ON BEING BLUE: A Cop Talks About Cops – Part II

Deputy Chief Charles Beck is the head of LAPD’s Detective Bureau. That means when the story ran here and in the LA Times about the LAPD detectives who falsely told a Vineland Boyz gangster that 16-year-old Martha Puebla had identified him for murder, and she was killed as a consequence, Chief Beck found himself at the center of the discussion—although the incident happened years before his tenure.

Charlie Beck is a smart, savvy, straight shooter who has been with the LAPD since 1977.

Before he was tapped to be head of LAPD’s Detectives, he was the Chief of South Bureau, which meant he oversaw enforcement for some of LA’s most violence-ridden real estate. During his tenure there, crime in Watts dropped by nearly 50 percent, and Beck gained a reputation as a tough, fair-minded, genuinely enlightened and modern cop who courted cooperative relationships with gang interventionists and other community members that, in other eras, had not exactly felt welcome at the department. Beck credits much of South Bureau’s success to those new partnerships. If and when Bill Bratton leaves, Charles Beck is usually mentioned as one of those most likely to replace him.

I talked with Chief Beck last Friday about the Martha Puebla story and about the earlier LA Times story regarding some Hollywood officers who may or may not have planted cocaine on a suspect. I found he had a lot to say on both topics.

Warning: This is longer than the usual post. But, be sure you don’t stop reading before Charlie Beck tells about the time—back in the bad old days—when some LAPD cops tried to plant drugs on him….

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WitnessLA: Let’s talk first about the Martha Puebla case It sounds like a change is needed in department policy so there’s some rule that prevents this kind of situation from happening. Obviously the Martha Puebla incident is not exactly confidence building for community members who don’t want to testify against gang members, even on a good day.

Charlie Beck: I don’t know if you can train for common sense. But, now we’re going to make sure that all of our detective schools and all our detective training for the near future will include a piece about the use of “ruse,”—which is what that tactic is called—-and all the things that go with it.

I’m not upset by what those detectives did here. What bothers me is what they didn’t do. They didn’t takes steps to disclose the ruse. And in the end they didn’t need it. It was a failed tactic. In the end they convicted him another way. They had enough physical evidence to convict half the state. So in the end, they could have easily cleaned the whole thing up by saying to him, “By the way that wasn’t true.” Or they could have taken affirmative steps to let her know, “Hey we used your your name.” Or they could have not used her name in the first place. They could have said a person has indentified you….

WLA: Yeah, but that’s dicey too. In this particular case, it would have been only one of two people. So that wouldn’t have exactly protected her.

CB: True. So the point is, you can’t use that kind of tactic and just move on. You have to make sure you’re affirmative in the way you follow up.

WLA: To play devil’s advocate, while I understand the use of the ruse, if I were this girl’s parents and some detectives came to me and said, “By the way, we falsely gave your daughter’s name to this gangster whom we’re hoping will confess to a murder. Just thought we’d give you the heads up.” I’d be out of my mind with fury. So now they know, but there’s no real way to protect her. What’re the parent going to do? Move out of state?

CB: Well, frankly, the officers needed to have disclosed [to the suspect] that the ruse wasn’t true.

Of course, we deal with this issue all the time. Someone identifies someone. And their name will come out in the discovery process. It’s a very difficult thing. Often nothing happens But still, driving drunk often nothing happens. But that doesn’t make it smart. On the other hand, I hate to put a lot of restrictions on the creativity of detectives….

WLA: But surely there’s a practical rule you can make, rather than relying on being able to train people in critical thinking— which ain’t easy to do with any profession. In other words, if there is a reasonable expectation that someone will be put at risk of harm due to the use of a ruse, shouldn’t that be against department policy?

CB: Okay, I’ll give you the most common ruse situation. Three guys are arrested driving a stolen car. They all go into separate interrogation rooms and one by one each is told that the other guy is ratting ‘em out so that they should be the first to tell the truth…

WLA: Sure. We see it all the time on episodic television, and admittedly we cheer for the detectives who do it…

CB: So in that case, you could potentially say that people could be at risk so, again, it comes back to training critical thinking. We need to tell them that a ruse should be used as a last resort. Do you really need the ruse? And if you use it, be aware that the consequences could potentially be dangerous. So you have to be affirmative…

WLA: Interesting point. Yet, the Martha Puebla situation where you’re endangering an innocent does feel qualitatively different than three guys in a stolen car. And frankly people like me are bothered that there are no sanctions for those officers.

