Liberal Law-and-Order: The Politics of Police Reform in Los Angeles

The “Thin Blue Line”

No one was more instrumental in shaping the LAPD’s aggressive culture and autonomy from political oversight by the city government than longtime Chief of Police William Parker. Parker, who led the LAPD from 1950 until his death in 1966, envisioned a model of policing that rejected crime prevention in favor of proactive policing guided by a masculine and aggressive strategy of seeking out crime on the streets. Parker professionalized the LAPD to root out corruption, increase efficiency, and improve the image of the department through a program based on scientific management, research, and military-style training and discipline. Although Parker could not entirely restrain officer discretion on the street, he was largely successful in his efforts to create a rigidly hierarchical structure intended to instill pride and discipline in officers. Parker ensured his department was well-equipped and focused on maintaining authority on the streets. ¹² Under Parker, the LAPD represented a “thin blue line” between law and order on one hand and crime and lawlessness on the other.

Command and control policing put officers into patrol cars, which reduced contact with residents and stressed a quick response to crime through tactics that relied on knowing a criminal by his or her appearance, looks, or demeanor. Parker’s philosophy was based on his view that officers were “neither equipped nor authorized” to deal with the causes of crime, claiming, “Our job is to apply emergency treatment to society’s surface wounds. We deal with effect, not causes.” The proactive approach led to aggressive police work in neighborhoods of color, higher arrest rates, episodes of police abuse, and presumptions of black and Mexican American criminality. At the same time, departmental statistics reported higher rates of crime in black and Mexican American neighborhoods, which reinforced the department’s justification for higher levels of policing in neighborhoods of color and made calls for reform difficult. Indeed, would be reformers were often limited by the department’s use of statistics and assertion that aggressive policing was necessary to combat crime. ¹³ For Parker, the social roots of urban problems were irrelevant to the goal of crime control. “We are not interested in why a certain group tends towards crime,” Parker declared, “we are interested in maintaining order.” ¹⁴

Through professionalization, Parker also successfully insulated the department from political control or oversight, and maintained sole decision-making power over policy and procedure. Within the structure of city government, the LAPD had near-total autonomy. The City Charter granted the Chief sole disciplinary powers over officers and made it nearly impossible for the Chief to be fired due to civil service protection. Because the Chief wrote a self-evaluation on a yearly basis, there was never evidence of “just cause” for removal. ¹⁵ Although the Board of Police Commissioners oversaw the department, it rarely took a stand against the department and often acted as a rubber stamp following the Chief’s directives. Structural constraints of the City Charter, with its entrenched civil service protections and rules that city departments, such as the police, would be run by general managers overseen by part-time mayoral appointees who had to be approved by the city council, made police reform a difficult task. ¹⁶ As Chief Ed Davis, who rose through the ranks under Parker, quipped during the 1970s, “I don’t want to be mayor of this city. That position has no power. I already have more power than the mayor.” ¹⁷

The LAPD was a powerful force in the city that had carved out its autonomy over three decades of professionalization. Under nominally Democratic Mayor Sam Yorty, the LAPD received unquestioned support from the local political power structure, and Yorty did little to take an active role in asserting oversight through the Board of Police Commissioners. Any criticism of the department opened political officials to attacks portraying them as antipolice, something that could be fatal to politicians running for city-wide office. Growing concerns surrounding crime and violent unrest also shaped the political conditions under which liberals attempted to bring accountability to the department. Indeed, crime rates in Los Angeles had increased from 50.7 per 1,000 residents in 1963 to 59.5 per 1,000 residents in 1965. The crime rate continued to increase throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, reaching 76.8 in 1970 and a three-decade high of 105.6 in 1982 (Figure 1). Within this context, the ability of officials to enact fundamental police reform was limited as citizens openly supported get-tough policing. ¹⁸

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Part I Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents) in Los Angeles, 1963-1992.

The Watts Uprising and Politics of Reform

As a police veteran, Tom Bradley was especially aware of the problems that plagued the department. During his time as an officer, Bradley developed a strong commitment to community engagement through work with youth gangs and in the Public Information Division (Figure 2). ¹⁹ After leaving the department, Bradley entered politics in 1963 with his election to the City Council’s Tenth District. On the council, he routinely called for greater accountability, oversight in complaint procedures, and improved community relations. Prior to the Watts uprising, Bradley raised concerns over the patterns of harassment and officer-involved shootings in neighborhoods of color. ²⁰

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Tom Bradley in his police uniform, circa 1950s.

When two plainclothes police officers in an unmarked car killed John Grudt, an African American resident, on February 24, 1965, the department’s accountability and the ability of the police commission to impartially investigate the use of force came under scrutiny. Initially, the commission suspended the use of unmarked cars in high-crime areas. Councilman Bradley, however, called on the commission to investigate the proper use of firearms and requested the city council’s Fire and Police Committee to “determine the policy of the department as to when its officers should shoot.” ²¹ The result of the investigation found that the “action taken by the Police Officers involved was proper.” Dissatisfied with the judgment, Bradley pushed for further review and openly criticized the police commission for avoiding its duty to oversee the department’s use of force. ²² He provided evidence of at least 178 episodes of officer-involved shootings, seventy of those fatal, in the fourteen months prior to the Grudt killing and asked the commission to “look into these cases to avoid compounding the tragic death of John Grudt.” Such pressure, however, produced a defensive response from the commission, and Mayor Sam Yorty criticized Bradley for attempting to make a “grandstand play.” ²³

If Bradley’s critiques brought strong recriminations from mayor Yorty and law enforcement officials, they also made him the most prominent critic of the department on the City Council. Responding to Bradley, the police commission commented that his requests “stand out in a place by themselves as being voluminous and persistent. This Commission and its staff find it is now engaged almost entirely in researching your wishes and your whims to the exclusion of almost any other business.” ²⁴ Although Bradley stated he was hoping to allay the fears of an “anxious public” after the police killing of Grudt, his outspoken position on the police and recommendations for improved community relations threatened the department’s authority. ²⁵ By criticizing the department, Bradley gained an antipolice reputation.

