Hunt Known for Strength in Community Relations : LAPD: Deputy chief with Irish brogue has forged ties with blacks. Critics say he is too hard on his officers.

Some thought it was a police bureaucrat’s idea of a good joke: Take this immigrant cop with a thick Irish brogue--like something out of an old movie--and put him in the black neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles, just to see what happens.

Suspects heard the Irish accent and figured it was some sort of bizarre police playacting. They laughed.

But Matthew V. Hunt meant to be taken seriously. After his arrival in South Los Angeles in the 1970s, he went about charming residents with his lilting voice and affable demeanor. Soon, he was a community relations officer.

In the next 20 years, he parlayed his knack for community diplomacy into a series of promotions, rising to the rank of deputy chief.

Now he has a shot at the department’s biggest prize--chief of police.

Ironically, some of Hunt’s biggest fans are the same black community leaders who are calling for the first black to be appointed chief.

“He’s more of a human being as opposed to a cop,” said former Police Commissioner Melanie Lomax, a department critic who last year called on Chief Daryl F. Gates to resign. “He didn’t take the heavy-handed approach that you see a lot in the Police Department. And he was not uncomfortable in walking into a room full of black people, unlike a lot of LAPD officers.”

Hunt, 61, was born in Cork, Ireland. The son of a rural Irish policeman, he immigrated to the United States at 24 and joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1961. The Irish brogue is authentic, though some friends say jokingly that it seems to have become more pronounced in recent years.

“Some of us think he practices it when he’s alone,” said Clyde Cronkhite, a longtime friend and former LAPD commander.

Hunt declined to be interviewed for this story, saying that the selection of a new chief should not be influenced by media coverage. He said that by granting an interview he might be perceived as “blowin’ me own horn” and creating a “ballyhoo” to lobby for the position.

“I truly feel this is a conflict of the process,” Hunt said. “It’s something I’m uncomfortable with. I don’t want to make a big song and dance. This is not a political process.”

Now the commanding officer of the South Bureau, which covers much of South-Central Los Angeles, Hunt finished third this month in the scoring of semifinalists to succeed Gates.

Hunt is widely considered to be one of the more “liberal” of the six candidates, a man considered sensitive to the concerns of the black community. While many members of the department’s upper echelons are Republicans, Hunt is a registered Democrat.

“Hunt is professional and personable,” said one City Hall official who has worked closely with him. “But there are some people inside the department who would be uncomfortable with him being chief.”

In March, 1991, just a few weeks after the police beating of Rodney G. King, Hunt was promoted to deputy chief and placed in command of the South Bureau, which oversees four of the city’s busiest and most crime-plagued police divisions.

Since then, Hunt has found himself caught between the demands of competing constituencies. While winning praise from some black leaders for creating innovative programs to improve strained community-police relations, he has earned the private wrath of a few LAPD officials.

Some of his subordinates in the bureau charge that he is prone to severely punish officers accused of misconduct just to score points with the black community.

“Sometimes I think the chief (Hunt) doesn’t like police officers very much,” said a supervisor in one South Bureau station. “He offers them up as sacrificial lambs if Danny Bakewell (president of the Brotherhood Crusade) tells him to.”

Another LAPD official, Capt. John Trundle of the Southeast Division, said he has differed with Hunt on matters of police discipline.

“There have been some differences of opinion between the bureau and myself in terms of the penalties that should be handed out to some people,” said Trundle. “He’s generally known as a pretty strong disciplinarian.”

Police at the 77th Street station in South-Central Los Angeles cite an incident last June in which Hunt suspended an officer for arriving at work with a Confederate flag and hangman’s noose displayed on his pickup truck. The symbols had strong racist overtones in the predominantly black neighborhood around the station.

The officer removed the flag and noose and supervisors at the station did not reprimand him. But when a photograph of the offensive symbols appeared in the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper, Hunt stepped in and handed the officer a five-day suspension.