CB: I’m not sure there’ll be no sanctioning. Certainly those detectives should not be working homicide any time soon.

WLA: Last week was sort of a No Good Very Bad week for the LAPD in terms of negative publicity. In addition to the Martha Puebla story, there was story of the video that seemed to suggest those Hollywood officers may have planted drugs then lied about it.

This is, of course, another one of those instances that plays into the fears that low income communities already have about law enforcement. During the era of the Rampart scandal I ran across a number of incidents where people accused officers of shaving the dice in just this kind of way, and the accusations were pretty credible—BUT impossible to prove. The difference in the Hollywood instance is that there’s a video. But I suspect that there were a lot of folks in East and South LA who read that story and said, “Hey, welcome to my neighborhood…”

CB: Yeah, well….the reality is that these things are as old as policing. It is the slippery slope. Every profession has its slippery slope. Every one of them does. This is ours. And it is a constant battle to stay off of it. But I can tell you this: that type of behavior—while not rare enough—is much rarer than it was in my time on the street.

And I really believe that we’re going to make an such example of these folks—and every time this comes up we’re going to make an example—so pretty soon the slope starts to go away. I think we’re close to that, I really do.

I know a lot of people have a lot of stories about a lot of history. Some of it is urban legend, a lot of it based on factual things.
But I look at these young police officers…. My daughter’s a police officer and she doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I bring up this stuff. I truly believe that. If I felt I was going to introduce my daughter into the same environment I came into…..I wouldn’t want her to be a police officer. But I know she’s not coming into that same environment.

It isn’t that police officers were evil. It’s just the environment that I came into. I don’t want to say that this was the standard…

WBA: …But it used to go on…

CB: Yeah. And when you get right down to it, it’s lazy police work. If this occurred as portrayed—and I don’t know that it occurred….but if it did, there were certainly other ways to make an arrest. And I just want to make clear, we are discussing these cases in the hypothetical and there may certainly be things that come out in the investigation that changes the way we are looking at them

WBA: I understand that none of us knows yet knows exactly what occurred. But we can all admit it doesn’t look good at the moment…

CB: In my experience, in cases I’ve been involved with personally—and I haven’t been involved with this one—-the police officers have been arrested and fired.

And, Celeste, if you want to know the truth, when I worked undercover I had evidence planted on me… And I arrested and fired the police officers. But—it was lazy police work.

WLA: What?! Okay, that’s a great story.

CB: I actually have a tape too—where [his former partner] and I were working undercover in narcotics and we got evidence planted on us. That was a long time ago. But there’s a message here. It does happen occasionally. But when it happens, we take it very seriously. People lose their jobs and they get prosecuted. And we make an example of them.

WLA: Which is important. Although I know the union is not all that happy when you make an example out of misbehaving officers….

CB: Hey, I’m not thrilled about either. I don’t condone it but I have empathy. I understand how some people get to that point. But you know what? You can’t do it. If somebody’s dirty, there’s always another day. You have to do a better job. You have to do it right.

WLA: Switching the subject for a moment: Are you having fun being King of Detectives?

CB: I don’t know. We’ll see. It’s a great job. But I loved my last job.

WLA: Being Chief of South Bureau?

CB: Yeah, I loved that job. But I loved being Captain of Rampart. It’s the old story. The beast moves on, and we have to move where it wants us. On the other hand, maybe I have more influence here.

WLA: Okay, so what questions have I missed?

CB: I think you hit ‘em all. By the way, my daughter works Hollywood. And as soon as I found out what had happened, I called and had a 30-minute talk with her about how important it was to do things right.”

WLA: How old is she?

CB: Twenty-seven

WLA: Back off, dad. Leave the poor kid alone!

CB: (laughter)

WLA: Well, Chief Beck, thanks so much for your time. We’re glad to have you out there protecting and serving.

CB: Thanks. I’m glad to be here.

WLA: Stay safe.

CB: I’ll do my best.