Remembering LAPD Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner – UPDATED

UPDATE: Details regarding the services for Chief Garner may be found at the end of the post.
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LAPD’s Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner collapsed and died Sunday in his home. He was 53. Garner was the second highest ranking Black officer in the LAPD. (Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger ranks the highest.) It is, as yet, unclear what caused Garner’s death, although friends suspect a heart attack.

His death is a shock and loss to both the department and the various communities he policed in his nearly 32 years of wearing the badge of the Los Angeles Police Department.

When Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner took over as the head of South Bureau of the LAPD in March of 2008, it meant that he was suddenly in charge of policing one of the most complicated, vibrant, but too often dangerous pieces of real estate in America.

Yet Garner grew up in the South L.A. neighborhood he came to command, and he embraced the challenge of doing all he could for its residents.

I met and observed Garner in several contexts during his year on the job, and noticed that he quickly gained respect in areas of town that were not generally predisposed to feel warm and cozy toward the police.

Garner was a “beacon of reform and change within the LAPD,” Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, told the City News Service.

“He’s one of a handful of Blacks at the L.A.P.D. that I credit with helping change my perspective on the police department,” writes Jasmyne Cannick on her blog. (That’s Cannick in the snap with Garner below) “It’s a sad day for Los Angeles.”

The respect from Hutchinson, Cannick and others was granted for good reason. Garner made a point of reaching beyond the classic role of policing to think of new and creative ways that law enforcement could better protect and serve. He made a point of showing up frequently at the community forums that the Roundtable holds every week.

And last year Garner came up with an idea called The Urban Assistance Initiative, that was designed to help people who were coming out of prison transition to a legal and productive life. This voluntary parolee reentry program, which was launched this past January with the help of some community-based organizations in the Crenshaw area, is to help with employment, life skills training and educational opportunities, as well as such basics as clothing, housing, substance abuse treatment and long-term psychological family counseling.

Both growing up and during his experience as a police officer, Garner had seen too many men and women get stuck in the revolving door of repeated incarceration, and hoped the initiative would pioneer a replicable model that would help the thousands who are paroled into LA’s communities every year (making Los Angeles home to the largest parolee population in the nation) get off the recidivism merry go round and into productive lives.

“This program is not designed for powder puffs or a lot of white-collar criminals but it is for hard core criminals, because we could fill it with white-collar offenders and have a huge success rate but the problem in our community would go unsolved,” Garner said when explaining the planned reentry program. “We have to develop a way to help young people stop committing these crimes and going to prison because they ultimately lose and their communities lose their potential.”

Read that paragraph again. It gives an excellent clue as to how much Los Angeles lost in losing the potential of Kenny Garner.

“I’m talking about a man who was loved, a commanding officer who was loved by his officers,” said Sergeant Ronnie Cato. “We called him Kenny G. His concept, his ideology was people first. He was able to balance people and their needs—putting people first and still fighting crime. We’ve lost one of our best.”

Sergeant Samuel Mark, who works in the South Traffic division told me the same thing on Sunday night.

“Everybody was overjoyed when he became Deputy Chief,” Mark said. “They loved him. He treated everybody like they were his equal, no matter their rank. He was a sweetheart of a man. Everybody’s in shock. Just in shock.”

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UPDATE: THE SERVICES FOR CHIEF GARNER ARE AS FOLLOWS:

Viewing: Sunday, March 8th 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.. Crenshaw Christian Center – Faith Dome
7901 South Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA

Memorial Service: Monday, March 9th, 10:00 a.m.. Crenshaw Christian Center – Faith Dome

Internment: Immediately following the Memorial Service Rose Hills Cemetery, 3888 Workman Mill Road Whittier, CA