When I got home late last night, instead of posting, I’m afraid I collapsed into a useless puddle of exhaustion And am at UCI all day today. But a couple of things before I go.

First, everyone in LA (or who who cares about LA, or who once ever even vaguely drove through LA on their way to Las Vegas) must, of course, listen to the interview with outgoing chief, Bill Bratton, by Stephen Colbert.

Colbert asked: How hard was it to transition from one police stereotype in one city to another police stereotype in another city?

Bratton didn’t miss a beat: “From Jack Webb in Los Angeles to Andy Sipowetz in New York…?”

Anyway, it’s short and fun to watch. (McGruff the Crime Dog is mentioned)

Colbert: Why don’t you just become chief of police everywhere?

Bratton: “That’s what I’m trying to do with my new job.”

Speaking of new jobs, on Thursday, our new, nearly-chief-of-police Charlie Beck was on Patt Morrison’s show.

It’s a lovely interview. He sounds excellent. Beck talks again about how he will be “roots up” not “top down.” Bratton brought a lot of change to the department.

“Now it’s time to move those changes deeper down in the organization.” Yep. All true.

But much more—too much for me to randomly quote here and do it justice. Just listen.

But, while we’re on the subject, why is he still our new not-quite chief? Why in the world can’t the city council just confirm him over lunch today?

ONE MORE THING…. Kevin Roderick’s LA Observed segment on KCRW airs this afternoon. It isn’t up yet, but check back later as he’s going to be talking about Charlie Beck.

(How do I know this? A. Because Kevin’s a pal, and B. because called me for a Beck-related chat on Thursday.)

Most who closely tracked the selection of, at first, 13-candidates, then three finalists, and finally Deputy Chief Charlie Beck as the yet-to-be confirmed new chief of the LAPD, have likely read the article by Joel Rubin and Phil Willon in Wednesday morning’s paper, an account of the last minute wrestling match that went on inside the mayor’s office before Antonio Villaraigosa actually settled on Beck as his choice.

To summarize: Rubin and Willon write that the mayor felt intolerably pushed to choose Beck, because Charlie Beck had been Bratton’s choice. The recently departed chief had done a lot of lobbying in Beck’s behalf—some felt to an unseemly degree. Plus there was a cadre of others in and around city hall who were also pushing hard for the personable Deputy Chief.

Understandably irked at the efforts to box him into a choice that might or might not be his own, Antonio rebelled and, even though he actually liked Beck a lot, strongly considered going other directions. In fact, at the last minute, according to the Times the mayor was still dithering over whether to choose Charlie or the Valley Bureau’s deputy chief, Michel Moore.

Rubin and Willon write:

Though many had anointed Beck early on as the favorite to win the job, the outcome behind closed doors, where decisions were actually made, could easily have been different.

Of course, the glaringly ironic thing about this statement is the fact that chief among those “many” who most energetically and publicly “anointed” Beck was the LA Times.

NOTE: Before I get a slew of corrective emails, let me quickly state that I am not suggesting that anyone at the LA Times was campaigning for Charlie Beck. But I am saying they appeared to buy into the spin that was coming both from certain LAPD types and a small cadre in and around the mayor’s office, all of whom had a strong investment in Charlie being the choice.

The upshot was that, in addition to the behind the scenes pressure squeezing the mayor, the city’s main newspaper was yammering that the selection of Beck was nearly a foregone conclusion.

Which was not exactly helpful.

(It was also unhelpful when, the day after the Police Commission’s three finalists were announced, the Times ran an editorial that opined..“The commission has done its job well in winnowing out many less-qualified candidates.”

Dear LA Times: Really? Okay, so by “less-qualified candidates” did you mean Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, the guy who was head of operations during the recent drop in crime, so is credited by most as having a big part in that downturn in crime stats? Or maybe you just meant Assistant Chief Sharon Papa, the first woman in department history to be promoted to that title, and the former Chief of Police for the MTA?

I hate to be picky, but what exactly are you people smoking over there when you write stuff like that?)

Anyway, so back to the mayor’s decision-making process. What seems to be true is that, at the last minute, Villaraigosa genuinely wobbled over his choice.

On Sunday night when AV moved his announcement back a day, from Monday morning to Tuesday morning even people like me assumed that the selection had been firmed up over the weekend, that Beck would be the new chief, and that the delay was merely stagecraft.

We assumed wrong. I now know from my own sources that, on Monday, the mayor was back on the fence again and phoning around to get a few more eleventh hour reads on the candidates.

Then on Monday afternoon, there was a sudden blast of rumors coming out of city hall that all bets were off—and that now AV was leaning toward Michel Moore.

