Parks Says Hahn, Union Colluded

A determined Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks used his appeal to the City Council on Tuesday to denounce Mayor James K. Hahn and the city’s police union, whom Parks accused of conspiring to make life better for police officers at the expense of public safety.

The chief’s extraordinary address was covered live by local television stations and made before a packed council chamber, with hundreds of his supporters listening quietly as he excoriated the very political leadership whose support he was courting. At one point, Parks suggested that political motives had cost lives.

“You as council members and the commission in the future will have to determine how many lives should be lost to accommodate a police union as payback for its endorsement of the mayor and to accommodate a small number of community activists who want the Police Department at their beck and call,” he said. “The true question is how much emphasis is placed on the value of life over political agendas.”

Parks has been a Los Angeles police officer for 37 years, and he appeared for Tuesday’s hearing in the dark blue uniform of the LAPD--his adorned with the four stars on the collar that only the chief is allowed to wear. Somber and deliberate, he read for more than an hour. He addressed the council members individually by name as they sat a few feet away.

The mayor did not attend the session, and afterward his staff refused to make him available for comment. Hahn had no public events Tuesday afternoon.

“Mayor Hahn was disappointed that Chief Parks chose to use his time before the council to engage in personal attacks instead of laying out a vision for the next five years at the LAPD,” said Julie Wong, a spokeswoman for the mayor.

Others who came in for criticism from Parks were quicker to respond. Rick Caruso, president of the Police Commission that denied Parks his reappointment, defended the panel’s decision and its process.

Mitzi Grasso, who heads the police union, called the chief’s remarks “absurd” and said the union was not as powerful as Parks suggested.

In the council chambers, the chief suggested sinister motives by his opponents, principally Hahn and the union. He concluded his statement by acknowledging that the odds were against his reappointment, but he urged the council to give him a chance.

The council is expected to vote today on whether to overturn the commission’s 4-1 decision. To date, only three of the council’s 15 members--Nate Holden, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Jan Perry--have expressed strong support for the chief.

Though members of the council said they were impressed by some of the things Parks said, several questioned whether he would be able to secure the 10 votes needed to override the commission.

“His speech was really, really impressive,” said Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who heads the council’s Public Safety Committee. “There may have been some minds changed, but I just don’t know. I just don’t think there are enough votes to overturn it.”

Councilman Jack Weiss agreed.

“I think it is still an extraordinarily uphill battle for the chief in council,” he said, adding that he would reserve voicing his opinion until the council discussed the matter in today’s session.

“It is unfortunate how negative and personal this debate has become, for all sides and for the sake of the city,” Weiss said. “I think that it’s important to remember that no one in public office--an elected official or an appointed official--has a right to a public job.... We need to keep this in mind as we evaluate what has occurred here.”

Parks’ address blended his defense of his record with his curt rejection of the decision to deny him a second term. Throughout, he alluded to political machinations that he said prevented him from receiving a fair hearing.

Among other things, he argued that it was unfair to judge him on the city’s increase in crime over the last two years. He noted that crime had declined in his first two years as chief, and he blamed the recent increases on politics and politicians.

Specifically, Parks said the drive to alter the Police Department’s work schedule, to adopt a federal consent decree governing LAPD reform and to take officers out of patrol duties and put them into community policing assignments caused crime to increase. Then-Mayor Richard Riordan, who appointed Parks, agreed to the consent decree and pushed Parks to beef up popular community policing programs. Hahn, who succeeded Riordan, also supported those moves and pressed for the revised work schedule as well.

All three efforts enjoyed strong council support.

“We were directed to move forward swiftly and implement all three of these changes,” Parks said. “Then, as arrests went down, crime went up and [those] who were responsible for these decisions refused to take responsibility. They have disingenuously turned to me, as chief of police, and asked, ‘Why is crime going up?’”

Parks added: “You cannot take police resources off the street in this volume and expect it will not have a negative impact on crime.”

He noted that when the senior lead officer program was reinstated in 2000, 168 officers were removed from patrol duties. Meanwhile, as many as 300 officers were removed from patrol to work on reforms outlined in a federal consent decree.

As a result, Parks said, officer deployment is down about 20%.

“In each instance, the department voice was ignored,” he said. “We were directed to move forward swiftly and implement all three of these changes.”

Parks was even more pointedly critical of the process by which Hahn had opposed him. He told council members that he first informed the mayor in January that he would be seeking a second term. At that time, Parks says, the mayor urged him to retire and told him that he had already secured three votes on the five-member commission to oust him. A spokesman for the mayor, however, denied that allegation Tuesday.

The chief said he refused to give up his bid for a second term, adding that he would not be part of “a conspiracy” to remove him.

Though some of those themes have long been part of the evaluation of Parks, the chief introduced a new charge Tuesday. He said he is suspicious of millions of dollars sent from the city government to the Police Protective League for the purpose of defending officers in misconduct hearings. Parks said he doubts whether the money was used for that purpose.

“Why would the city give this money to the league at this time, as they did?” the chief asked. “Was it to give them a war chest to go after me?” He did not substantiate that claim, which union leaders and others denied.

Though Parks blamed political decisions for the LAPD’s reduced street presence in recent years, others have suggested that his leadership has contributed to woeful morale and attrition. Parks disagreed, arguing that recruitment and retention of officers is a nationwide problem.

In closing, he warned the council to consider the ramifications that its actions could have on the secession efforts in the San Fernando Valley and other areas of the city.

“This is another voter revolt that is directed toward the governance of the city,” Parks said. “They are not asking to be separated from this Police Department. They are asking to be separated from their governance in this body and in the mayor’s office.... That should be a real wake-up call for everyone in this room.”

After the chief’s presentation, Caruso defended the panel’s evaluation of Parks.

“I think he had a very fair process and the commission really did have as its No.-1 priority to make sure the process was fair and everything was looked at from both sides,” Caruso said.

He said Parks had every opportunity to answer questions the commissioners had about his conduct.

“I have a high regard for the chief and would never want to attack his name, and that is certainly not my intent,” he added. “But he’s put himself in a process in which those kinds of questions need to be asked. I think the commission would be remiss if we didn’t. I was very fair to the chief. Eyeball to eyeball, we talked about things.”

Grasso, who was in the council chamber for the chief’s remarks, rejected his assertion that the police union has been controlling Parks’ reappointment process.

“Those remarks are absurd,” she said. “And while I’m flattered that he attributes so much power to the Police Protective League, all we ever really did was embark on a community education campaign.

“We made our point and then we stepped back,” she said. “We have not continued in this grand conspiracy that he illustrates.”

*

Times staff writer Laura Loh contributed to this report.