CHIEF OF POLICE HAS SOLE LEGAL AUTHORITY; OUTSIDERS DON'T INFLUENCE LAPD.

Byline: Stephen Yagman

IT will be very easy to blame numerous Los Angeles officials for the brutal and corrupt LAPD, but only Chief of Police Bernard C. Parks deserves the blame, because only Parks has legal authority over the LAPD.

All police departments have a culture, be it cultures of respect for inhabitants' rights or brutality. Police cultures reflect the outlook and design of police managers, who have the ability to change police culture.

Any unbiased observer knows what the LAPD culture is: It is one of strict enforcement and aggressive policing.

Strict enforcement brings police into more frequent contact with inhabitants because police who strictly enforce laws necessarily approach more people. More contact with people gives rise to more opportunities for friction.

Similarly, aggressive policing, which demands instant compliance with police orders, often is the basis for conflict when civilians fail to comply instantly with police commands.

Police managers can tell their troops to be strict enforcers and to undertake aggressive policing, but they also can tell them to take it easy and to try to avoid confrontations.

Historically, and now, LAPD managers have told their troops strictly to enforce the laws and to brook no resistance.

The culture established by the LAPD's managers causes problems. When citizens feel harassed by strict enforcers, they are less likely to respond to officers' commands, and when citizens are confronted by aggressive policing they are more likely to resist officers' commands.

Communities generally have the police forces they want, and Los Angeles is no exception. Los Angeles endured former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates' hard style of policing from 1978 to 1992, and, contrary to public belief, former Chief Willie L. Williams endorsed Gates' strict enforcement and aggressive policing methods, though he got the boot for his perceived incompetence.

Hardly would Chief Parks have ascended to the position of chief after some three decades in the LAPD had he not talked its talk and strutted its walk.

Under Los Angeles' system of government, only its chief of police ever has had any real authority over its Police Department. That system conveniently allows the misimpression that the mayor, the City Council and the Board of Police Commissioners all have some power to oversee the LAPD, but in law and in fact they do not.

The mayor has no legal authority over the LAPD. Away from public view in 1997, Mayor Richard Riordan said under oath that he has no legal authority over the LAPD.

Similarly, all the City Council members also testified under oath in 1997 that the council had no legal authority over the LAPD.

The existence of the Board of Police Commissioners creates the unfortunate impression that it, and through it the mayor who appoints its five members, oversees the LAPD, but it does not.

In fact, the Police Commission can act with respect to the LAPD only through the chief of police. It has no legal ability to impose discipline, and beyond setting the broadest policies it cannot affect the LAPD.

There never has been, nor is there, any real civilian control of the LAPD, and this is the real problem of the LAPD's brutal and corrupt culture, because whoever the chief happens to be is the only person who runs the LAPD.

An officer who has risen high enough through the LAPD ranks to become chief never would have gotten there, gotten by his superiors, if he had not mirrored LAPD culture, talked the talk and walked the walk, because he would have been ``Peter Principled'' at one of the lower levels of command. The Peter Principle supposes an employee will rise to the level of his incompetence and, within a bureaucracy, obtain a promotion one step above his abilities.

In fact, that happened to Parks in 1994 when he resisted Williams' modest reform efforts, and subsequently was demoted.

L.A. District Attorneys John K. Van de Kamp, Ira Reiner and Gil Garcetti all bear some responsibility for the continuation of LAPD misconduct because of their woeful records of refusing to prosecute police.

L.A. City Attorney James K. Hahn bears some responsibility for LAPD misconduct because he and his staff routinely have disregarded and minimized police abuses while defending LAPD members in civil suits.

And, a series of U.S. Attorneys, including Andrea Ordin (1977-80), Stephen S. Trott (1980-84), Robert Bonner (1985-87), Lourdes Baird (1987-91) and Nora M. Manella (1993-98), also bear some responsibility for routinely refusing to prosecute errant cops.

But it is Parks, as chief of police, who runs the LAPD. It is Parks who is the current guardian of its culture, and it is only Parks who is responsible for the current bad effects of that culture.

In 1990, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in ruling about the LAPD, ``We are properly shocked to hear that an officer has become a burglar or a (thief) . . . (and we) demand that officers be, and appear to be, honest and that they use their authority wisely.'' In doing so, the justices were speaking to the chief of police, but no one was listening.

And now, no one is listening.