“Chief Hunt is very sensitive to the African-American community and things pertaining to racism because he’s an Irish Catholic,” said Officer Carl McGill, a black officer at the station. “He knows what’s it’s like to be a minority and be locked out.”

When the African-American Peace Officers Assn.--a 762-member advocacy group made up primarily of LAPD officers--later voted to endorse a candidate for chief, Hunt finished a close second behind Deputy Chief Bernard C. Parks, one of two black finalists.

Among Hunt’s detractors are police defense representatives who say they routinely try to reject him from Board of Rights panels that act as internal juries in cases of alleged misconduct. Defense representatives are allowed to select three high-ranking officers from a list of six names drawn at random.

“When you pick names . . . it will be rare his name will be chosen because he’s not considered fair,” said a police defense representative who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Former Police Commissioner Barbara Lindemann Schlei said Hunt’s get-tough reputation might strengthen his bid for chief. “Maybe it’s time for our department to stand up and say the old-boy network doesn’t work anymore and we’re going to listen to the community,” she said.

Some black community leaders say Hunt’s command in the South Bureau has been characterized by openness and fairness to the community.

“He’s a good guy,” said John Mack of the Urban League of Los Angeles. “Certainly he gets high marks in race relations and human relations. I can’t think of anyone I would give higher marks in that area.”

Hunt’s Irish brogue, Mack added, helps to disarm people who might otherwise be intimidated by a white police officer. “It takes you back a little,” Mack said. “Here we are in L.A. dealing with this man with this Irish accent. And he has this look. You’d think he’d make a nice British bobby.”

In his first year at the South Bureau, Hunt helped create a number of programs designed to improve police relations with the black community. Officers newly assigned to South L.A. stations are now assigned to work at the Urban League’s family training and literacy classes.

But perhaps the most publicized incident in the bureau during Hunt’s command was the November death of Henry Peco, shot at the Imperial Courts housing project by police officers who said Peco had fired first with an assault rifle. An accomplice later testified that he hid Peco’s gun, which was never found. The incident touched off protests by tenants complaining of harassment and disrespectful treatment by police. Hunt promised to investigate the shooting, but community activist Michael Zinzun was critical of the deputy chief’s role.

“He called me here when the incident first happened in an attempt to give a justification for what happened,” Zinzun said. “He promoted the us-versus-them attitude. With him at the helm, it’s been business as usual.”

There were few critics to be found, however, when Hunt dropped by the Watts Senior Center recently to celebrate “St. Patrick’s Day with a touch of soul” with 150 black retirees.

Jackie Calloway, an event organizer and Housing Authority employee, said she has known the deputy chief for 20 years.

Often, she said, Hunt brought his wife and two children to events in Calloway’s South Los Angeles community. “I’ve seen (the children) grow up since they were this high,” she said. “When I was sick with asthma and in the hospital, he came with his wife to visit me.”

In addition to his community relations efforts, he has been trusted with a number of politically sensitive posts over the course of his career.

During the 10 months Hunt commanded the LAPD’s affirmative action unit, the number of women in the department increased 69% as officials tried to comply with a court order to increase female representation. Hunt brought in fitness guru Jack LaLanne to start a fitness program for women applicants who had trouble with the strenuous physical tests. The number of African-American, Latino and Asian officers increased 20%.

Hunt also served as head of the LAPD unit assigned to the Police Commission, the civilian panel that oversees the department. In past years, the post was considered a career dead end, a sure way to make enemies in the force.

But former Police Commissioner Robert Talcott said Hunt managed to maintain good relations with department officials and LAPD critics.

“Most of the other commanding officers felt their careers might be hurt if they were to seek out a position with the Police Commission,” Talcott said. “It was a very difficult role to handle between the LAPD and the community. He was able not to alienate either constituency.”

After arriving from Ireland in the 1950s, Hunt took a job as a salesman for a New York bread company until a stint in the Army brought him to Southern California. He became a U.S. citizen in 1961 and joined the Los Angeles Police Department a few months later.