The board’s lack of oversight combined with a continuing pattern of police brutality in the African American community that created the conditions for violence. After the police arrested Marquette Frye for drunk driving on August 11, 1965, South Central erupted in antipolice protest. The years of police abuse and discrimination contributed to six days of violent protest against the police, commonly referred to as the Watts riot. LAPD leadership and mayor Yorty were not only unprepared for the uprising, but they also rejected recommendations from black leaders to reduce the police presence in the neighborhood to quell the violence. Instead, the city and state responded with overwhelming force resulting in nearly 4,000 arrests, thirty-four deaths, and thousands wounded almost all black and at the hands of law enforcement officers and National Guard. ²⁶

The Watts uprising led Bradley and other African American councilmen, Billy Mills and Gilbert Lindsay, to call for increased civilian oversight of the police department. Within days of the end of the violence, governor Edmund “Pat” Brown established the McCone Commission to investigate the causes of the unrest. Discriminatory police practices were at the center of community grievances and cited as the reason for the outburst of violence. Yet the Commission often came to the defense of the department and Chief Parker, who was often on the defensive. During the investigation, Bradley and Parker repeatedly faced off. After questioning from Bradley about the role of the police in provoking the violence, Parker jabbed back, claiming, “Councilman Bradley has been tremendously critical of my department before the riots and he is continuing to be.” ²⁷

The McCone Commission promptly fell in line behind Parker. The McCone Report absolved the police of blame and praised Parker for his handling of the uprising. The proposed reforms centered on including more human relations training, community relations programming, the appointment of an inspector general to oversee complaints, and efforts to diversify the officer corps. ²⁸ The changes that resulted from the McCone Report preserved the liberal commitment to administrative reforms defining the proper role of the police while doing little to alter the daily operation of officers or provide external oversight of the police.

After Parker’s death in 1966, the Police Commission appointed Tom Reddin as Chief on his promise to improve the department’s community relations programs. Bradley lauded Reddin’s commitment to police–community relations in 1968, stating, “We’ve come a long way here in Los Angeles. Since Reddin took over at least two-thirds of the 13 pages of recommendations made five years ago have been put into use.” ²⁹ Praise for the department’s community relations programs was premature; the reforms did little to change the situation on the ground for African American and Mexican American residents. Police abuse and killings remained a flashpoint as Reddin pursued both community relations programs and militarization, a combination that enhanced the authority and power of the police. While community relations meant to decrease the level of mistrust between the community and the police, militarization was necessary to respond to violent unrest that threatened the safety of law-abiding residents. ³⁰

Liberal city councilmembers believed enhancing police–community relations would create mutual respect and understanding between residents of color and the police. Such reforms centered on the liberal belief that the problem of discriminatory policing was one of misunderstanding. Promoting police–community contact and respect would allow officers to better operate in neighborhoods that had little reason to trust the police. Enhancing communication was central to Bradley’s approach. As Bradley suggested in late 1968, the LAPD’s participation in the Imperial Courts Public Housing Music Club for young residents reflected the way policing could be “improved and strengthened by developing contacts which go beyond law enforcement.” Along with placing officers on the beat to interact with residents, the police would become “cooperative helper[s]” that “would provide greater person-to-person contact in non-criminal situations. It would provide a brief opportunity for socialization, a humanizing activity.” ³¹ Increasing understanding and communication worked hand in hand with efforts to reform the supposed disorderly black and brown youth and, in the process, legitimized the overwhelming presence of police in their neighborhoods.

Despite attempts by civil rights and civil liberties organizations—such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the United Civil Rights Committee, and the Temporary Alliance of Local Organizations—to create a civilian review board, few politicians supported such efforts to limit police power. Bradley, in particular, believed that the Board of Police Commissioners should retain the power to oversee hearings on complaints and use of force incidents. “Instead of taking their once-a-week meeting time to grant permits and review licenses,” he stated in 1968, “they need to become an aggressive group, much more sensitive to the things that are occurring, not just in minority areas but in the community as a whole.” ³² Indeed, Bradley believed that reform of the police department would be possible under a more activist mayor who would use technocratic arrangements aimed at enhancing the ability of the local state to define the proper limits of police authority. As his sights turned toward a mayoral campaign, Bradley reemphasized a commitment to fighting crime and supporting efficient and fair police operations for all residents.