Deputy Chief Moore had been the guy out of the three who—despite his capabilities and his impressive resume—was deemed to be the least likely of the finalists to emerge in the lead simply because, in addition to Bratton and others pushing Beck, a lot of the law enforcement community—inside and outside the LAPD— strongly favored Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, who was also ultra experienced and supremely capable.

By early evening, some of the most ardent Beck supporters were in a flaming panic. The mayor was definitely going for Moore, they said.

Finally, sometime after 9 p.m. the gossip drums grew eerily silent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, so we were all geared up, popcorn in hand, waiting for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to announce his selection for Chief of Police on Monday. We were primed. We were deliriously anticipatory. We had paper streamers and noisemakers and were entirely prepared to whoop and holler supportively for whichever of the three he named: Charlie Beck or Jim McDonnell or Michel Moore.

Furthermore, we really, really felt we knew who it was going to be. We’d done our reconnaissance flights, read the I Ching, laid out the Tarot, swirled some tea leaves, thrown some bones. We figured our analysis was a Las Vegas oddsmaker’s sure thing. And we surmised that the decision had likely been locked and loaded for a while—even though the mayor made a big To-Do about calling everyone back for interviews on Sunday, and everything.

But, whatever. We liked each of the candidates a lot and were going to be happy whichever way it went.

Then came the word that, no, there wasn’t going to be a Monday announcement after all. The clay was still wet, the cake hadn’t risen, the pot hadn’t boiled, the stone had yet to be carved.

The mayor was still thinking.

The selection was now to be made public on Tuesday.

What’s this?! Tuesday? Was it really possible that AV was still undecided?

We were confused.

Then we talked to persons with cooler heads than our own (who also happened to be in something of a position to know). And they laid it out succinctly.

The mayor is not dithering. This isn’t indecision, or extended contemplation. It is stage management.

In part, Antonio is milking the moment. But the delay is more than that. AV is making it clear that it is he who is making this decision. Not the police commission. Not Bill Bratton. Not….fill in the blank with any number of prominent names who have been energetically lobbying behind the scenes for this candidate or that one.

Moreover, by delaying a day, Antonio is flashing a message in neon letters to the chief-to-be, that it is to the mayor—not anyone else—that the new head of the LAPD will owe his job.

Yeah, it’s a power play, with a liberal sprinkling of narcissism thrown in.

On the other hand, he who takes the credit also gets the blame if things go wrong. And, with the plethora of challenges presented by the present economy (double-digit unemployment, a sinking city budget, shredded social safety nets, looming prisoner release) a hell of a lot could go wrong under any chief. So, if Antonio is gambling a pile of political capital on the bet that he and the new C.O.P. will be able to continue to make things go right in the post-Bratton realm of protect and serve, one cannot honestly say that is a bad thing.

It’s even, kind of, you know, leader-ish.

Okay, then, see you Tuesday. Same time, same place, same noisemakers. New popcorn.

The timing was perfect.

Three weeks ago, when LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell agreed to speak to my Tuesday night class of Annenberg grad students about policing in general and about the job of LAPD Chief in particular, none of us had any idea that the short list of candidates to succeed Bill Bratton would be announced five minutes after McDonnell was scheduled to arrive in our USC classroom at 5 p.m..

In other words, Chief McDonnell himself would have gotten the fateful thumbs up or thumbs down telephone call right about the time he would leaving his office on the 10th floor of the new police headquarters to come to us. Or worse, maybe the mayor would call McDonnell when he was somewhere en route from Spring Street to campus in in his black Yukon.

For the sake of all concerned, my class and I really, really hoped that our scheduled guest was going to be on the commission’s list of three.

Jim McDonnell was always considered to be one of the front runners. But city politics can be quirky. And one never knew. I spent much of the morning Tuesday, on the phone with people from the police commission and the mayor’s office, getting updates as the commission continued to dither and ran late with it’s decision. I wanted to get a definitive read from somebody about whether our classroom guest was going to be sad or happy when he arrived.

Of course, as we now all know McDonnell was on the list—along with Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, and Deputy Chief Michel Moore, who oversees department’s Valley Bureau. (Just before I passed the field where the USC marching band was practicing on my way to the building that houses my classroom, I got the needed message, “The answer is ‘happy,’” my informant told me.)

According to what was billed as leaked insider information reported by KNX radio and a local TV station, McDonnell was first on the commission’s list, with Beck and Moore following after, in that order.

So, as luck would have it, the journalism class got what I believe was the first full length interview with any of the candidates since the selection process began, and certainly the first since since the finalists were named. We were all pretty excited.

