TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040191/0401106.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.6 KB | 119 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 25

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.