The Impossible Dream and Liberal Law-and-Order

Themes of crime control, policing, and law-and-order shaped the 1969 mayoral campaign, which pitted Bradley against incumbent Sam Yorty. The election demonstrated the ways black and white residents divided over the meaning of law-and-order and support for the police within metropolitan politics. Capitalizing on the growing divide between liberals and the police after the Watts uprising, Yorty portrayed Bradley as an antipolice leftist with Communist connections who would leave the city defenseless against radicals and criminals. ³³ Despite Bradley’s police service, Yorty claimed, “[Bradley] is no friend of the Police Department. If you don’t believe that, ask any policeman. Stop one on the street. Tell the citizens to stop any policeman they know and ask him how they feel about Tom Bradley.” ³⁴ Yorty also ran racially inflammatory ads in the predominantly white San Fernando Valley neighborhoods with Bradley’s picture and the caption “Will Your City Be Safe with This Man?” ³⁵

Responding to Yorty, Bradley outlined a liberal law-and-order platform that combined support for strong law enforcement policies with demands for equitable and inclusive policing. The harm principle, which viewed the state as justified in policing only those activities that harmed others, allowed Bradley to call for law-and-order. “Law and order here and now is essential,” Bradley stated in a position paper, “crime or violence in support of any claim cannot be tolerated.” In fact, Bradley pledged to maintain the more than one-third of the city budget allocated to the department “for more sophisticated detection and greater officer protection” to wage a war on crime. ³⁶

A strong position on crime and support for the police, however, did not preclude greater civilian oversight of the department or justify inequitable policing. It required the government to impose proper oversight of the police to ensure nondiscriminatory enforcement of the law for all residents. Bradley proposed “a stronger active Police Commission willing to use the broad law enforcement review powers which it possesses (a community review board is not the answer).” This vision of civilian oversight directed by mayoral appointees complemented Bradley’s commitment to fairness and more responsive public servants. “But law enforcement,” Bradley continued, “will not be the tool of discrimination or the weapon of oppression against any group or person because of his race, economic status, his style of living or his views, whether or not I may agree or disagree with him.” ³⁷ In appealing to citizens, Bradley promised that his first priority would be strengthening the police department so that all residents could feel safe from urban unrest, crime, and violence.

At the same time, Bradley suggested that more police would not solve problems rooted in unequal social and economic conditions. “The incidence of violence and unrest of the poor, the youth, and the minorities is not the product of what is commonly regarded as a product of the criminal mind,” Bradley stated. “It cannot be dealt with as we all know, by the traditional emphasis on techniques of ‘catching crooks.’” He warned that attempting to relieve discontent with the police through force would only undermine the legitimacy of the police. For Bradley, “the answer to the increasing tensions between actions in the name of law enforcement and the community is not force but new dialogue, training and education.” The city needed a comprehensive “multi-front program” of improved police–community relations, a strong police commission, better dialogue between the community and the police, quality police training and education, diverse recruitment policies, meaningful complaint procedures, and tough-on-crime policies. Emphasizing a framework of equity and fairness, in short, would enable the get-tough policing of violent crime to protect all residents. ³⁸

Although Bradley emphasized a platform of equitable law-and-order, Yorty defeated him with sizable backing from white residents and police officers. The Police and Firemen for Efficient Law Enforcement, a pro-Yorty organization, conducted last-minute polls intended to undercut Bradley’s position and shape public perceptions of Bradley as antipolice. Of 895 police officers polled, they reported, 98.7 percent supported Yorty. Within such a context, Bradley’s liberal law-and-order message was limited. Yorty’s hardline law-and-order politics and media campaign to link Bradley with Communism, extremists, and radicals was a “veiled appeal to racism.” In fact, Yorty capitalized on fears of campus unrest and crime among white suburbanites in the San Fernando Valley where support for Bradley was lowest. ³⁹

The problem for Bradley was not his lack of support for law enforcement or law-and-order but his campaign’s failure to promote his law-and-order vision. As Richard Maullin, a Bradley campaign strategist, recalled, “If Bradley was a policeman and supported true law and order, which he did and which most political liberals do, then he could emphasize that fact clearly.” Political conditions meant that Bradley would have to reemphasize his support for the police to win a future mayoral election. As Maullin concluded,

Reforming the police—not destroying them—became a driving purpose for Bradley’s supporters and, one may assume, for Bradley himself. That the police were seemingly expressive of a majority’s mood, and had therefore become a politically sensitive subject indicative of dominant social trends, was lost in the impulse to reform them to a more liberal image of public service. ⁴⁰

If Yorty’s ability to create an image of Bradley as an antipolice, soft-on-crime candidate held Bradley back in 1969, in his second mayoral campaign Bradley made sure to emphasize his career as a police officer as well as his liberal law-and-order platform.

During his 1973 campaign, Bradley continued to balance the need for tough-on-crime measures with recognition that unregulated police power threatened the rights of residents. Such themes echoed his law-and-order stance from 1969 but with a more forceful assertion that crime, violence, or lawlessness would not be tolerated on his watch. Bradley worked to counter the image of liberals as soft on crime, stressing his police record and the right of all residents to equitable police protection in announcing his candidacy. “I’m very proud of my service of 21 years on the Police Department, an honorable career,” Bradley explained while standing in front of an image of himself as a police Lieutenant. “The people of Los Angeles are entitled to a safe city, safe in the Central City as well as the San Fernando Valley.” ⁴¹ By stressing his police record during the campaign, Bradley hoped to defend himself from Yorty’s portrayal of him as a radical, antipolice, communist sympathizer.

Promoting Bradley’s police record did not mean that the campaign abandoned a liberal law-and-order vision based on rigorous government oversight of the department. Campaign material routinely criticized Sam Yorty as a do-nothing mayor who hid behind the myth that the mayor’s office had no power, especially when it came to regulating the police department. An active mayor using the tools of government, Bradley argued, would not only bring more oversight to the department but also ensure safety for all residents through proper support for law enforcement. Campaign fliers (Figure 3), for example, stressed that “If the Mayor says it can’t be done, it won’t be . . . Tom Bradley says we can have safe communities.” ⁴²

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Tom Bradley campaign flyer, 1973.

