Bratton Takes Reins at LAPD

Police Chief William J. Bratton, pinned Monday with the badge of the Los Angeles Police Department, said the city’s entrenched gang culture and thin police staffing made him reluctant to make the sort of bold predictions about reducing crime for which he was known in New York.

“I’m purposely not talking numbers in a public way until I have a much better sense of how the department works,” Bratton said after the public ceremony inducting him as the 54th police chief.

In his remarks to a crowd gathered at the Police Academy at Elysian Park in the backyard of Dodger Stadium, Bratton outlined the task ahead, saying that the city can become safer only if residents and the police work together.

“There is no police department in America that needs the community more than this Police Department,” said Bratton, emphasizing the need to regain residents’ trust.

“You cannot do it alone, but with them you can do anything.”

“We’re outnumbered 10 to 1,” he told his officers. “100,000 gangbangers out there; 10 to 1.” But the chief said skilled policing can overcome those odds.

Bratton, who was officially sworn in at a private City Hall ceremony Friday, donned his midnight blue uniform for the first time Monday for an outdoor celebration that included a police band, bagpipes, officers on horseback, a choir and a helicopter flyover. Gov. Gray Davis, Mayor James K. Hahn, hundreds of dignitaries, including former chiefs, rank-and-file officers and members of the public and media attended.

Speaking without notes, Bratton repeated his promise to make Los Angeles the safest big city in America--the charge given to him by Hahn. He called on LAPD officers to fulfill the promise “on the side of each and every one of your black and whites ... that world-famous motto: ‘To protect and serve.’ ”

“It is a very thin blue line -- 9,000 for a city this large,” Bratton said. “I want to talk very bluntly to you. The citizens of this city need you back in those streets. They don’t need you smiling and waving. They need you out of those cars, on those corners, in those parks taking back those streets.”

While he lauded the success against crime during the 1990s in Los Angeles, Bratton said that, unlike then, police now must forge a connection with residents, as well as make arrests.

“This is a new day. Cops have to work with their community,” said Bratton--who has gone back and forth on the quality of the force he is inheriting, at times saying that the badge has been tarnished by scandal, but then also saying that the force is already the best in the country.

Bratton said Monday that he believed good progress had been made under departing Chief Martin Pomeroy, who came out of retirement earlier this year to lead the department on an interim basis after Hahn refused to reappoint Bernard C. Parks to another term.

“You need to get in the business of problem-solving -- putting cops where the crime is,” Bratton told the department. “And if it’s on weekends, if it’s on nights, if it’s on the late hours, that’s where you have to be.”

To some, Monday’s ceremony represented a changing of the guard at the LAPD. Many of the top department managers who rose to prominence under Chief Darryl F. Gates are expected to be ousted in coming days. But Gates’ shadow had hung over the department since his 1992 departure as officers he promoted into management continued to run Parker Center.

Impossible to miss in a pale cotton jacket and tan slacks amid rows of deep LAPD blue, Gates earned loud applause and whoops and shouts when he was introduced on the dais.

“What I find to be ominous is the response to Chief Gate’s presence,” Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said after the event. “If one had an applause meter there, it would have been hard to register any higher than he did. This is what Chief Bratton has to deal with. I hope he comes to terms with how daunting the task will be.”

Ridley-Thomas said he found it disconcerting to watch Gates, whom he called an “anathema to reform,” on the stage, while Parks was never mentioned by name.

“It was obviously deliberate,” he said. “It’s hard in my view to ignore and or disregard someone who devotes nearly 40 years of his life to an institution.”

Gates refused to comment Monday on Bratton’s appointment, ignoring reporters’ questions.

Bratton said he would announce new leadership for the department in coming days and weeks.

Noticeably added at the last minute to the program’s listed platform guests were Cmdrs. Jim McDonnell and Sharon Papa. Bratton has mentioned the veteran officers, as well as Police Cmdr. George Gascon, a number of times as people he admires in the department

“We joined the department for the same purpose -- quality public safety -- that’s the bottom line,” Gascon said. “Jimmy, Sharon and I are from a different generation. We’re all more willing to try new things. We’re more comfortable with change.”

Bratton acknowledged that he is less familiar with Los Angeles’ problems and Police Department than he was with New York’s when he took over the New York Police Department in 1994. In many respects, Bratton’s comments and plan for his newly adopted city seemed a direct copy of his remarks and the strategy he outlined nearly nine years ago, when he was sworn in as New York’s police commissioner with an appeal for a new covenant between citizens and police.

Among 50 friends and family members who traveled from the East Coast to attend Monday’s ceremony was George Kelling, who, along with James Q. Wilson, developed the “broken windows” style of policing that argues for early police intervention on small problems such as vandalism as the means to head off serious crime.

Kelling -- who will work for Bratton as a consultant from Boston -- said Monday that Los Angeles is very different from Boston or New York but that he believed Bratton can get the same results by tweaking the approach.

In order to import community policing, Bratton plans to make a number of adjustments.

He said Monday that he would revamp a disciplinary system that has been unpopular with rank-and-file officers for being slow and arbitrary. He said again that he would shift more power to the department’s 18 divisions, which he envisions as “mini-police departments.”

Another priority for Bratton is updating the department’s technology to track crime street by street. He used a similar system in New York. Bratton argues that such a shift is needed to comply fully with the federal consent decree that the city signed last year after the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the LAPD had for years engaged in a “pattern or practice of civil rights violations.”

But with limited resources, Bratton also seemed eager to identify new pockets to draw on. He said he would go to the business community for political support and money.

And when Gov. Davis said in brief comments: “There’s no higher priority to me, than to ensure that the funding, the tools and the resources necessary to help local law enforcement are there,” Bratton promised to knock on his door.

In one dose of wry humor, Bratton, who received a sustained standing ovation from the crowd, acknowledged that his days as chief might not always be as easy.

As Rick Caruso, head of the Police Commission, pinned the badge to the new chief’s uniform, Bratton jokingly called on paramedics in the audience to be alert.

“If I stab you it’s only a sign of things to come,” Caruso responded.

“Mr. Caruso,” Bratton said, moments after he took the oath for a second time, “you can stick me any time, as long as it’s not in the back.”