Who's to Blame?

Amid the crossfire of conjecture, no one questioned that the Los Angeles riots were caused by Negro lawlessness. But who or what caused that? The most frequent, and most serious, charges were: 1) that Mayor Sam Yorty had ignored the legitimate needs of the city's Negroes, and 2) that the outburst was in large measure a protest against Police Chief William Parker's cops. It was too impassioned a time for final judgments, but Angelenos and others familiar with the Negro's private and public grievances against the city administration began last week to weigh the evidence on both sides.

THE MAYOR

In four years in office, Democrat Yorty, 55, a former state legislator (1936-40, 1949-50) and ex-Congressman (1951-54), has moved from ultra-liberal to dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He has run an efficient administration, put qualified professionals in charge of big city departments, and reduced discrimination in city hiring. Like most of his predecessors, however, Yorty expresses paternalistic interest in the city's Negro population but has made little effort to understand its problems or anticipate its difficulties. Though the city's 540,000 Negroes represent more than one-fifth of its population, Yorty has relied mostly on three Negro city councilmen and "a fine group of Negro ministers" to keep him in touch with the Black Channel -which regards Yorty's men as Uncle Toms. As a result, says a Los Angeles Negro psychiatrist, black Angelenos feel that they are victims of "disregard, hypocritical attitudes and paternalism."

"Deliberate Incitement." Outside attempts to help the city's Negroes have met with resistance from the mayor. In 1962, when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sent an investigative team to the city, Yorty was downright hostile, warned it not to serve as "a sounding board for dissident elements and irresponsible charges." The mayor's relations with the Federal Government reached the breaking point over the city's anti-poverty program, which has been snarled from the start. Yorty rejected demands by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity that he accept representatives of "the poor" on his anti-poverty board, arguing that private citizens should not be deputed to spend public money -though virtually every other major U.S. city had adopted this approach. Yorty later retreated, consented to an expanded board, including some representatives of private groups. Yet, though OEO has pumped $17 million into the city for various programs, it has held up another $20 million for projects that would create desperately needed job opportunities for the city's unemployed Negroes.

OEO Director Sargent Shriver charged last week that while 523 towns and counties have organized effective anti-poverty programs, Los Angeles is the only major city in the U.S. that has not done so. Federal officials also claimed that Yorty was one of only two big-city mayors (the other: Chicago's Richard Daley) who spurned a secret offer of special federal aid earlier this year to help forestall summer riots -even though 34% of L.A.'s Negro youths were unemployed.. In Harlem, by contrast, the Federal Government's $4,000,000 program to make jobs for 4,000 Negro youths is credited with averting a repetition of last year's riots.

In his defense, Yorty charges that the Federal Government bears a major share of the responsibility for stirring the emotions of Los Angeles Negroes to fever pitch. In a telegram that he fired off to Washington last week, Yorty declared that "one of the riot-inciting factors was the deliberate and well-publicized cutting off of poverty funds to this city," demanded that Shriver "process our programs and release our funds while we reorganize." The mayor also accused California Governor Edmund G. Brown of trying to make political hay by appointing a commission to look into the riots' causes.

THE POLICE CHIEF

William Parker, a 63-year-old native of Lead, S. Dak., is a crusty cop who neither drinks nor smokes, is married to a former policewoman, and lives in a modest suburban home protected by a massive chain-link fence. He joined the L.A. police force 38 years ago, won a law degree by studying nights and, though little liked by less austere fellow officers, rose rapidly. Parker was appointed chief in 1950. In a traditionally precarious post -the average tenure of his predecessors was 18 months -Parker has lasted 15 years, and made the Los Angeles Police Department one of the nation's most efficient.

Despite Negro charges that his cops are mostly Southerners, the great majority are native to the West Coast. They must have an IQ of at least 110. Parker's force has one Ph.D., 15 officers with masters' degrees, 15 with law degrees, 208 B.A.s, 288 with two-year college certificates, 375 with police academy diplomas; more than 2,000 policemen are taking outside courses. Though it has the highest pay rates of any police force in the U.S., the department is seriously undermanned, has only 5,018 men to cover 458.2 sq. mi. -ten cops per sq. mi. v. 39 in the average U.S. community. Nonetheless, Parker has racked up an admirable record of arrests (of 268,567 offenses in 1964, his men apprehended 196,683 suspects) and has chased the Mafia all the way to Las Vegas.

A "Revolution Against Authority." In a way, Chief Parker is too successful. He is probably the most respected law-enforcement officer in the U.S. after J. Edgar Hoover. His published views on law enforcement, Parker on Police, are required reading for lawmen all over the U.S. At home, the very fact that he has survived three city administrations -and helped them to survive -gives him enormous power and prestige. Moreover, unlike most cops who are content to tend their roses or go fishing in off hours, William Parker (few call him Bill) is a compulsive and all-too-articulate public speaker who tends to view contemporary history through the eyes of such moralists as Jeremiah and Sophocles and Swift.

Inevitably, Chief Parker's moralistic judgments make the newspapers. His favorite theme is that morality and respect for the law are the world's last hopes of survival in an era of ethical collapse that is leading only to socialism. As he puts it: "There has been a worldwide revolution against constituted authority. A police officer is the living, physical symbol of authority, and so it is against him that this resentment is frequently directed. It is hard for me to believe that our society can continue to violate all the fundamental rules of human conduct and expect to survive."

"Monkeys in a Zoo." Parker's running comments are blunt and impolitic, and he is often accused of shooting from the lip. He said that the riots started when "one person threw a rock and then, like monkeys in a zoo, others started throwing rocks." And when the rioters were temporarily under control, he boasted: "We are on the top and they are on the bottom."

Brutality is another story. Inevitably, Parker's men arrest a lot of Negroes. They commit a disproportionate number of the city's crimes and thus incur the cops' suspicion almost as a reflex reaction. Undoubtedly, Los Angeles policemen in ghetto districts do not go out of their way to cosset Negro suspects. Martin Luther King, after touring Los Angeles' Negro districts, declared: "There is a unanimous feeling that there has been police brutality." Yet no one -not even the 1962 Civil Rights Commission delegation -has been able to cite any specific evidence of flagrant physical brutality.

Remarkable Restraint. The most critical moment in Parker's career probably came during the early stages of the riots. With remarkable restraint, he bowed to the advice of Negro leaders and pulled his police out of the riot area -only to see the chaos worsen. When he sent his police back in, they came equipped with tear gas -and strict orders not to use it until authorized. Even then -though he had discussed calling out the National Guard with Mayor Yorty -Parker did not formally request the Guard until the next day. "Millions of dollars in damage would have been averted had the National Guard been called in sooner," says California Guard Commander Lieut. General Roderic Hill.

Not all Angelenos are denouncing Parker; by last week, more than 2,000 telegrams of congratulation had poured into his office. Perhaps the frankest Negro comment on the brutality charge came last week from a 19-year-old school dropout who ran with the rioters through ail four days of the Watts uprising. "I wouldn't say that police brutality started it," he allowed, "but it was a good alibi."

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