COLUMN RIGHT : Don’t Weaken City Charter to Get at LAPD : Changes can be made without making the Police Department an instrument of politicians.

Good government in the city of Los Angeles is being challenged by the proposed amendments to the City Charter that the City Council is trying to place on the June ballot.

The changes would severely alter the manner in which a police chief can be removed from office. The elimination of civil-service protection and the imposition of term limits on future police chiefs would politicize the Los Angeles Police Department in the way that it was in the 1930s, when political control of the department was the order of the day, and taking the lid off civil-service protection for the chief of police would eventually lead to the politicization of all city departments.

Because of the current political climate in Los Angeles, I am convinced that some people really want to have political influence over the Police Department, and not structural changes, by tinkering with the City Charter. The citizens of Los Angeles must separate the issue of Chief Daryl Gates and the charter.

The police commissioners who are clamoring for change in the charter and calling for term limits for the police chief are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. Police commissioners Stanley K. Sheinbaum and Jesse A. Brewer have argued before the City Council that the Christopher Commission’s recommendations should be fully implemented. However, they balked when a proposal was made for term limits on police commissioners.

Critics of the chief of police seek to wrest management of the department from career managers dedicated to serving all of the people of the city and place it in the hands of politicians who seek to use the department to serve their own purposes.

Although some people criticize the City Charter as outdated, it is a document that should be viewed as progressive. The charter makes the Police Commission the policy-makers of the Police Department. Commissioners are chosen and serve at the will of the mayor. Thus, the mayor is not completely locked out of policy decisions.

Perhaps part of the problem has been that the Police Commission, which is the head of the department under the current charter, has been asleep at the switch.

The new call for “reform” of the City Charter is really an old one: Make the Police Department an instrument of the politicians in power.

The Los Angeles City Charter was changed in the late 1930s as part of the great reform movement in Los Angeles to prevent the corruption of the Police Department by the mayor. Reforms were made to the system to prevent City Hall politicians from making arbitrary decisions that would affect the Police Department.

The insulation of the police chief from outside political pressures has kept the LAPD free of corruption for years. The Christopher Commission noted that “by all accounts, the LAPD is generally efficient, sophisticated and free of corruption.” But if the potential exists for elected officials to control the police, it is only a matter of time until corrupt influences will seek the ability to control a handful of elected officials, who in turn can control the police.

The fight for justice and change within the LAPD sparked by the beating of Rodney King has turned into a battle for political control of the Police Department by changing the City Charter. The citizens of Los Angeles must consider the long-term effects of eliminating civil-service protection for the office of chief of police. Law enforcement should not be based on political considerations. Even the Christopher Commission recognized this in its report by finding that the chief of police “must be protected from improper political influences.

Some of the changes suggested by the Christopher Commission could be implemented by the department itself. For example, many of the jobs now filled by police officers could be staffed with civilians. The LAPD could increase community policing, demand accountability of supervisors for the actions of officers under their command, and provide swift and decisive actions against personnel who display aberrant behavior, all without changing the City Charter.

Some members of the Los Angeles City Council have approached change in the LAPD like some of the infantrymen in Vietnam who felt that the only way to save a village was to destroy it. Let’s set in motion the recommendations of the Christopher Commission, but let’s not carpet-bomb the City Charter in the process.