From the outset, he also promoted a message that liberals were just as concerned with controlling crime and ensuring safety as conservatives. “The insane political division which somehow makes it ‘conservative’ to be against crime and ‘liberal’ to be for civil liberties,” Bradley told the Los Angeles Bar, “has to start coming apart.” Bradley’s tough-on-crime platform continued his belief in liberal law-and-order based on fairness and equity through government oversight of the police. But in a departure from his 1969 campaign, Bradley stressed his time as a police officer by releasing advertisements of Bradley in his police uniform and made his police file public, which had nothing but positive reports. ⁴³ Bradley’s platform also explicitly supported the police department through proposals for a policeman’s bill of rights, the use of federal grants to strengthen the police department, and legislation requiring strict punishment for “hard drug pushers.” ⁴⁴

Bradley portrayed himself as a liberal reformer but not one that would hamstring the police by supporting a civilian review board. “In all my life, I have never proposed a civilian police review board, consistently fought against it since I was a policeman and since I’ve been a city councilman,” Bradley told a journalist. “Never once have I suggested that.” Bradley also worked to head off any attacks that he would not back the LAPD by stating he would work with Chief Ed Davis to wage a more effective war on crime. Incorporating liberal law-and-order in his campaign, Bradley demonstrated that, if elected, his commitment to fairness would not only support equitable policing for “all Los Angeles” but also expand funding and support to the police department to address crime and violence that threatened the safety of residents across the city. ⁴⁵

Bradley’s promise of making city government more responsive to all residents combined with a tough-on-crime platform helped him soundly defeat Yorty with 54 percent of the vote. A multiracial coalition of African Americans, Latinos, Japanese Americans, and white liberals fueled Bradley’s victory. Bradley became the first black mayor elected in a city that was not majority African American. ⁴⁶ While in office, Bradley promoted a tough-on-crime agenda by emphasizing his efforts to increase government oversight of the department by appointing new Police Commissioners, to limit extravagant spending by the police, and to enhance community-relations programs. Reforms aimed at increasing dialogue and understanding balanced a commitment to safety and a get-tough approach to crime that contributed to a more robust criminal justice apparatus.

Civilian Authority without Control

Bradley’s election created the potential for increasing civilian authority of the police. While he faced constraints of the city charter, Bradley believed that the mayor had significant power over city government. “By charter language,” Bradley stated in an interview after his election,

It [city government] is what we call a strong-Council- weak-Mayor form of government. I’ve never accepted that, nor do I believe that it is so. The fact of the matter is that the Mayor has enormous power by law, by charter and by ordinance.

Yet, when it came to the police department, Bradley’s liberal law-and-order vision narrowed his reform agenda. Bradley focused his reforms on a liberal belief in technocratic governance and faith in the power of the local state to properly regulate law enforcement. Such programs took the form of diversifying the police through affirmative action and appointments to the Board of Police Commissioners. ⁴⁷ By naming liberal commissioners, Bradley, a strong proponent of the civil service system and only a mild supporter of charter reform, believed he could bring accountability to the police department without supporting more substantial reforms aimed at civilian review and independent oversight of the police. ⁴⁸

Bradley avoided open confrontation and criticism of the LAPD over issues of brutality and harassment to not appear antipolice. Many residents were increasingly fearful of rising crime rates and youth violence in schools, which shaped Bradley’s agenda. After voicing support for law-and-order on his election night, Bradley recalled his hopes of assuring the department and the public

that we were not going to have any fulfilling of the prophecies or the statements of doom that the opposition had made, that we were going to work together, and we were going to work in the interest of the city.

His police commission reinforced the effort to avoid confrontation with the police department to maintain support among residents skeptical of a black liberal’s commitment to law-and-order. “Sam Yorty tried to exploit [Bradley’s race],” William Norris, the president of the police commission, affirmed,

to lead the people to believe that a black mayor would somehow undermine the effectiveness of law enforcement in this community. And we thought it was important to reassure the community—and the department—that Bradley believed in tough law enforcement.

Strong law enforcement was not only a campaign commitment but also a key component of Bradley’s vision for the city. ⁴⁹

Fulfilling his campaign promise to maintain a strong police department, Bradley supported the department’s requests for, and City Council’s allocation, of a high level of city funding to the LAPD. In 1972, for example, the LAPD’s budget was $198.5 million, which accounted for 35.5 percent of the city’s budget. By 1982, the department’s budget declined slightly to 34.4 percent of the city budget. Pension reform in the 1980s reduced the overall proportion of funds allocated to the police, but the department continued to receive nearly half of the city’s undedicated budget. Bradley and the city council also supported tax measures and budget appropriations that would increase the number of officers on the beat. During his two runs for governor in 1982 and 1986, aides promoted his tough-on-crime policies and asserted that Bradley had “consistently supported increases in the Police Department’s budget.” ⁵⁰

Although Bradley limited extravagant spending for equipment such as jets and submarines, any attempt to reduce the budget faced stiff opposition from Chief Davis who was routinely able to get proposed budget reductions overturned. Davis resorted to fear tactics, warning residents to “bar their doors, buy a police dog, call us when we’re available, and to pray,” to convince the City Council to maintain a high level of funding to the department. Even when Bradley attempted to limit the budget, the City Council often used its power to reallocate funds to the police department. The large LAPD budget enabled the department to develop new elite patrol units, high-tech communication and patrol systems, and test experimental crime control programs that had a disproportionate impact on inner-city neighborhoods. ⁵¹

In keeping with the goal of improving communication and police–community relations, Chief Davis cooperated with Bradley to develop new programs aimed at community policing. As part of the attempt to enhance police–community relationships, Davis introduced the TEAM concept between June 1, 1972, and June 30, 1973, in the Venice neighborhood. Team policing, in Davis’s words, was

the combined and integrated delivery of field and investigative services in a police group and geographic area small enough so that the team can act together, on a one-to-one basis, among themselves and can work with the community to perform the crime prevention, deterrent and apprehension functions at an optimum level with full public cooperation. ⁵²

Under the plan, a team of officers worked within a specific area, communicated with residents, and addressed all facets of law enforcement to enlist citizens in the fight against crime.

