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.

The Los Angeles Police Commission will hold a series of four public forums in order to get public input as to what qualities Angelenos want to find in their next Chief of Police.

The meetings will be held on the following nights:

1. Wednesday, Sept 2 at 6:30 p.m. at Friendship Auditorium, 3201 Riverside Drive, near Griffith Park.

2. Thursday, Sept. 3 at 6 p.m. at the Department of Water and Power Community Auditorium, 4030 Crenshaw Blvd.

3. Sept. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the Felicia Mahood Senior Center, 11338 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles

4. Sept. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at One Generation, 18255 Victory Blvd., Reseda.

If you have an opinion about who should replace Bill bratton, now is the time to voice it.

2 p.m. UPDATE:

Bill Bratton is leaving to be in business with former LAPD Independent Consent Decree Monitor, Michael Cherkasky, who is a close FOB—Friend of Bill. Cherkasky runs a firm called Altegrity Inc., a division of a firm called USIS, out of Virginia.

There is no question that the two will do well. But I suspect there’s some other factor. One thing I know it’s NOT, however—whatever anyone is saying in the rumor mill— Bill Bratton would not be leaving LA because he was running from some kind of fight or challenge. Put that out of your mind. It’s not in his character.
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ORIGINAL MORNING POST: Wow. I guess we’ve always expected this. But I would have bet Bratton would only leave early to take a job in D.C.—or something equally high profile.

But he is to take a position as the head of a private security company. (????)

(The LA Times Joel Rubin broke the story.)

UPDATE & CORRECTION: Eric Leonard at KFI co-broke it. Both reporters had it last night.

Messages are flying all over town expressing surprise.

Let the handicapping begin regarding who will succeed him as chief.

And, trust me, we’ll be heavily into that very activity here.

***********************************************************************************************************

UPDATE 1 PM:

Janice Hahn, in an interview with the City News Service, ticked off the names of those who will be in the running to succeed Bratton:

“Sharon Papa, Charlie Beck, Jim McDonnell, Earl Paysinger – all of them would be a great chief of police,” she said.

Yes, those would be the four out of the five who would be on my short list—possibly with the addition of Valley Bureau Deputy Chief, Mke Moore, although I think the other four have the inside track—some more than others. (More on that as time goes along.)

The obvious omission is George Gascon, the former LAPD Assistant Chief, strongly Bratton favored, who then took the job as chief of Mesa Arizona, and earlier this summer became Chief of the San Francisco Police Department. Gascon has always wished to be the one to succeed Bratton. In fact he was one of those on the shortest list for Bratton’s job in the first place.

Gascon took the Mesa job specifically with that in mind. But could he walk away from SF this early? It’d be hard, maybe even Palinesque. And there are other reasons why he moves out of the first or second place—namely that I am not sure that the city is prepared to have both a Latino mayor and a Latino chief.

(It would be nice if we were beyond such things, but we’re not.)

On the other hand, Gascon has more than enough talent to do it–-and the best CV of the bunch as he has already run a complicated police department. Mesa is, after all, the 40th largest city in America.

More on all this in a while.

I will say the obvious: Bill Bratton will be a tough act to follow. He’s an enormously talented law enforcement executive. It would be hard to point to one better in the nation. And he is enormously popular in the city. Probably LA’s most popular leader. We like our smart-mouthed, wickedly smart chief.

While Bratton ain’t perfect, it is hard to imagine a better match for Los Angeles at the moment when he assumed the helm of what was then a very troubled department— with a rank and file who had lost faith in it’s leadership, and a city that, in many sectors, particularly post-Rampart, had come to view with suspicion and even loathing the department that was supposed to protect and serve it.

Oh, yeah, and there was a spiking crime rate.

To varying degrees, Bill Bratton turned all three of those boats around.

He began to unleash the very best potential in the LAPD—a department that was loaded with skill and potential—while starting the job of correcting a police culture that had, in many ways, become malign.

Yes, there is further to go—lots further in the arena of regaining confidence in certain communities. But the progress has been enormous. And we don’t like to lose the man who made those strides possible.

BUT here’s the good news. There is assuredly the talent inside this department to take the department to the next step.

The rowdy Lakers fans who rampaged through the streets around Staples Center on Sunday night couldn’t have picked a better time to test the LAPD: It was the eve of a federal judge’s hearing on whether to extend the consent decree

Officers handled with restraint several situations that could have gone ugly: rowdy crowds trying to tip over police cars, trashing an MTA bus and looting a gas station.

Nicely done. The peaceful outcome certainly made for a better day for police brass trying to persuade Judge Gary Feess to do away with federal oversight of the department.

Feess, of course, sounded reluctant to abandon his oversight, and asked for more information before making a decision.. Read Celeste’s posts of a week ago urging the judge to surrender his control and return the LAPD to the LAPD. The ACLU thinks otherwise, and here’s a statement from staff attorney Peter Bibring after today’s court hearing:

“We are pleased the court recognized the progress the LAPD has made but focused on the larger question at hand: Whether it’s appropriate to lift the decree when the department has not complied with all of its terms most importantly the non discrimination provisions.”

