Internal Rift Deeply Divides Battered LAPD, Ex-Officer Says

In mid-January, police union officials blamed poor morale, notably the fear of discipline and prosecution among officers, for a decline in the number of traffic citations and drunk-driving arrests by the Los Angeles Police Department. Police officials disputed that conclusion, but a city councilman called for a “summit” meeting of city and community leaders to investigate police morale.

Charlie Meter, who was a Los Angeles police officer for 36 years before retiring in June, discussed morale last week with Times staff writer Chip Johnson.

Meter worked as a patrol sergeant, watch commander and detective at divisions all over the city under officers including future Chiefs Tom Bradley and Darryl Gates. He suffered three concussions in the line of duty, one of them from a beating, but kept his desire to be a police officer.

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Question: Did things change after Rodney King? Did the police feel as if they were made to bear the brunt of the stigma caused by the officers involved in the beating?

Answer: Absolutely. I can truthfully say that in my 36 years never, never did I dream that one incident was going to cause the havoc that it did. I was at Van Nuys when the Rodney King thing went down, and when I heard from the other officers about the video, I thought to myself, “Nah, can’t be that bad. These guys are exaggerating.” I saw the video and I could not, in any way, shape or form, believe what I was seeing. I mean I could not believe it.

Q: How did things change after that? And how did police officers react to the change?

A: The officers were divided on whether or not King should have received the punishment that he did. There was no one in the middle. You either had them saying no, it shouldn’t have gone that far, and others who said he was on drugs and you can’t second-guess, they were there, and all of that business.

What happened immediately after that thing went down was that you had all of this public pressure on the department. Now, the captains in these various patrol divisions, management-type levels, naturally they are captains because they have the drive to climb the ladder. They are ambitious people. When that thing went down, the division where I worked, Van Nuys, people in that capacity were going to show: “I am a firm administrator, and when you do anything a little bit out of line, I’m going to nail you for everything there is.” So now what happens, as an example, in Van Nuys maybe we had about five or six complaints going at one time. That would have been about right. These were either complaints by the public or complaints made by sergeants. We went from this six or seven all the way to the 40s, and once into the low 50s. Instead of someone from administration taking a look at why Van Nuys was having such a problem compared to everyone else in the city, their attitude was, “We’re going to be firm. We’re going to nail these officers whether it’s good, bad or indifferent.”

Q: How far did this policy go?

A: Let me give you an example of how far things got out of line and why the officers’ morale was affected. We had a man that was arrested for a warrant. It was a $1,200 warrant and he said, “I want to talk to the watch commander.” So, fine. I’m the watch commander and I go out and say, “Yeah, I understand you want to talk to me.” He says, “I do some informing for your people from narcotics.” “That’s nice, how can I help you?” “Well,” he said, “I don’t think I should get booked for the warrant.” I told him, “A judge has demanded that you be arrested. We have you in custody, and I can’t help you. If you want to call the people from narcotics and arrange it, I have no problem with that.”

Then he tells me right in front of the two arresting officers, “If you don’t let me go, I’m going to say that these two officers took money from me.” Is that right? Book him. The following day, even though I had logged that this guy threatened to frame the officers, he came in and my captain told me to take the complaint. This is the type of thing that sent these officers in a spiral downwards.

Q: Isn’t that an unusual occurrence?

A: In the aftermath of the Rodney King incident, we had the managers of the department running scared. They wanted to show that they were hard-nosed-type people and therefore were taking a complaint that in the eyes of patrol supervisors should never have been taken. So, now officers were not only catching hell from the public for something that they didn’t do, but at the same time they were not getting any support from the managers. They were in a totally no-win type of thing, and that started that downward spiral.

Q: Was it incidents like that that made you decide to leave the department?

A: Slowly. I always based my retirement on two things: my health and my attitude toward the department, and I always loved my job. But it was coupled with the riots, which is another extremely sore spot with me and all supervisors who are street-patrol people. When that thing went down, you had these managers, but the officers out there didn’t need managers. They needed leaders, and the leadership came from the sergeants and the lieutenants but not from the captains, commanders and deputy chiefs.

Q: Has the department , since the riots, been able to heal that rift?

A: That’s still a deep rift. It’s still a deep rift because our officers have very little confidence in management.

Q: Do officers still feel unappreciated by the public?

A: Yeah, but that’s changing. That will heal a lot faster than their lack of confidence in our management-type people. That’s going to be the biggest thing for the department to change and the biggest wound to heal. The other one will come slowly and, I’m sure, in time. But as far as these officers having confidence and wanting to be led by our managers, that is going to take a long time.

Q: How do career ambitions affect a manager’s ability to support and represent the men and women under them?

A: Once they finally arrive in that spot, they don’t want to do anything that will cause waves. I heard a captain tell Chief Ed Davis, “Commander, I think you’re full of crap on this decision,” and Davis backed down. That would never happen now.

Q: Do the rank and file confide in their captains about anything?

A: They will confide in them if they trust them. Supervisors are very standoffish. And when we questioned things at supervisors’ meetings, we were labeled cowboys because we wouldn’t go along with the party line. We were supposed to sit there, listen to all this stuff, not argue about it, accept it, just like a little puppy dog--yes boss, yes boss, yes boss. If we do that, captains aren’t hearing the bottom line about how things are really going, because they don’t want to hear it, we don’t want to tell them because we’re going to be labeled cowboys.

Q. What about a rookie and his idealistic notions about what the department is like. Have you seen people who’ve become disillusioned quickly?

A: Yes. Recently, and the department doesn’t like to hear this, we have officers who were street-oriented people that did not want this business about hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil, and they went off into other departments or head to other cities like Escondido and places like that.

Q: What’s the difference between the recruits then and now?

A: Out of about 30 people in my academy class, 27 of them had been in the (military) service. So we knew how to take orders. When we were told something, no one ever asked why. These people also had a burning desire to be police officers. They didn’t care about the pay or the benefits. They wanted it for whatever reasons they had, but it meant a lot to them. As the years went by, you started getting less and less ex-servicemen, so things got questioned more. Your officers now, they’re better educated than we were.

But the big difference is that with my era, it wasn’t a job, it was something that we were proud of, something we wanted with our heart and soul. Now what you get is this: It’s good pay, good benefits, and it beats doing whatever it was they were doing, and so they decide to become Los Angeles Police Department officers. To a lot of people coming on today, it’s just a job. You put in eight hours. You respond to the radio, do everything you have to do. But it’s hear, see and speak no evil. If I just pay attention to the radio and I don’t stop people on the streets because here’s maybe a guy selling narcotics, then I’m not going to get any kind of complaint or anything, so therefore I’m going to put in my time, do what I have to do. As far taking pride in making arrests and doing all of the other things go, that has changed.