Chief McDonnell talked with the students for more than an hour, answering their questions press-conference style. On a day as significantly eventful as Tuesday, another man might have canceled, but instead McDonnell graciously seemed to delight in the opportunity to talk with a bunch of smart journalism students.

He spoke about topics as varied as why he thought he’d make a good chief, about the way helicopters are best used in policing, about the different elements that must be present if we are to lessen LA’s gang violence, about California’s prisoner reentry problem, about how to create better relations with LA’s urban communities—and about the single principle that most guides him.

There was more. The group of young reporters asked an array of skillful questions and McDonnell gave thoughtful and informative answers. But the class members are each writing up news stories based on the interview, so I’d prefer to wait for their insights rather than muddying the water with my own.

The mayor told the candidates he will interview each of them over the next three days (Beck, Wednesday, McDonnell, Thursday, Moore, Friday) and make his decision by Monday.

In the meantime, we’ll be watching and waiting (and analyzing and handicapping).

Stay tuned.

As any avid LAPD watcher knows by now, the short list of three is: First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, Deputy Chief Charlie Beck and Deputy Chief Michael Moore

Much more soon after I get back from USC.

Waiting for the short list.

Last we heard, the Police Commission was going to give the mayor its list of three candidates tonight or early tomorrow. Now we hear it will likely be today, and that the mayor will make an announcement before sundown—give or take a few rays of light. (It is expected to be around 5 p.m.)

So will the Commission give the mayor a strong threesome or a stacked deck (as it did last time around)? Either is permissible, of course. But with this many interesting candidates, I’d hope for the former strategy, not the latter.

We will know soon. Stay tuned.

By the way, one of the people who is considered to have the best shot of landing on that short list is coming to speak to my USC grad students this afternoon—right about the time that the mayor could possibly be announcing the names. (I ain’t saying exactly who the guest is as that is my students’ story to break—and there is, of course, no guarantee that this person will be on the list.)

In any case, we count on it being an interesting class.

One more thing: I’ve been meaning to comment on the story about the selection of the chief in this week’s issue of the LA Weekly in which the Weekly speculates that George Gascon, the former LAPD Assistant Chief, turned Chief of Mesa, AZ, now the Chief of the San Francisco PD, is one of the two secret out-of-towners being who were interviewed by the police commission.

It would be a provocative idea were it not for the fact that it’s TOTALLY WRONG—which a brief Google search could have told the writer, Dennis Romero, and his editors.

Although he has long hoped to succeed Bratton, Gascon said publicly and succinctly at his swearing in during the first week of August that he would not be applying for the LA job. The timing sucked for Gascon, who was a bit sandbagged by Bill Bratton’s surprise resignation, but he dealt with the matter elegantly. In any case, we have known for months that Gascon did not apply.

Research, people. Research.

UPDATE:

The police commission is going to announce an interim chief at 2:45 3:45 p.m.. They said they weren’t going to have an interim chief. But they thought about it, now they are as we are likely two-weeks out from having a new chief chosen by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, so they decided it would be the prudent choice to have someone officially at the helm for those two weeks.

Also, if one or more of the assistant chiefs—like Jim McDonnell or Earl Paysinger, say— are on the short list, then slightly politically awkward circumstances could arise if there is no acting chief while the selection is being made, and high level decisions need to be made.

So, good call, police commission.

CONFIRMED: Interim chief is Deputy Chief Michael Downing, the only one of the Deputy Chiefs who did not apply to be chief. Right now Downing heads the LAPD’s counter terrorism bureau.

Yesterday, blogger Joe Scott, who also works for DA Steve Cooley, wrote that “Gnomes of Spring Street” have told him which three people are the finalists in the process to select a Chief of the LAPD to succeed Bill Bratton.

Then Scott names the three men who have generally been considered to be the most out in front of the front runners: Jim McDonnell, First Assistant Chief and Chief of Staff; Earl Paysinger, Assistant Chief in charge of operations; and Charlie Beck, Deputy Chief and Chief of Detectives.

Scott’s blog post was linked to and quoted from a lot yesterday.

Yet there are a few things that suggest he was rather hasty in posting his list.

1. For one thing, the LA police commission just began its interviews of the 12 pre-finalist finalists.

(At least we think there are 12 or around 12. Not even the finalists themselves were informed of the exact number. UPDATE: ABC7 says it’s 13. Eight being interviewed Wednesday, five Thursday. Along with other news crews, Channel 7 is camped outside the City Club on
Bunker Hill where the interviews are taking place.)

