, but to beat them with metal batons and kicks until suspects complied. More often than not, suspects who endured these beatings were under the influence of anesthetics like cocaine, PCP, and alcohol, and often did not feel the painful blows until long after the drugs had worn off. Despite warnings and pleas from the LAPD Training Division experts, the policies were ordered.

As the LA Times and politicians reported excessive force throughout the 1980s, LA residents understandably grew increasingly troubled by the allegations. City Attorney James Hahn spent hundreds of millions of dollars on excessive force complaints that enriched trial lawyers and personal friends like Johnnie Cochran, but refused to identify the role that policy played in the assaults. And although LA cops disliked the brutal policies, when we confronted violent suspects without reasonable alternatives, we had to choose whether to follow policy or avoid the suspects. From 1983 through 1991, Los Angeles police officers unnecessary shot and beat hundreds of suspects while taking them into custody.

No one had any incentive to showcase the policies either. As LAPD investigations labeled most assaults as “within policy,” City Attorney Hahn shifted hundreds of millions of tax dollars to claimants and their trial attorney’s. When the Hollywood media blamed out-of-control or racist cops, the politicians, prosecutors, and judges kept silent. Hahn consistently won praise, endorsements, and campaign contributions from trial lawyers until voters finally dropped him after one term as mayor. With the absence of responsible news reporting, the half-billion dollar scam drove the wedge further between LA residents and the LAPD.

With Jack Webb on the sidelines by 1978, Chief Gates became the LAPD’s primary spokesman. Mentored by Chief Parker and emboldened by 50 years of civil service protections, Chief Gates’ 1960s persona only facilitated the hostile elements that rallied against the LAPD. And because Gates could only be removed with good cause (i.e., criminal behavior), Mayor Bradley could only attack Gates by imposing policies that undermined and discredited LAPD effectiveness. And with the passing of Jack Webb (1982) and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (1989), Gates could not overcome the forces that had rallied against him.

On March 3, 1991, LAPD officers saved Rodney King from being shot by CHP Officer Melanie Singer, and a plumber recorded the subsequent images on a video camera. As LAPD’s senior management ran for the hills, Mayor Bradley’s personal friend and attorney, Warren Christopher, blamed the arresting officers. If one can imagine Ken Lay's attorney forming an independent commission of Arthur Anderson accountants to investigate the Enron Scandal, one begins to grasp the fraud committed by the Christopher Commission upon LA residents. Less than one year later, the Ventura County jury acquitted the accused after finding that the officers had followed LAPD policy.

A few minutes after the verdicts were read, a visibly upset Mayor Bradley held a press conference where he told LA blacks that they had “a right to be angry and a right to demonstrate (their) anger.” Bradley’s comments, coupled with the City Council’s refusal to authorize LAPD’s request for overtime and preparation, ignited the riots that helped Christopher convince voters to remove civil service protections from LAPD’s senior management. Charter Amendment F ended the civil service protections that had kept corruption out of the LAPD and city politics for more than half a century.

It wasn’t long before corruption took root. While the remaining Christopher Commission recommendations were shelved until the proper time passed to kill them altogether, the gang associates who’d been hired to undo LAPD credibility had moved on to internal drug thefts, drug trafficking and sales, murder, and bank robbery while Chief Willie Williams’ incompetence outdid even Mayor Bradley’s expectations. Chief Bernard Parks replaced Williams but left after Rampart – and covering up for close personal friend Deputy Chief Maurice Moore, who had laundered and invested proceeds from his son’s multi-million dollar cocaine enterprise. Parks is now on the City Council where people like Horacio Vignali can bribe and influence politicians in ways that haven’t been seen in LA since 1939.

Which begs this question: With whites being almost non-existent among the incompetent and corrupt LA cops and politicians who have been prosecuted, imprisoned, or ignored since Warren Christopher defrauded LA voters in 1991, what could Hollywood possibly gain by casting Matt Dillon as a misogynist racist LA cop who violates a black couple in Crash? Beyond the tired stereotypes that prompted me to join the LAPD in 1980, it hasn’t happened. And until LA residents pay attention with what IS going on in their city, LA will remain stuck in the politics of the 1930s.