The TEAM approach was well-intentioned but did not result in greater community control of the police. Many officers viewed community policing skeptically, believing it undermined aggressive police work and high arrest rates. ⁵³ Under the LAPD’s team policing program, a study of officer discretion by political scientist Michael Brown conducted in the early 1970s found, “responsiveness to citizen demands is being sacrificed to the objective of crime control.” Crime control, not an alternate role for the police, continued to be at the center of the TEAM reforms. Although LAPD officials, Davis in particular, believed that the TEAM experiments were successful, some observers believed that it led to a more aggressive style of policing and evidence of its impact on crime rates was inconsistent. Brown found that rather than devolving power or control to citizens, the TEAM policing model was “an attempt at formal cooptation—participation without control.” ⁵⁴

Efforts to make the police more responsive to residents through community-oriented policing were hampered by the department’s composition as a predominantly white force. Compared with cities with large black populations where black officers made up half the department, such as Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., the LAPD’s racial composition, like New York’s, was particularly lacking. In 1978, for instance, the department was over 80 percent white, 6.2 percent black, and 9.7 percent Latino. Even after a 1980 consent decree requiring the department to implement affirmative action hiring and promotion programs, the composition of LAPD officers remained predominantly white. By 1990, the department had become 63.3 percent white, 13.2 percent black, and 20.4 percent Latino in a city that was 40 percent Latino, 37 percent white, 13 percent black, and 9 percent Asian American. For women, the obstacle was higher as the percentage of female officers increased from a miniscule 2.6 percent in 1980 to a marginal 12.2 percent in 1990. The gradual pace of diversification resulted from slow turnover and an annual goal of minority and female new hires. The department achieved a 23 percent new hire rate for blacks and a 28 percent for Latinos during the 1980s. ⁵⁵ Incremental changes in hiring did increase the number of black and Latino officers, achieving “moderate compliance” with hiring goals according to some studies. ⁵⁶ But through the 1980s, many residents of color continued to view the police as a predominantly white, masculine department that not only did not represent their interests but operated as an aggressive force on the streets.

Despite claims of reform in areas of community relations and diversity, the department’s commitment to a community-oriented policing philosophy withered by the late-1970s. The newly appointed Chief, Daryl Gates, strongly opposed community-oriented policing in favor of a return to more proactive approaches. Budget constraints resulting from Proposition 13’s limit on property taxes also led Bradley to emphasize using scarce funds for those police services that directly combatted crime, not TEAM policing or community-oriented policing programs. ⁵⁷ While some projects remained, citizen participation continued to be supplementary to the LAPD’s crime-fighting role while doing little to produce greater civilian accountability and oversight of the police department more broadly.

The Problem of Police Brutality

If Bradley hoped relying on the police commission and community relations programs would result in changes to the department’s pattern of harassment and abuse in black and Latino neighborhoods, he was mistaken. Under Chief Davis, the department continued to operate with an “us versus them” attitude and an aggressive approach to crime control. The result was routine confrontations between the police and residents of color that all too often ended with officer-involved shootings and the use of deadly force. Between 1974 and the first half of 1979, LAPD officers shot 584 suspects: 55 percent were black, 22 percent were Hispanic, 22 percent were white, and 1 percent were “other.” Out of 128 suspects killed, 50 percent were black, 16 were Hispanic, and 33 percent were white. ⁵⁸

Discontent with the dual standard of law enforcement and lack of accountability in use of force incidents led to the mobilization of defense and justice organizations. These groups combined forces in response to a series of killings of black and Latino youth in 1976 forming the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA), a multiracial coalition of activists and residents. Believing that the LAPD operated as a force aimed at maintaining social control over the city’s poor, CAPA activists pressured police officials, Bradley, and city councilmembers to bring accountability to the police through greater civilian oversight and community control of the police. ⁵⁹

After the killing of Ron Burkholder in 1977, a 35-year-old white man with mental illness who was gunned down by police while nude in the street, CAPA demanded oversight of the department’s use of force policy. Bradley responded by pushing the commission to review the use of force guidelines, resulting in the first overhaul of the LAPD’s use of force regulations since the 1960s. Although limiting the use of firearms in fleeing felon incidents, the new guidelines were vague, stating that all officers should take into consideration “the reverence for human life” in deciding to use force. Such a change, while criticized by Davis as “likely to imperil the safety of police officers and to eliminate sixth sense police work,” did not alter the use of deadly force. The routine abusive practices, shootings, and killings by the LAPD officers continued with little comment from the mayor or other officials. ⁶⁰

While believing that progress had been made, Bradley also recognized that political officials and the police needed to address discontent with the police and the use of force. “I think the general level of hostility and tension between the general black community and the Police Department in 1965 was considerably greater than it is today,” Bradley told the Urban League in 1978.

That is not to suggest that there isn’t a problem, because there is a serious problem. The number of incidents involving law enforcement officers and the use of their guns, and the number of incidents in which people have been killed as a result of police restraint holds, have created serious problems.

