Riordan Picks Parks as New Chief of Police

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has selected Bernard C. Parks--a steely disciplinarian with strong political support and 32 years of police experience--to serve as the next chief of the LAPD and navigate its treacherous crosscurrents of reform, expansion and crime-fighting.

Riordan’s decision, to be announced at a news conference today, caps an exhaustive search whose outcome will not surprise most City Hall insiders: For months, sources close to the mayor have described Parks as the front-runner for the job. He received the nod from the city’s Police Commission, which interviewed each of the finalists, and from a citizens panel that sorted through the original applicants.

If confirmed by the City Council, Parks will become the 52nd Los Angeles chief of police and the second African American to hold the post, one of the most esteemed in American policing. His selection will stand as one of the defining decisions of the mayor’s tenure, and Parks’ five-year term would extend until 2002, one year beyond Riordan’s.

Riordan said Tuesday that the choice had been a difficult one, reached late Monday night after days of background checks and deliberation. Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker--like Parks, a 32-year veteran of the LAPD--and Sacramento Police Chief Arturo Venegas Jr. rounded out the list of the three top candidates identified by the Police Commission and forwarded to Riordan for his consideration.

The mayor, who interviewed each candidate twice, said all three impressed him but that ultimately he was convinced that Parks is the right man to lead the LAPD.

“Bernie Parks is a strong leader who will put the department back in order, somebody who demands excellence, somebody who wants to put power and accountability down to the stations,” Riordan said. “That has not been part of the culture.”

In Parks, Riordan has tapped a forceful and much-admired senior police officer whose entire professional life has been devoted to the LAPD and who nearly won the chief’s job five years ago. He has deep knowledge of the political culture of Los Angeles and its Police Department, and he is a voracious student of police procedure and policy.

He draws support from across the political spectrum: Liberals such as county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky are among his stalwarts, but his backers also include conservatives such as Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. And his commitment to work is legendary: Many days, he is the last person to leave the sixth floor at police headquarters, where the LAPD’s top staff has its offices.

But Parks also has his critics. Some rank-and-file officers resent his history as a disciplinarian, and some accuse him of favoring minority officers over whites. Others complain that he is too preoccupied with detail, too vague about his overall philosophy of policing and too reluctant to entrust others with power.

By contrast, Kroeker, the top LAPD runner-up for the chief’s job, is considered a more philosophical leader with a softer disciplinary touch. The police union, which twice endorsed Riordan for mayor and once openly challenged Parks on a set of staff promotions, made no secret of its hope that the job would go to Kroeker.

In the interview, Riordan said he remains a strong supporter of Kroeker and hopes that the deputy chief will stay with the LAPD, perhaps as one of Parks’ top aides.

Choice Will Define Riordan’s Legacy

Despite his admiration for Kroeker, Riordan chose Parks in part, according to sources close to him, because he believed the Police Department was left in such poor shape by departing Chief Willie L. Williams that it badly needs a firm disciplinarian at its helm. Riordan declined to comment on that contention Tuesday, but agreed that selecting Parks is one of the most important decisions he will make as mayor, one that will define not only the LAPD’s future but the mayor’s own legacy to Los Angeles.

“The buck stops with me,” Riordan said. “I’m going to be judged on how Chief Parks does. He’s going to do great, and I’m going to look good.”

Riordan also hopes that today’s announcement will lift the shadow cast across the department by last spring’s decision not to reappoint Williams. The former chief, who left office in May, was brought from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, where he inherited a department thrown into disarray first by the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King and then by the 1992 riots that erupted when the police officers responsible for that beating were found not guilty in state court.

Williams at first won high marks for restoring public confidence in the police. But as his tenure progressed and Williams fell short of many expectations, his performance disappointed Riordan and people close to the mayor.

The mayor’s frustration was compounded by Williams’ habit of agreeing with virtually any suggestion, then often failing to act on it. Riordan said Tuesday that he expects Williams’ successor to be more forceful in articulating positions on issues and more capable at putting ideas into practice.

“I expect the chief to hear me and to do something about it. I expect the chief to feel free to agree with me or disagree with me,” Riordan said. “Where he agrees with me, I expect him to implement it.”

Throughout his first term, Riordan rarely aired his unhappiness with Williams, and his silence frustrated some LAPD observers, who believed that the mayor should have spoken out about his mounting dissatisfaction with the Police Department and its chief. In the interview Tuesday, Riordan said he intends to play a more public role in setting LAPD goals and holding its top officer responsible for achieving them.