“Over the past years, the consent decree has been the engine for LAPD reform, so as not to repeat the nightmares of Watts, Rodney King and Rampart. With the monitor’s finding that the department has not yet fully complied with the decree—including specifically its policies and practices toward communities of color—now is not the time to prematurely terminate what is working to bring order to our city. When it can be confidently said that citizens of color are not overstopped, overfrisked and overarrested by the LAPD for no other reason than their race, it will be time to end the decree.”

Who can blame the judge for wanting to see all the reforms in place before surrendering control? On the other hand, maybe there’s some room for compromise. What if Chief Bratton vowed to stop endorsing candidates for city offices?

Parker Center would be a better place without such blatant pandering and politics. Not only would he avoid the embarrassment of having endorsed Jack Weiss for city attorney, but it would certainly help his relationship with the victor Carmen Trutanich.

Those of us who remember the not-so-distant past when the police secretly investigated political foes will be happy to see the chief disengaged from the political process.

How ‘bout it chief: You can tear up the consent decree if you keep your ballot choices to yourself.

Late yesterday afternoon, I got a note from a couple of staffers at the LA Weekly that read:

“We thought you would be interested in the following piece of hot LOL:

Chief Bratton responds to LA Weekly’s recent cover story “Bratton: L.A. Is as Safe as 1956″ by saying “I think they were smoking a little weed when they wrote that article,” and then “It’s kind of voodoo reporting.”

The subject head for the email read: LA Police Chief Calls Us Stoners.

Indeed I was interested. Who could resist?

When I followed the embedded links I learned that on Wednesday’s Ask the Chief segment of Patt Morrison’s show on KPCC, Chief Bill Bratton came back with a few testy retorts when asked about a recent LA Weekly cover story that stated Bratton was manipulating LAPD crime stats for political purposes.

Then on Thursday, the Weekly’s Steve Mikulan posted a short take on Bratton’s remarks. (Mikulan has done a remarkable job as a one person news machine for the Weekly’s website. I have become convinced that Steve never sleeps.)

Here is the relevant excerpt:

“Actually,” said Bratton, “I think they were smoking a little weed when they wrote that article.”

The crack got a chuckle from Morrison, but the chief did not seem to be in a jovial mood about the story, and soon sounded darker motives behind it.

“The reporter that wrote that piece had a conclusion that he was writing to,” Bratton said. “Quite frankly I read that article and I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about . . . We stand by our numbers.”

[SNIP]

“L.A. Weekly,” he intoned, “seems to have it in for the mayor, so anything he says they try to question. . . . the L.A. Weekly, in their effort to go after the mayor seized on this, spent a lot of time writing about it.”

When Morrison asked if it may be a little misleading to compare per capita statistics that are separated by half a century, Bratton defended his department’s figures while taking one more swipe at the Weekly:

“It’s kind of voodoo reporting,” he said of McDonald’s cover story. “I’m very happy to rely on our statistics, which are audited by the FBI.”

(You can listen to the whole radio segment here.)

Here’s the thing. Yeah, Bill Bratton at times has the fastest mouth in the West. It’s part of his…um… charm. But on the matter of the Weekly article, I must admit I agree with him. I read the 6600 word story by Patrick Range McDonald when it appeared in in the LA Weekly at the end of April. And I found it to be pretty much a hit piece.

In his initial thesis McDonald had a point. He said that Bratton claimed that crime in LA was down to levels of the 1950’s.

On January 5, 2006, for example, Bratton sent out a press release noting that the 2005 “preliminary crime rate” was “364 Part I crimes per 10,000 residents.”

“You’d have to look back to 1956 to find a comparable crime rate for Los Angeles,” the chief said in the press release. He did it again in 2008, this time saying that L.A.’s crime rate in 2007 had repeated the amazing achievement of 2005, once again dropping so low that it matched 1956.

Technically Bratton was right, but only if he looked at Part I crimes in a particular way: Murders and robberies are much higher now per capita than they were in 1956. (Duh! I’m sure you are shocked—shocked—at this news.) But right now rapes and burglaries are way down in comparison to the 50’s. So if one averages all those figures together, Bratton can back his claim—in a number-pretzeling kind of way.

In other words, Bratton’s not cooking the figures, but he’s spinning them. It’s a sales trick. He’s making the numbers say something that he finds useful.

Okay, fair enough. I think Bratton’s 1950’s gambit is a dopey, disingenuous comparison too. Hey, Chief! Catchado!

And that’s probably worth a single column to whack Bratton on the wrist. But a 6600 word piece? Seriously?

And oh, yeah, and did I mention that McDonald’s editor, Jill Stewart, already did that column two months earlier?

With nearly all the same sources.