“I think I’d always had it in the back of my mind to go into police work,” Hunt told The Times in a 1980 interview. “Had I stayed in New York, I probably would have joined the force there. But I fell in love with Southern California and I wanted this to be my home.”

First assigned to the Central Division, Hunt transferred to the 77th Street station in South Los Angeles in 1972. Police colleagues who served with Hunt in those years said he seemed to thrive in the new political climate brought forth by the 1965 Watts riots, when the Police Department tried to mend fences with the black community.

Before the riots, being a police officer in Los Angeles meant taking “a cold, professional approach,” Cronkhite said. “Then we learned that things were changing in the community and that we had to change with it. A softer, more empathetic approach was necessary.”

Hunt became a community relations officer at the Southwest station in 1973, served later as a captain of detectives and patrol officers, and spent two years as the area commanding officer. When he left, citizen groups in the predominantly black community took up petitions to get him back.

“More than anything, the message we were trying to get across was that we really care about you,” Hunt said in a 1980 interview just after completing his stint in the Southwest Division. “I like to think I have some understanding for my fellow man and the problems of everyday living.”

But in contrast to his easygoing public demeanor, some colleagues and subordinates say Hunt is known within the department as a taskmaster who keeps his underlings busy doing “audits of audits” and other “make-work.”

“He’s a very demanding boss,” said one officer who worked under Hunt at the Support Services Bureau. “But he won’t ask you to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.”

Jack White, a former LAPD commander who heads the Bureau of Investigation of the district attorney’s office, described Hunt as a “tough manager.” “He does a lot of things that are very cautious, very meticulous,” White said.

Hunt was transferred to the Support Services Bureau in 1988. Traditionally, it is a place where Gates places commanders to groom them for deputy chief jobs; Parks and William Rathburn (now chief of police in Dallas) served there before becoming deputy chiefs.

Still, some department observers say Hunt has not maintained a close relationship to Gates.

“It’s not like some people who are sort of proteges of the chief,” said Schlei, the former police commissioner. “Hunt is much more his own man and not anybody’s protege.”

If selected chief, Hunt is likely to be a voice for reform and would work to close the rifts between the department and minority communities, Schlei said.

Hunt’s determination to stay out of the political limelight surrounding the selection process was undercut recently by allegations made against three candidates by NEWS for America, a community group angered that no Latinos are finalists. The Police Commission has ordered an investigation into the accusations.

In Hunt’s case, the inquiry seeks to determine whether he discouraged subordinates from freeing a rape suspect investigators believed was innocent. (The man was cleared because of DNA evidence.) Hunt has strongly denied intervening in the case.

Away from the job, Hunt, a resident of West Covina, is active in Irish cultural organizations. His wife, Kathleen, once had an Irish program on a Los Angeles radio station. Recently, a band struck up a jig as a smiling Hunt strode into a Studio City fund-raiser for an order of Irish missionary priests.

“I’m still a Boy Scout at heart,” Hunt once said. “I’m optimistic. Basically, mankind is very good. Ninety-eight percent of the people are law-abiding. . . . I would like to think we have grown more sensitive to each other’s problems over the years.”

Profile: Matthew V. Hunt

Deputy Chief Hunt, commanding officer of the South Bureau of the LAPD, ranked third among the six finalists to succeed Daryl F. Gates as chief of police.

Born: Feb. 28, 1931, in Cork, Ireland.

Residence: West Covina.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in police administration, Cal State L.A., 1971.

Career highlights: Joined the LAPD in 1961. Commanding officer of Southwest Division in 1978, headed LAPD’s affirmative action unit in 1980, promoted to deputy chief in 1991. As commanding officer of South Bureau, oversees four LAPD stations in South Los Angeles.

Personal: Married with two grown children. Active in Irish cultural organizations, and travels regularly to Ireland to visit relatives.

Known for: Since his early days in South-Central Los Angeles in the 1970s, Hunt has developed a reputation for cultivating a good relationship with the black community.

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