Reforming LAPD Profile No Easy Task



Posted: May 25th, 2007 11:00 AM EDT

William M. Welch

USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES -- When New York City's former top cop moved West he figured, like the song lyric goes, if he could make it there, he could make it anywhere.

Four-and-a-half years later, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton has found the job far more difficult than he imagined.

Crime and violence are down under Bratton's watch. But gangs still grip neighborhoods with fear in this sprawling city, racial tensions are taut and drug problems fester. And by his own acknowledgement, Bratton still wrestles with one of his biggest tasks: reforming the character and culture of a police department that continues to make headlines for use of force with the public it is there to protect.

Seeking second term
"Trying to get it right, get crime down and at the same time improve relations, that's proving to be an extraordinary challenge," Bratton says.
Bratton, 59, is probably America's most visible cop after turns running the departments in three great cities. He is the only person to serve as chief in New York and Los Angeles. He started policing in Boston and rose to head the force there. He brought his distinctive Boston accent to California in 2002.
He is seeking a second, five-year term in the job when his first expires in October. Limiting chiefs to two terms was one of the recommendations of a commission after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which began after a jury acquitted four officers in the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King.

He expects to get the second term and would be the first chief to do so. The decision is due in July from a five-member civilian Police Commission.
"I am not concerned at this time about that reappointment," he says. "I think I have pretty solid support of the Police Commission."

Bratton's reappointment was a foregone conclusion until a mostly peaceful immigration rally May 1 in MacArthur Park ended with a police clash with demonstrators, raising questions about his progress.

Local TV news was filled with images of officers using batons and firing about 150 rounds of rubber bullets at rally participants after a small group of provocateurs threw items at officers. Bratton voiced "grave concern," ordered a series of investigations, demoted the top-ranking commander on the scene, and reassigned the second-in-command.

The incident, Bratton says, showed that he has more work to do -- and that he needs another term to get the job done.

"While the current MacArthur Park incident has certainly raised a lot of concerns, it provides an opportunity to show leadership at a time of crisis," he says.
Other incidents over the years:

*Use of batons and rubber bullets on crowds protesting outside the Democratic National Convention in 2000.
*A 1999 scandal at the department's Rampart station when rogue officers assaulted and framed citizens.
*The videotaped beating of King.

Already lawsuits have been filed over the May 1 police response. But few seem ready to blame Bratton.

"You have to judge a chief by how he or she responds to a crisis, and he's made the right response," says Connie Rice, a civil rights lawyer who led a probe of the Rampart scandal.

But Rice says the police's move on a largely peaceful immigration rally was "so stupid that you can't believe normal officers thought this was appropriate."
She blames "insulated and isolated" members of an elite division within the police department and says Bratton needs to go further than he already has in shaking it up.

"I think he will get a second term and should get a second term," she says. "It's going to take a while to reprogram and recode that culture. This is the first chief I've seen with both the capacity and will to do it."
More crime, fewer officers

Charles Whitebread, law professor at the University of Southern California who participated in another post-Rampart investigation, says Bratton has "done a fairly good job" transforming the force's culture from one of isolation from citizens.
"You could disagree with some of his decisions. I ... don't think a lot of his broken-windows-style of policing: to put so much emphasis on prostitution, graffiti and things people see," Whitebread says. "Nevertheless, I think it has to be said he's done a good job. I think he's got a very difficult situation."
That focus on ending visible signs of lawlessness was a Bratton trademark in New York, along with his boss, then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

In Los Angeles, Bratton says he has found big differences in size and scale: more crime, more territory and fewer cops.

Los Angeles has 4 million people, half that of New York City, but they are spread over 469 square miles, compared with 301 miles in New York. To cover that territory, Bratton has 9,500 officers -- about one-quarter of the 38,000 he had in New York City, he says.

"Some nights here I have one police car covering 3 square miles," he says. "In New York, you might have 25 or 30 officers covering that area."
The city also faces broader gang violence and difficult relations between Latino and African-American groups, sometimes fueling gang warfare. Bratton estimates the city has 40,000 "gang-bangers," or violent gang members. New York gangs were smaller, he says.

The size of the force is often cited as a cause of tension between police and citizens, particularly minorities.

"When you've got a force that's too small for the population, (officers) have to amplify their power," Rice says. "You do what a porcupine does: You puff yourself up and make people afraid of you."

Bratton says he would need another 18,000 officers to provide policing comparable to New York's. For now, he's having trouble getting to 10,000 officers because retirements outstrip recruits.

When Bratton took office he vowed the department would do three things: reduce crime, protect against terrorism and "reform the character and style of our policing."

He's still working on all of them, but the last one has been the toughest, he says.
"Everybody talks about changing the culture of the LAPD," Bratton says. "After 4 1/2 years here I think I've finally figured it out. It's the isolation of police from the community. It's very different from New York."