Moreover, the LAPD’s FBI verified crime stats are up on the department’s website for anybody to check. You can do your very own comparisons. In fact, short of the US DOJ, the LAPD has some of the easiest to access law enforcement stats in the nation.

So why did the Weekly decide to do this cover story on a retreaded column that had a very, very small point to make?

Well, McDonald did have two other points in mind:

Read the rest of this entry »

Four-year-old Roberto Lopez is the latest symbol of a dying newspaper. The little boy was shot and killed as he walked with his sister to a community center near their Angelino Heights home around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Where did the Los Angeles Times play the story? Page B3 in my edition. It should, at least, have been the dominant story on the cover of the California section and knocked off a timeless feature about a fire-gutted Montecito monastery’s efforts to rebuild.

Instead, we get a short story, with no photo of the boy. No interviews with family, friends or neighbors. No neighborhood scene. Times’ editors should have followed the example of LAPD’s Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, who told their reporter: “We’re throwing everything we have at this investigation.”

I’m so over blaming Sam Zell for every shortcoming of our once stronger daily; rarely great, just stronger. Reporters and photographers out to save their jobs from impending layoffs should have carpooled to the scene and produced an in-depth series of stories and hoisted them on their editors in time for today’s paper. Too bad a tipster couldn’t have phoned in an erroneous report of a celebrity spotted in the neighborhood. Maybe the sleepyheads on Spring Street will recover in time for Thursday’s paper. To its credit, the paper’s Web site shows some progress on the story, with video from Tribune’s KTLA. Still, it seems like their overdosing on sedatives in the Times newsroom again.

The criminal enterprise known as L.A. Unified, which should be overseen by a panel of federal judges, took steps to can 2,300 teachers if the nightmarish budget comes true. Where did the story run? Page B-4.

The Times should run front-page stories every day on the latest news of the budget debacle. Include email addresses, home phone numbers and home addresses of every GOP legislator who refuses to act responsibly and raise taxes. (OK, I hear you on the home addresses.) Interview the constitutents of these backward-thinking lawmakers to see if these cavemen really represent their views.

Even the governor, who continues to steal transit money, is calling for tax hikes. The same governor who would have billions more to spend today had he not slashed the car tax upon taking office in 2003.

Forgive me, L.A. Times, for suggesting you step up your game. You probably think what I’m calling for sounds like advocacy journalism and would force you to surrender your objectivity, an outdated term that only provides an excuse for your failure to inform a community about the meaning of events and issues.

Tell me, what’s your objective view of a bankrupt state that fails to meet the needs of its young and its most needy residents?

And what does your objectivity say about the sad end of 4-year-old Roberto’s life? How are we to cope when you don’t tell us more about him, our city, our struggles and our future?

While you think about it, leave a red rose on Roberto’s shrine. It’s OK to mourn while you ponder questions for Chief Bratton and the mayor.

I had pretty much dismissed this Washington Post story about Al-Qaeda supposedly supporting John McCain as somewhere in between questionable journalism and pretty silly (although the McCain campaign got even sillier when they called a conference call with reporters in order to insist that al Queda really, really meant was that it hoped John McCain won (wink, wink), when really the terrorists want Obama to win. The McCain thing was just reverse psychology. (Okay, if you say so.)

But then this OpEd by LAPD Chief Bill Bratton came out yesterday, in the New York Daily news, saying that we should expect a October surprise in the form of Al-Qaeda attack, because Bin Laden and company would love to influence the US elections, and that they want McCain to win. (Yes, I know. The logic’s hard to follow.)

Bratton wrote the thing with a guy named R. P. Eddy, who is something of a terrorism expert, as the senior fellow for counterterrorism at the Manhattan Institute, and the former director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

Anyway, here’s a clip. Make of it what you will.

Will Osama Bin Laden have anything to say about the U.S. presidential race? Does our economic implosion make us an even more tempting target?

Al-Qaeda has a history of trying to influence elections, most notably with the 2004 train attacks in Madrid. Just three days before Spain’s prime ministerial elections, 10 bombs left 191 dead- and Al-Qaeda affiliates swung the election away from the incumbent, who supported the coalition wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and toward the challenger, a vociferous critic of U.S. foreign policy.

Seven months later, Bin Laden attempted to disrupt the presidential race between George W. Bush and John Kerry. His videotaped statement, released just days before the elections, seemed to support Kerry – driving some voters toward Bush. According to 2006 reporting by Ron Suskind, CIA analysts concluded that Bin Laden knew that voters would react in this way and his message was “clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.”

If Bin Laden wants to engineer a late-October surprise in 2008, an attack on a significant American economic target may be one of the most tempting opportunities he has had in recent years. One of his goals on 9/11 was to undermine our markets; he has bragged of what he calls the “success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan.” Given our current financial turmoil, Bin Laden may believe that a strike against the U.S.could push our economy over the edge.

(sigh.) You can read the rest here.