Chief Shoot from the Lip

The lifelong reader of the Los Angeles Times was outraged. "You are the Paul Revere of the oncoming avalanche of libertine behavior," he wrote in a letter to the editor canceling his subscription. Lest anyone fail to recognize the disgruntled reader's name, the Times responded last week by identifying him in a cartoon lampooning his decision. It was hardly necessary, for everyone knows that Edward Michael Davis, 58, is the city's chief of police. Tilting with the Times--and anyone else who runs up against his puritan ethics--is standard operating procedure for Davis. To him advocates of gun control are "quacks"; legislators who support less than draconian marijuana laws are "irresponsible, no-good sons of bitches."

Gunsmoke Rhetoric. Such volleys, delivered in surprisingly temperate tones, have won U.S.C. Grad Davis the enmity of civil libertarians and the politicians who are his targets. They have also earned him the uncontested ranking of toughest talking big-city cop in the U.S. Today's police chiefs generally take a less inflammatory public stand as they try to deal with intractable urban crime. Ed Davis' gunsmoke rhetoric revives memories of Birmingham's Bull Connor and his L.A. predecessor Bill Parker, who once said that as far as he was concerned any suspect picked up was guilty until proven innocent.

The Davis penchant to shoot from the lip tends to obscure the fact that he heads one of the more innovative and efficient police forces in the country. Crime is rising in Los Angeles at an annual rate of 7%--only half the nationwide rate of increase. And Davis deserves much of the credit. An admirer of Sir Robert Peel, who founded Britain's nonviolent and respected police system, Davis follows the British practice of running a strong community-relations program. He gets his cops into living rooms to talk crime prevention and build trust. "It's working," says City Councilman Bob Farrell, a black who represents part of the crime-ridden south-central section of the city.

But Davis' stance on gun control is something else again. He says that all too many of his city's affluent "swimming-pool Communists" pose a serious threat to law-and-order. Respectable citizens, he says, should arm themselves to ward off domestic terrorism, and to be ready for some as yet undefined coastal invasion. Pot smokers also rank high on the chief's enemies' list. Last spring Davis dispatched 75 officers to a series of rock concerts, and they rounded up over 500 fans.

Security Company Executive Tom Reddin, whom Davis succeeded as L.A.'s top cop, thinks his protege's bark is worse than his bite. Says Reddin: "People may remember him by his statements rather than his accomplishments." City Attorney Burt Pines certainly will. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a 1964 classmate of Davis at the police academy, recently had to negotiate a truce after Davis attacked Pines for being "soft" on pornographers, and Pines struck back, questioning the chief's professionalism in making charges without evidence. Last week Davis zeroed in on bigger game. Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss revealed that one reason the party chose New York over L.A. for its 1976 National Convention was fear that the chief would overreact to demonstrations, Davis reacted by resigning from the party.

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