There had been improvements in human relations training and increased sensitivity to community concerns but not enough to alter the episodes of harassment and distrust of the police among black and Latino residents. “Much more,” Bradley concluded, “is going to have to be done.” ⁶¹

Lack of changes in police tactics continued to have deadly ramifications. When two officers shot and killed Eula Mae Love, a 39-year-old African American widow, in January 1979, the problem of police killings and lack of reform erupted with full force. Unsurprisingly, the LAPD’s Shooting Review Board found the shooting within departmental policy. Newly minted Chief Daryl Gates defended the shooting as a legitimate use of force for self-defense. Such findings were commonplace and had aggravated black and Latino residents since well before the Watts uprising. ⁶²

Frustration with the police was directed not only at the department but also at political officials. Some observers believed that the Love shooting revealed the limited impact of Bradley’s efforts to reform the police department. Perhaps the most strident criticism came from the Los Angeles Sentinel, the city’s African American newspaper, when it called on the mayor to take more direct measures, claiming, “For the past 5½ years, Mayor Bradley has walked rather softly whenever matters of the police came about.” The Sentinel also printed an editorial cartoon portraying Bradley walking past signs of “police brutality” with the caption: “I see nothing.” ⁶³

The editorial brought strong criticism from the Reverend Thomas Kilgore, who championed Bradley’s efforts to bring more accountability to the police department. Bradley had worked to expand the power of the mayor’s office over the department. As Kilgore pointed out, Bradley pushed the police commission to alter the police use of force policies in 1977. He had also pressured the Police Commission to investigate the LAPD’s intelligence gathering operations and the department’s use of the controversial chokehold. These technocratic reforms, however, did little to reduce the number of fatal shootings or police use of force. ⁶⁴

The District Attorney fueled the discontent with its thirty-seven-page report on the shooting, which ruled the killing a justifiable homicide because the officers acted in self-defense. The finding reflected the lack of change in the daily operations of officers even as the Board of Police Commissioners had instituted new use of force guidelines. ⁶⁵ Responding to the pressure from community organizations, civil rights groups, and ministerial alliances, Bradley routed demands for civilian review and external oversight of the department into proposals for enhanced human relations training and greater supervision of officers decisions, and he called on the Board of Police Commissioners to investigate the Love killing. ⁶⁶

The shift in Bradley’s public stance on the problem of police brutality was a relief to many in the black community. The Sentinel commented in an editorial titled “Plaudits for Tom” that Bradley should be commended for taking a strong stance criticizing the LAPD. Activists and community leaders wanted Bradley to push for more substantive accountability to the department. While continuing to praise Bradley, Reverend Kilgore also recommended the creation of a civilian review board and insisted upon the need to “weed out racism” from the department. Paul Hudson of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) concluded that Bradley’s reaction was no different from other responses to police shootings: “Every time there’s a shooting somebody asks for better training.” Without a civilian review board, they believed, shootings and abuse would continue. ⁶⁷

The police commission investigation led to a multipart report condemning the Love killing and further revisions to the use of force policy. Following a heated conference between Bradley and Gates to forge a path forward, the potential for a transformation in the LAPD’s actions in the city’s communities of color seemed plausible. Shootings decreased in the two years following the report. Activists and residents were also able to push Gates, Bradley, and city officials to declare a moratorium on the use of the deadly police chokehold, which had resulted in sixteen deaths, twelve of them black, between 1975 and 1985. ⁶⁸

Changes in the LAPD’s use of force policies and training programs, however, resulted in bureaucratizing radical demands into channels that would set the guidelines for the legitimate use of coercive force rather than external oversight. When activists in CAPA and mainstream civil rights organizations such as the NAACP called for the establishment of a civilian review board, police officials strongly opposed the plan. Bradley had never supported the establishment of a civilian review board in the city. But he also recognized that creating such a board in 1980 was a political impossibility. Not only had Bradley opposed such a review board throughout his career as an officer and politicians, but there was little support in the city council and the police department and Police Protective League vehemently opposed the proposal. As Bradley told reporters after the Love killing, “you and I both know it [a civilian review board] is not going to happen.” ⁶⁹ Instead, Bradley persisted in pushing forward reforms that, he believed, would guarantee civilian accountability. Yet police brutality continued alongside administrative reforms aimed at efficiency and equitable policing. As the city entered the 1980s, Bradley continued to promote civilian accountability and fairness to law enforcement while working hand-in-hand with the LAPD to wage an aggressive war on drugs and gangs.

The War on Drugs and Gangs

Liberal law-and-order brought a semblance of accountability to the department during the 1970s. But efforts to rein in the police use of force or to interfere with disciplinary proceedings created tension between political officials and law enforcement. Indeed, Bradley’s efforts to use the Police Commission to oversee the department often led to opposition from Gates as well as rank-and-file officers. Although Gates and Bradley divided over the proper extent of political oversight of the police department, when it came to addressing drugs and gangs they were often aligned. Based on the belief that drug traffickers and gang members were violent criminals and caused irreparable harm to residents, Bradley and liberal city councilmembers employed the harm principle to promote an increasingly punitive law-and-order campaign while continuing to work for more civilian oversight of the department through the police commission. Using the harm principle, in other words, allowed liberals to call for aggressive targeting of gangs and drugs, which officials saw as particularly threatening to residents. ⁷⁰

