Choosing a Police Chief Is More Than a Professional Decision

Now that Willie L. Williams has formally applied for a second term as police chief, many in the city’s political establishment seem to believe that the next step, to be taken by the Police Commission, is simply a professional one based on objective criteria. They are mistaken. In every major U.S. city, the job of police chief is among the most political--and one of the least secure. In the 1990s, no police chief in the top 10 cities has held his job for more than five years.

Indeed, the job of police chief goes to the core of what politics is all about, if politics is the process by which opposing interests work out their differences. For minority communities, there cannot be a more sensitive political issue than how the law is enforced in their neighborhood.

It certainly helps to know that other big-city police chiefs are buffeted by politics. But this doesn’t make the decision of whether or not to reappoint Williams any easier. Williams himself created a serious political problem when he did not candidly respond to the Police Commission’s questions about his trips to Las Vegas. He made matters worse when he hired one of the city’s most aggressive and outspoken attorneys to defend his honor. He got the matter dropped in the City Council, but it was something of a pyrrhic victory, because it cost him some precious political capital. His credibility within the LAPD is strained, but odds are that “outsider” Williams never had much to begin with.

One observer thinks that Williams, early on, was advised to trust no one--and trust no one he has. He couldn’t bring his Philadelphia lieutenants with him. He lacks heavyweight support in the Los Angeles political community, inside or outside the LAPD. Maybe he thought he could avoid political minefields by attempting to stay above politics. And maybe he has avoided some. His strength, like the mayor’s, is with the public, not among those whom he manages--rank-and-file police officers.

Politics, in part, is the capacity to form coalitions that can sustain you in times of trouble. It is building a base of support that will remain loyal even when you are wrong. Williams has a strong base in the African American community, but it may not be enough to offset his critics.

Charles Mathesian, in an article in Governing, raises the question of whether the job of modern police chief has become impossible to do. New chiefs are “brought in to initiate change, they initiate it, then find themselves under attack from all sides, including the side that called for the change in the first place.” For some, they go too slowly; for others, too quickly.

Modern-day chiefs are asked to run police departments that have remained relatively immune to calls for change because they have been shielded from political influence to avoid the possibility of corruption. When something terrible goes wrong, as in the case of the Rodney G. King beating, everyone suddenly realizes that the old police department is too powerful and unaccountable in a free society. In comes the new chief, and the political pressure is on for him to deal with charges of oppression, not graft and corruption. He is caught between trying to reform a closed, para-military department while making his officers more responsive to the communities they police.

If any chief is to succeed as head of the LAPD, all constituencies must recognize that reforming the department, as put forth in the Christopher Commission report, is not the same as increasing the number of cops on the street. Nor is courting the support of the Police Protective League by contesting an inspector general’s report on citizen complaints against police, or by embracing an officer-friendly patrol schedule, an efficient way to produce a cohesive, well-run department.

The city’s political leaders are in denial if they truly believe that Williams’ reappointment is, can be, or even should be strictly a “professional” decision. Clearly, Williams, judging by his handling of the Ennis Cosby murder and the arrest of four suspects in the slaying of Corie Williams, now recognizes that his job is inherently political. The city would be much better served if the rest of its leaders openly discussed what kind of chief Los Angeles needs, how he or she can best go about reforming the Police Department and whether the current chief is the right person for the job. This is politics at its best--and its most important.