An Optimist for Los Angeles

Chief William H. Parker was a crusty law-enforcement fundamentalist who spent 16 years building the Los Angeles Police Department into one of the best known, best paid and least corrupt in the U.S. There was a price though: a chilly distance between the cops and the slum Negroes that helped to start the 1965 Watts riots. When Parker died at 64 last July, Los Angeles set out to find a successor skilled in "community relations"--the art of enlisting citizens to help prevent crime, rather than relying on repression after it happens. Last week the city found its man in Thomas J. Reddin, 50, a genial giant of a career cop.

Reddin's task is complicated by the vastness of Los Angeles, a manpower shortage and his department's consequent impersonality. For all its prowess in chasing the Mafia to Las Vegas, the L.A. department is seriously undermanned. Even at a minimum $7,692 a year (near tops in the U.S.), it cannot lure enough recruits. New York City has nearly three times as many people as Los Angeles, more than five times as many police. In Los Angeles, only 5,035 men cover 458 sq. mi.--roughly ten cops per square mile, v. 39 in the average U.S. community.

Pecking Order. As a result, the L.A. cops patrol almost entirely in cars rather than pounding a beat on foot, and lose touch with people in the process. Hurtling to one crime call after another, police sometimes seem to view Negroes and Mexicans (24% of the populace) through the eyes of an occupation army. Only 4% of the force are Negroes, compared with 13.5% of the population. By comparison, of New York City's regular, transit and housing police, 9% are Negroes, v. 15% of the population. The minorities seem sometimes in the grip of an anti-cop mystique that turns every attempt to enforce the law into an outrageous act of persecution.

Critics charge that the department's impersonality is reinforced by its own pecking order. Since the front-line patrol-car force has the lowest status, it tends to consist of men who have failed promotion or who have been demoted. Rookies learn that the way out of the car is to write more traffic tickets and exceed their informal quotas (based on anticipated crime) in making "field interrogations" and misdemeanor arrests. Civil rights leaders argue that police sometimes overexercise their discretionary powers by hitting minority groups for marginal offenses. In slum areas, critics claim, such zeal is often self-defeating: for the poor, unpaid traffic tickets and minor arrests lead to more arrests, lost jobs--and more crime in order to pay the bills.

Positive Thirst. Chief Reddin calls his predecessor "one of the greatest police administrators who ever lived." But Tom Reddin, he adds, "is a different fellow from William H. Parker." Reddin sees opportunity in "a community thirst for positive programs from law-enforcement people. We have to find a lot of things to be for rather than a lot of things to be against." The son of a New York millionaire who got rich running carnivals, Reddin was forced into optimism when his father lost every penny vainly drilling for oil in Oklahoma. A star student as well as a star athlete, Reddin was forced to quit the University of Colorado in Depression 1933.

He did a four-year hitch in the Navy, wound up as a Los Angeles gas-station manager. A customer gawked at his size (6 ft. 4 in., 210 Ibs.), suggested that he become a policeman. So did several cops who stopped in for gas. Reddin signed up in 1941 as a $2,040-a-year patrolman, became, in turn, a detective sergeant, adjutant to the traffic chief, lieutenant in charge of training, a much respected captain of the Watts division, deputy chief and head of the technical-services bureau.

As chief of detectives after Parker died, Reddin took a battery of tests-for the top post that pitted him against Inspector James G. Fisk, the department's articulate chief of community relations. Fisk had toiled to heal the wounds of Watts, sending white-Negro police teams into ghetto schools, running workshops for gang members, assigning patrolmen to walk around meeting people and "dispel stereotypes." On the test scores, Fisk beat Reddin by a hairline half of 1%. The city's five police commissioners nonetheless picked Reddin for his overall depth and breadth. As deputy chief, Fisk will expand his community-building efforts.

Sensor and Instant Lawyers. Chief Reddin is full of ideas, such as incentive pay to raise patrol-force status and keep good men in prowl cars. He wastes no time blaming the Supreme Court for "handcuffing" policemen. He is much harder on scientists and technicians for ignoring urgent police equipment needs: tiny radios, night glasses, lightweight armor, heat sensors to detect hidden fugitives, metal sensors for frisking suspects. He also wants someone to develop a gadget to stop a fleeing car's engine and a computerized "instant lawyer" to help police field interrogators avoid unlawful procedures.

Chief Reddin ranks his priorities as "crime in the streets," community relations and better recruitment. He aims to walk a "terrible tightrope" between "hard-nosed" policing and understanding. He thinks science and systematization should take over routine jobs, leaving "more time to talk to people." Minority groups are only some of the people he means. Last year crime dropped (by 3.8%) in only one Los Angeles area: the predominantly Negro Newton Street division. By contrast, serious crime jumped 32% in the white, prosperous West Valley division. If the L.A. department is now doing something right in "bad" areas, Reddin must try to do it throughout the city.

-Including a written exam containing essay questions on how to solve L.A. policing problems through 1970, implement recent court decisions, cooperate with city government, improve community relations.

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