Bradley stressed his commitment to law enforcement as the solution to urban problems, especially during his two gubernatorial campaigns in 1982 and 1986. Bradley had to appeal to a much different constituency running for statewide office than in his mayoral campaigns. He also faced strong opposition from the Police Protective League, which supported his Republican opponent George Deukmejian. During his first unsuccessful run for governor, for example, Bradley’s campaign material touted Bradley as a crime fighter who fought for legislation to “increase police protection and to toughen crime laws.” ⁷¹ The appeal of liberal law-and-order stressed robust police power based on inclusion and cooperation with residents. “While demanding greater efficiency from our police department,” Deputy Mayor Mike Fabiani outland in a 1984 memorandum looking toward the 1986 governor’s race, “the Mayor has consistently encouraged citizens to cooperate and assist police officers in the battle against crime.” ⁷² Yet in his second, also unsuccessful, run for governor Bradley faced criticism, however off base given his strong support for the war on drugs and gangs. Governor Deukmejian called out Bradley for being “AWOL” in the War on Crime. ⁷³ Running for governor would shape Bradley’s political strategy as mayor.

While Bradley continued to promote a fair and equitable LAPD, he also helped expand the size and scope of the department within the post–Proposition 13 antitax context. Support for the police reflected his liberal law-and-order vision for the city. But it was also a move shaped by his desire to win the gubernatorial campaign. Bradley was, in part, responding to internal surveys conducted by his administration and Los Angeles Times polls revealing a desire for more police protection and fear of crime. ⁷⁴ Bradley’s efforts to “fight crime on every front” expanded the LAPD from a sworn officer force of 6,900 in 1984 to 8,414 in 1990. “A strong, visible police force is one of our best crime-fighting tools,” Bradley stated in 1990 when pushing for an additional 400 officers. “The police are waging an all-out war on crime. I want to give them the personnel to escalate our attack . . . The city has made our blue-uniformed officers the number-one priority.” ⁷⁵

With the development of the crack cocaine crisis and rising gang violence in the mid-1980s, Bradley supported aggressive police measures that rested on making a distinction between fair and equitable policing for law-abiding residents on one hand and a war on criminals described as “thugs” and “urban terrorists” on the other. ⁷⁶ “If we need tougher anti-drug laws,” Bradley told residents in 1986, “we will propose them. If we need more law enforcement resources from federal, state or local government. . . [we] will seek them.” ⁷⁷ Bradley’s solution also involved redeployment of police officers and gang specialists to South Central as part of a Task Force to curb gang and drug activity through punitive measures. “The Task Force,” Bradley explained using the language of a military campaign, “shall give its highest priority to increased surveillance, arrests, support for successful prosecutions, and probation and parole revocations to break the back of gang violence and urban terrorism.” ⁷⁸ The emphasis on police solutions suggested that the problems of the inner city were no longer a result of structural inequalities but rooted in the rejection of personal responsibility, poor behavior, and criminal predispositions of predominantly black youth.

Political officials and law enforcement agencies reinforced such understandings of inner-city problems by addressing the rise of youth gangs primarily as a crime problem related to crack cocaine trafficking. ⁷⁹ Testimony by law enforcement officials and politicians at a series of federal hearings held in Los Angeles in 1986 and 1988 repeatedly connected gang violence and crack cocaine trafficking. ⁸⁰ As District Attorney Ira Reiner emphasized, “The gang wars are truly drug wars, the result of cheap cocaine that is flooding the streets.” ⁸¹ The connection between gangs and drugs, however, was not so straightforward, and studies using LAPD statistics found that the majority of drug sales in Los Angeles were not gang related. ⁸² Even Reiner shifted his stance by 1992, commenting in a countywide report that “gang violence does not appear to be explained by drugs.” Yet law enforcement, city policy, and popular perceptions continued to treat the drug trade as intimately linked to gang violence. ⁸³

The frame of the war on drugs as an effort to root out gang violence had staying power because it enabled Bradley and political officials to justify aggressive policing under the harm principle. Aggressive policing of gangs did not undermine appeals to a more equitable and restrained police force because gang violence represented a threat to all residents. Yet the result was the rise in state-sanctioned violence that made the inner city a war zone. Local law enforcement agencies formed specialized gang units and saw themselves in a battle to keep violent inner-city youth under control through any means necessary. As the head of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Hardcore Drug Unit stated in 1988, “This is Vietnam here.” Others often referred to gang members as a domestic Viet Cong. As law enforcement officials framed their efforts to address gang violence as part of a war, they reinforced a commitment to suppressive tactics that criminalized entire communities. ⁸⁴ Gates defined the war on gangs: “It’s like having the Marine Corps invade an area that is still having little pockets of resistance . . . We’ve got to wipe them out.” ⁸⁵

By 1988, with the war on drugs and gangs in full swing, Bradley supported policing strategies that treated entire swaths of the city as part of a scorched-earth campaign aimed at saving the city for the law-abiding inhabitants. A joint plan developed by Bradley and Gates created a city antigang and drug czar. The program centralized all elements of the city’s antidrug and antigang programs in a law enforcement capacity to “marshal LAPD resources anytime, anywhere and on any scale to effectively wage battle against street drug peddlers and gangs narcotics traffickers.” ⁸⁶ Aggressive police-based strategies resulted in widespread abuses of power, such as in Operation Hammer that rounded up thousands of young black and Latino men during mass arrests. City officials also extended the militarized approach to the built environment; programs such as Operation Knockdown in 1989 bulldozed known “rock houses,” took property, and extracted value from the community through asset forfeiture. ⁸⁷

The combined gang and drug war not only expanded the power of the police but also focused solutions to the crack epidemic on a militarized approach to urban policy that contributed to views of black and Latino residents as collateral damage. Although promoting the need for rehabilitation and police–community projects through programs such as the Focused Attack Linking Community Organizations and Neighborhoods (FALCON), the strategy reinforced the long legacy of using liberal reforms to legitimize enhanced law enforcement capacity. ⁸⁸ Liberal law-and-order could not contain the fallout of continued police repression, which led to new episodes of state violence and a rethinking of the meaning of police reform.