Among other things, Riordan said he expected the new chief to reverse the LAPD’s drop in arrests, field interviews and other measures of police productivity--all of which dramatically fell under Williams despite the addition of more than 2,000 officers. Those reductions, partially reversed last year, have fueled concerns that some LAPD officers are avoiding situations that might put them in harm’s way or subject them to possible complaints.

Riordan said supervisors should not tolerate such reluctance--which police derisively refer to as “driving and waving”--and added that he wants the department to step up its focus on quality-of-life crimes such as aggressive panhandling, graffiti and street prostitution.

Tackling issues such as those is thought to have contributed to the the dramatic crime reductions achieved in New York City during the past five years. Riordan is a great admirer of the New York model, and Parks’ mandate will include emulating the successful aspects of New York’s experience, including its focus on low-level crimes, its rigorous use of statistics to identify trouble spots, and its determination to give police captains power to fight crime and then to hold them responsible for producing results.

In New York, the crime crackdown has been accompanied by a sharp rise in arrests--and in complaints against police officers. As a result, some local observers have worried that Riordan’s enthusiasm for the New York approach could inflame tensions between the LAPD and the communities it serves. Given the long history of antagonism between the Los Angeles police force and some of those communities, any such rise in tension would be troublesome, both for the mayor and the city.

Seeking to reassure residents that he is not willing to accept the excesses of the past, Riordan said he supported a renewed emphasis on community-based policing, a concept that is widely endorsed but only vaguely understood.

“Instead of thinking of community-based policing as some vague, spiritual, karmic way of life, we need to look at it in terms of its goals, as a means to an end,” Riordan said. “Essentially, the goal is to improve quality of life in neighborhoods.”

In addition, the mayor said other changes in the management and approach of the LAPD will ensure that it does not slide back to the days in which it was feared by many residents, especially blacks.

The department today is more attuned to community interests than it was in the days preceding the King beating, Riordan and other officials said, adding that they expect the LAPD to extend its reach much further under Parks. And Riordan argued that focusing on so-called quality-of-life crimes will strengthen the bond between police and residents, not strain it.

“The people of this city, in every community, are going to be more impressed with the police fighting quality-of-life crime than they are going to be [by police] waving at them as they drive by,” Riordan said. “Hollenbeck is a good example. Some of the parents there were complaining that there should be a curfew. . . . Now they’re almost 100% happy that their kids are home, their kids are acting better. It’s these type of things that impress a community.”

In Riordan’s view, those sentiments are universal, transcending race, ethnicity and economic status. But the most grateful residents, he said, may be the city’s poorest.

“The poorer the neighborhood, the more they want you to help them fight quality-of-life crimes,” Riordan said. “They’re the ones who feel unsafe.”

Riordan, who was criticized by some African Americans for failing to support Williams, strongly insisted Tuesday that his selection of Parks was not motivated by Parks’ race.

“I’m getting sick and tired of people bringing race into it,” the mayor said. “Bernie Parks is not the black chief of police. He’s the chief of police. I think we have to stop this racial division.”

The new chief inherits a Police Department held in far greater esteem than the one Williams found in 1992, but one that faces new challenges. Expansion in recent years has strained police facilities; morale has languished as officers struggled to make sense of the LAPD’s mission; many reforms have stalled, either through inattention or resistance.

Mayor Not Pushing for Expansion

At least for the immediate future, Riordan said he does not expect to press LAPD expansion as aggressively as he has in recent years. The department has grown by more than 2,000 officers since he took office. Although not as big as Riordan had promised during his 1993 mayoral campaign, it is larger than it has ever been.

“As the economy turns around, clearly, we want to expand more,” Riordan said. But he added that “I think now is a good time to step back and utilize the resources we have.”

On Tuesday, Riordan expressed confidence that Parks would jump-start the LAPD, and the mayor had a few quick proposals for his nominee.

Riordan suggested that the LAPD trim $10 million out of overhead and use it to pay for additional police overtime, a move that could temporarily bolster street patrols. He also said he would help negotiate with the county a proposal to transfer city prisoners more quickly to county jails, and he proposed that the LAPD begin sending some of its evidence-analysis functions to the county crime lab, taking some of the pressure off the LAPD’s much-maligned facility.

What’s more, LAPD streamlining may be in the offing. Each of the finalists for police chief proposed eliminating some top ranks in the department.

Before he can be sworn in as the next LAPD chief, Parks must win City Council confirmation, but, barring a last-minute shift, he seems likely to surmount that last hurdle. In 1994, the council strongly rallied behind Parks when he was demoted by Williams. Since then, he has remained a popular insider; even his critics acknowledge his political skills.

If confirmed, he is expected to take office later this month.