So if we are to believe Scott, the die is already cast, and the interviews are merely pro forma, which—by all accounts I’ve heard— is simply not true.

There are indeed some strong winds at the backs of each one of those three, and they could very easily be the triumvirate handed to the mayor in early November.

Chief of Detectives Charlie Beck is a cops-cop and the choice favored by the mayor’s chief of staff, Jeff Carr, and by Connie Rice. Beck has been Bratton’s pick as the Can-Do guy to solve such vexing problems as the rape kit backlog.

Jim McDonnell is at the top of a lot of lists, inside and outside the department. He is the skilled big picture theorist among the three, and is usually the name mentioned first by the uniforms on the street.

The well-liked former head of the department’s complicated South Bureau, during recent years, Earl Paysinger has been the man firmly in charge of operations during an extended period of dropping crime so commands much respect and has his own group of very strong supporters.

Yet to believe that anybody’s “gnomes” can predict all three as a lock at this point in the process is foolish. Plus it does not take into account all the various puzzle pieces that comprise the whole picture.

2. Look, for example, at the last shortlist for chief that an LA police commission sent to an LA mayor.

In the fall of 2002, when Bill Bratton was selected, his closest rivals from the department—people like George Gascon and Jim McDonnell— weren’t on the final list of three. Instead, the commission delivered along with Bratton’s resume, the stacked deck of Philadelphia’s former Chief John Timony and Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez (a former LAPD deputy chief). The two were both capable men. In this situation, they were also ringers.

3. In the wide canvassing I’ve done in and around City Hall, and among the rank and file of the department, another of the names that continues to come up with frequency by street cops as one of the front-runners, is that of Assistant Chief Sharon Papa who, as the former chief of the MTA police, is the only person in the group to have had her own department to command. Do I think she’ll be the final pick? Probably not. At least, not this time. But could she be on the short list? Sure. Easily.

4. Finally, a dark horse in the mix is Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz. He was late to throw his name in, but during a short period he too has gathered a significant list of supporters from inside and outside the department. Given his depth and breadth of experience, and his performance as the problem solver head of Central Bureau (home of Avenues gang, et al), in many ways Diaz combines the main strengths of McDonnell and Beck, so cannot be crossed off either.

5. Given the talents of our homegrown candidates, the frequently expressed wishes of our very popular outgoing chief, and the unambiguous desires of the rank and file, the chances range from unlikely to impossible that Bratton’s replacement will be someone from outside the department. Yet an outsider could be among the three, just to show that the commission has fairly considered all comers.

So, yeah, the short list may, indeed, be made up of the three Scott mentions.

But I would energetically advise betting the ranch on it just yet.

PS: Joel Rubin has his own smart and well-reported take on the front runners, which is a must read on the topic.

He rightly mentions Deputy Chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, head of training division, as another dark horse. If I were to personally pick the person who has the best shot of being the department’s first woman chief, it would be MacArthur. Also, Rubin’s suggestion that the chief is quietly putting in a word for Beck is my read as well. And, the fact that the mayor put Connie Rice on his picking-the-chief advisory panel could be telling.

In short, there are very strong trends, but the jury’s still out.

PPS: The Alex Sanchez bail hearing post is still coming later.

Chief William Bratton has been making the rounds for a series of good bye meetings and celebrations. (”Bill’s Good Bye Tour” is how one of his command staff described it to me yesterday, with a friendly roll of the eyes.)

On Wednesday one such event was held by Los Angeles Magazine at the Foundry on Melrose. LA Mag editor Mary Melton hosted around 30 people for breakfast, including LA Observed’s Kevin Roderick, blogger Mikey Kaus, former City councilman Jack Weiss, former LA Mag editor, Kit Rachlis, former LA Times Managing Editor Janet Clayton (now chief of Think Cure!), LA Times cop and crime writer, Joel Rubin, KPCC’s Frank Stoltze …and me—among others.

After a certain amount of meeting and greeting and some star gazing at Bratton (still, after all this time) everyone settled down to hear Melton interview the Chief.

As you can see, I’ve posted the interview here in four parts.

(Apologies for the jiggles and occasional odd framing. I need to remember to bring my little portable tripod.)

IN PART ONE….

Bratton talks about that the things he found surprising about Los Angeles when he first showed up here—and how resistant the rank-an-file was to his initial cultural changes, and about the destructive legacy of former LAPD Chief Bill Parker’s Thin Blue Line.

IN PART TWO….

Bratton talks about changing the leadership in the department in order to begin to change the culture of the LAPD.