The Long Road to Reform

On March 3, 1991, LAPD officers helped the California Highway Patrol pull over unarmed motorist Rodney King. Four LAPD officers confronted King, who was drunk and appeared to the officers to be on Phencyclidine (PCP) . King did not respond to verbal commands, leading officers to use force. But officers showed little restraint as they viciously beat King using aluminum batons and tasers that carried 50,000 volts into his body. After the arrest, commanding officer Sergeant Koon reported on his Mobile Digital Terminal, “U just had a big time use of force . . . Tased and beat the susp of CHP pursuit bigtime.” Unbeknownst to the officers, a bystander filmed the beating that quickly became national news and provided startling evidence confirming longstanding complaints made by black and Latino residents about the LAPD’s excessive use of force. ⁸⁹

After the King beating, Bradley demanded Gates’s resignation, something he had not previously done when episodes of blatant abuse surfaced, in part, because of his strong faith in the ability of the police commission to keep the police department in line. To be sure, in the decades prior to 1991 Bradley had operated within the context of structural constraints of the City Charter that gave the mayor only so much authority over the police department. But given Bradley’s belief in mayoral power to regulate the police department, the King beating revealed a cautionary tale of a city that had resisted liberal police reforms. Indeed, two decades of liberal law-and-order arrangements had not resulted in substantial reforms. Video evidence of the beating also provided Bradley with the leverage he did not have before. But Bradley did not have the power to remove the Chief. As a result, he would not achieve Gates’s removal for another year when residents passed a ballot measure to amend the charter. Bradley also established a ten-member commission on May 1, 1991, known as the Christopher Commission, which conducted an in-depth review of LAPD policies and procedures. ⁹⁰ The report condemned the LAPD’s longstanding discriminatory practices and made over 130 recommendations aimed at a vast overhaul of departmental culture starting with top leadership, the elimination of discriminatory hiring practices, a philosophy of community policing, transparency in disciplinary and complaint proceedings, and a greater oversight role for the Board of Police Commissioners. ⁹¹

Following the Christopher report, a jury found the officers involved in the King beating not guilty on April 29, 1992. As news of the verdict spread, the city once again exploded in violent protest lasting five days. ⁹² The rebellion further lifted the veil of inscrutability surrounding the LAPD and the discontent among residents of color with the pattern of justice denied in cases of police brutality. In the aftermath, residents overwhelmingly passed Charter Amendment F in June 1992, which altered the city charter provisions insulating the department from political oversight, limited the Chief of Police to two five-year terms, and appointed a civilian member to the board of rights to promote greater accountability in complaint and disciplinary proceedings. ⁹³ For all of Bradley’s efforts to bring accountability to the department in the 1970s and 1980s, the media attention to the King beating, the 1992 rebellion, and the referendum system ultimately created the conditions for reform. “This victory signifies the overwhelming desire of our people for an accountable Police Department that fights crime instead of being held hostage to the whims of an arrogant, divisive chief of police,” Bradley stated. “[It] shows that the city is coming together again.” ⁹⁴

Achieving reform required implementation, however. Warren Christopher called the measure “a very good beginning for the rebuilding of the city. The next hurdle is to translate all these reforms into actions you can see on the street.” ⁹⁵ The controversy of the King beating, the violent rebellion, and the passage of Charter Amendment F ended with Gates’s resignation, and on June 30, 1992, the Board of Police Commissioners appointed Willie Williams as the first African American Chief. Williams promised residents: “You should expect change today; you should expect change tomorrow . . . But change unfortunately comes very slow.” ⁹⁶

Although the changes ushered in by the response to the King beating and the 1992 rebellion represented a significant victory for reformers, the LAPD worked to maintain autonomy and resisted fundamental changes. The election of conservative Richard Riordan in 1993 stalled the reform effort. ⁹⁷ Chief Williams’s hopes for community policing faced resistance from Riordan who was elected on a platform of expanding the police force and limiting civilian oversight. Williams was also an outsider who had not come up through the ranks of the LAPD, and he was unable to influence the operation of his subordinates. After a series of personal scandals and mobilization from rank-and-file officers in opposition to Williams, the police commission refused to reappoint him after his first term. His successor, Bernard Parks, was a career LAPD officer, and he opposed external control of the department. The lack of changes became evident in 1997 when the corrupt activities and blatant brutality of Rampart CRASH officers was unearthed. The Rampart scandal led to a federal consent decree aimed at bringing external oversight and accountability to the department. ⁹⁸

Despite two decades of liberal law-and-order policies, the underlying philosophy of the police as the means to handling unequal social and economic conditions remained central to city policy. The combination of liberal law-and-order and the structural constraints on liberal reforms, in other words, had an important legacy by enabling the expansion of police power and authority. Reform focused on changing the image of the police as equitable enforcers of the law for all residents but did little to transform the actions or attitudes of officers on the streets. The police continued to operate with impunity, especially in neighborhoods of color. By responding to fear of crime and urban uprisings with calls for more efficient policing, Bradley and city officials created a program of police reform that enabled aggressive enforcement of the law. In this way, liberal law-and-order contributed to making Los Angeles a carceral city.