The Political Interest Gates: The Buck Doesn't Stop Here

By Michael Kramer

"No one is going to force me out of this office," says Daryl Gates. "I didn't invest 42 years of my life to go down the tubes over an incident I had nothing to do with."

Gates doesn't get it. Even though he was not physically present when Rodney King had the hell beat out of him in Los Angeles on March 3, Gates, as head of the L.A.P.D., is responsible. When one has the power to constrain those who might engage in an immoral enterprise, one has a responsibility to do so. In such a situation, a leader's worthiness is judged by how that responsibility is discharged, both before and after the outrage is committed. Gates failed at both ends.

In the weeks following the King incident, Gates has refused to accept any responsibility. He still insists that the atrocity was an "aberration," although Los Angeles is currently paying at least $10 million in claims to blacks and Hispanics unjustly slammed around by Gates' cops. The video evidence -- horrifying and unambiguous -- was seen around the world almost instantly, but it took Gates four days to announce that all the officers present at the scene would be investigated, and to ask that criminal charges be filed against the cops who calmly took turns clubbing and kicking the handcuffed King.

It took two more weeks for Gates to order a "brick-by-brick" review of police-training procedures, but he was on television the very next day touting his department as a "model" for the nation. Gates' eventual apology to King was equally grudging -- and began with two absurd irrelevancies: "In spite of the fact that he's on parole and a convicted robber, I'd be glad to apologize."

Consider how New York City's former police commissioner reacted to a similar situation in 1985, when officers were accused of torturing a suspect with electric "stun guns." After first accepting his own responsibility, Commissioner Benjamin Ward summoned 327 senior officers to police headquarters in lower Manhattan. He read them the riot act, then fired the entire chain of command involved in the incident -- from a lieutenant at the offending precinct to the department's third-ranking official, the chief of patrol. "I didn't consult with the mayor or the district attorney, or anyone," says Ward. "I just acted."

"Ben understood instantly and instinctively about accountability," says Patrick Murphy, who held New York's top police job in the early 1970s. "He knew that behavior is controlled by consequences. The work of police officers, no matter how idealistic, energetic or motivated, can never transcend the caliber of their bosses. Leadership will either be a constant inspiration or instant depression. Cops at the lower rungs cannot escape the management of the chief. The L.A. officers would not have done what they did if they knew they would be reported by other officers. The problem is the tone set at the top." In most departments, says James Fyfe, an American University professor and former cop, "the use of force is considered a failure." But Los Angeles is different. In the L.A.P.D., says Fyfe, "if you kick butt, you're doing a good job."

Those who defend Gates say his is the only realistic approach. They decry the average officer's frustration with revolving-door justice, excessive plea bargaining, the fact that so few convicted felons "do time" for their crimes, the requirement that those who patrol ghetto areas fulfill a myriad of societal roles. As excuses, these explanations excuse nothing -- and the / conditions they describe are hardly new.

The trying task of policing ghetto America was perhaps best described by the Kerner Commission following the urban riots of the 1960s, most of which were ignited by police violence: "Police responsibilities in the ghetto have grown as other institutions of social control have lost much of their authority: the schools, because so many are segregated, old and inferior; religion, which has become irrelevant to those who lost faith as they lost hope . . . the family, because its bonds are so often snapped. It is the policeman who must fill this institutional vacuum, and is then resented for the presence this effort demands.

"And yet," the report continued, "precisely because the policeman in the ghetto is a symbol, it is of critical importance that the police take every possible step to allay grievances that flow from a sense of injustice and increased tension and turmoil."

In a democracy, effective law enforcement requires community support. Without it, the concept of ordered liberty is impossible. However true public- police partnerships are fashioned -- and they do exist -- they can never thrive, as the Kerner commissioners put it, "when a substantial segment of the community feels threatened by the police and regards the police as an occupying force."

Daryl Gates complained last week that his department is "not getting" public support. "They hate me," he said of his critics, a condition ordinarily insufficient to demand a police commander's resignation: most chiefs are routinely denounced by some of those they serve. But when a near majority of Los Angeles residents say in a poll they fear for their safety when stopped by an L.A. cop, and a quarter say they have personally seen or been involved in an incident in which excessive force has been used, something is tragically wrong. And the first thing wrong is Daryl Gates.