He also talks about his most recent fights with the city council, and about what every murder costs the city in economic losses. (Hint: A lot.) In his advice to his successor, he quotes Winston Churchill: “never give up, never give up, never give up.”

IN PART THREE…..

He talks angrily about the Council snatching the trash fee revenues that he says were supposed to be allocated to the LAPD to put more cops on the street, and about those three recently-indicted officers.

He also talks about what he would do differently if he could, and why he doesn’t feel guilty for leaving the department at such a dicey time.

(Read on, there’s lots more after the jump.)

Read the rest of this entry »

The process of selecting a new Los Angeles Chief of Police has just entered phase two. The candidates for chief who will advance to the next stage of the selection process all were notified on Thursday.

In phase one, 24 candidates—13 from within the department, elevenfrom outside—filled out an application that included a bunch of term paper-ish essay questions, in which candidates were asked to describe their ideas about and experience with around a half dozen issues that are part of a chief’s job—matters such as dealing with unions, new technology and so on.

The applications were reviewed by LA City Personnel Department General Manager Margaret Whelan and her team.

And out of the pile of applications, Maggie Whelan (a surprisingly powerful person about whom we know nothing) was to choose between six and twelve candidates.

The next step was for that list of 6-12 to be passed along to the LA Police commission, who will interview the candidates.

That long list is whittled down to the short list of three candidates who are then passed to the mayor with a recommendation.

None of the candidates were told how many were on that pre-short list.

I’ve spoken to two of the candidates who are moving to the next round.

My guess is that(in alphabetical order) Charlie Beck, Sergio Diaz, Jim McDonnell, Mike Moore, Sharon Papa, Earl Paysinger are on the list. Yet there will likely be some surprises.

I’ll let you know when I know for sure who’s on.

I do know that the interviews will be on October 21 and 22.

Good luck to all concerned, and good luck to us.

(David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News)

As most of us are aware, a great many city jobs are getting cut because, like the state, LA has serious money troubles. So, shouldn’t the Los Angeles Police Department also have to take a hit to their personnel along with the rest of the city’s agencies that are dealing with layoffs and hiring freezes?

In an editorial in this morning’s LA Times, the paper has answered the question with a resounding NO.

The opinion may prove to be an unpopular position given the number of city workers who are getting furlough days, or worse, bounced out of the workforce altogether.

Yet I agree with the Times.

For decades, Los Angeles had the lowest officer to resident ratio of all of the nation’s six largest police departments, a fact that did not serve our city well. In 2006, for example, New York City had a 228 to 1 ratio of residents to cops. Chicago had 216 to 1. LA had 426 to 1.

Over the years, the department coped by instituting its now famous command-and-control paramilitary model that resulted in such methodology as SWAT and the helicopter pursuit, all of which other departments came to emulate.

Yet it is also the same model that led to the kind of entrenched problems and abuses that broke most infamously into the open during the Rampart scandal.

Doing something to raise the numbers was one of the most important changes that Bill Bratton told me he felt he had to make when he first came the the LAPD, if he was to institute the reforms to the department’s so-called culture that he believed were necessary. He cited the out of kilter officer/resident ratio as being one of the elements that led to the attitude within certain quarters of the department that produced Rampart.

“It [became] all about control,”Bratton said in January of 2003, during my very first interview with him, (and his first for any LA print news outlet since his arrival as chief). “It was all about controlling the community, not working with the community. It starts out as the desire to control the criminal component of the community. It ends up spreading to all the aspects of the community.”

Chief Bratton fought hard to raise the number of uniformed officers on LA’s streets, and, at the same time, while crime stats dropped, the relationship between the police and the communities they served began to improve. There is still farther to go in the twinned realms of community relations and…let’s just call it…the less productive side of the department’s culture, but one thing is for sure, we cannot possibly afford to go backward.

Here’s how the LATimes described that same issue in this morning’s editorial:

After years of toying with expanding the size of the Los Angeles Police Department, advancing and then retreating when a limited funding stream evaporated or the economy turned sour, Los Angeles has begun to make some headway. It has been an important development. A growing LAPD, together with smart deployment decisions, have helped to keep crime in check and to improve the working relationship between the department and the neighborhoods it serves. A larger number of officers helps the LAPD to move away from the “occupying force”-style of policing that once prevailed in Los Angeles, keeping some communities secure and others geared for confrontation.

Allowing the LAPD to drop in size would be a setback for Los Angeles

Yep. It would. And, as unfair as it might seem given the cuts being visited on others, it would be an imprudent choice to allow that setback to occur—particularly during this stressed and insecure time.