LAPD Reform Under Riordan Looks Doubtful : With Violante as liaison, the mayor gets cheers from roll call.

Last week, Mayor Richard Riordan spoke to a group of LAPD officers at roll call at the department’s Van Nuys station. “I know,” he said, “that when you’re put in situations where you have to be tough and make tough arrests, that you’re subject to criticism. I think we have to step back and give some latitude, to know that you’ve got to be tough and when you’re tough, things don’t always come out the way everybody wants them to.”

It was a line that had the troops cheering in the aisles, one that could have not have gone better to the heart of the matter had it been written by his new deputy mayor, former Police Protective League President Bill Violante.

The league, along with former Chief Daryl Gates, has always been the foremost proponent of the theory that unless police officers are given wide latitude when making arrests or using force, they will not do their jobs. To be accountable, so the theory goes, is to be ineffectual. Yet it was precisely the issue of lax discipline when excessive force was being routinely used that ultimately led to the beating of Rodney King and the violent reaction to it. The cavalier use of such force was a consequence of an unspoken departmental credo that went, “If you beat in someone’s head we’ll back you 100%, but if you steal even one penny, your ass is ours.” This was the judgment of the Christopher Commission and of David Dotson and Jesse Brewer, two of the three deputy chiefs who served under Gates in the late 1980s.

Yet here was Riordan, going over the head of the police chief and pandering to the rank and file, who told us through the league they do not want to be held accountable, don’t want to change. They want the widest possible latitude in performing their jobs. That’s the way, they maintain, to have safe streets. But while the public wants safe streets, they don’t want police beating in their heads or constantly harassing them. It’s a fine line for a police chief to walk, a walk Gates never even tried and which Willie Williams is now attempting to straddle. The message Riordan was sending to the troops in Van Nuys was clear: He doesn’t believe in walking that line either.

That message was only underscored by his appointment of Violante. And what a powerful message it was--akin to President Clinton placing Bob Dornan in charge of implementing his policy on gays in the military. As league president, Violante was not only the head of a union composed of the most hard-line conservative and macho of a very macho breed of cops; it was also traditionally the most special of all the city’s special-interest groups. It was the league, back in the 1930s that wrote, strategized, financed and campaigned for the provisions in the City Charter that until last year gave the chief lifetime tenure and that still guarantees the rank and file such extraordinary job protection that it takes eight pages to lay it all out. It was the league that had supported Gates after the King beating and the league’s then-president, George Aliano, was promoted to captain and given a coveted position in the Intelligence Division before Gates left office. And it was the league under Violante that had opposed the reasonable reforms of Proposition F.

Violante said recently that “what’s good for the rank and file is good for the city of Los Angeles.” If better training and more equipment is what he’s taking about, then he’s right. But if Riordan’s statement and the reaction to it are any indication, the choice of Violante means that real reforms in discipline and accountability rank maybe 600th in Riordan’s priorities.

The new mayor’s other declaration of war on reform was conveyed in his appointments to the Police Commission: four unknowns of little or no experience in law enforcement. They were Clarence Thomas appointments: a promise of diversity fulfilled in the letter but not the spirit. It will take the new commissioners months if not years of once-a-week meetings to familiarize themselves with the intricacies of the department. To help guide them, Riordan chose not to reappoint Brewer--an enormously popular man in and out of the department with more than 40 years experience in law enforcement--but to select instead Herbert Boeckmann, a Valley car dealer. A Gates supplicant when he previously served on the commission, Boeckmann was one of the commissioners who, days after Gates made his “shoot casual drug users” remark, chose to ignore it and instead celebrate Gates’ 40 years of service.

There is a saying in the LAPD that accounts for previous chiefs always holding their ground, never giving in to outside reform. “Don’t worry,” it goes, “the pendulum will swing back.” How right they are. How easy to once again walk down the path of disaster.