Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing (52 page)

Increasingly, the answers to these and dozens of other similar questions are out there—the data is in, the pilot projects are done, and enough is known to start a true transformation of a notoriously risk-averse, blindly resistant police establishment whose leaders mostly think alike and reinforce one another’s prejudices and often willful ignorance.

Those answers are coming not just from criminologists and the relatively few thoughtful, committed reformers within the criminal justice system. They’re coming as well from behavioral and social scientists, from anthropologists, from public health experts, from neuroscientists and experts in pre- and postnatal care—from disciplines that are exploding with new revelations and information almost daily. If applied correctly and over a long term, this information could almost certainly dramatically scale back both crime and the millions of broken, impoverished lives we help produce and then imprison for decades in numbers so much higher than those of any other industrial nation that it boggles the mind.

The title of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essay is “The Myth of Police Reform.” In it, he concludes by pointing out that “a reform that begins with the officer on the beat is
not reform at all.” He’s right. American society is now in a major crisis centered on our deeply corrupted politics and institutions and propelled by our New Gilded Age disdain for and dehumanization of the poor and powerless. There’s no denying it, because it’s undeniable. Nevertheless, you have to start somewhere in a multifront struggle, and American policing is a good place to begin.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’ve been writing about the LAPD for over twenty-five years, and this book—my second about the department—is the culmination of what I’ve learned.

During those years I accrued an enormous debt to scores of L.A. police-beat reporters, first at the long-defunct
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
and then for decades at the
Los Angeles Times.
Their methodical work of daily holding the LAPD accountable (when L.A.’s politicians didn’t dare) has enormously enriched my own reporting, both in the writing of
Blue
and in my earlier, character-driven narrative history of the LAPD,
To Protect and to Serve.

Much of
Blue
is based on historical research, interviews, and other original reporting I did exclusively for this book, but some is based on my original reporting for other publications over the decades, including
To Protect and to Serve.
Some passages from that book and from my previously published material have been rewritten and integrated into
Blue
, and on several occasions I’ve included them verbatim, or nearly verbatim.

Among the L.A. reporters who covered the LAPD, I’d particularly like to thank the fearless David Cay Johnston, Bill Boyarsky, Tim Rutten, Joel Rubin, Scott Glover, Matt Lait, Richard Winton, Andrew Blanstein, Joel Sappel, Wayne Satz, Lennie LaGuire, and Mark S. Warnick. I’m also indebted to Kit Rachlis, my editor at both the
LA Weekly
and
Los Angeles
magazine, and to Gary Speaker, my longtime op-ed editor at the
Los Angeles Times.

Much of
Blue
is about cops and police leadership, and many LAPD officers—past and present—have been extremely generous in helping me understand how and why big-city police organizations—and particularly the LAPD—function as they do.

Over the years no police officer has been more helpful than former LAPD assistant chief David Dotson, who had the audacity to buck the
omertà
that
saturates cop culture and critically testify against his department at the 1991 Christopher Commission hearings, earning himself a forced retirement for his trouble.

For the writing of
Blue
, however, I’d particularly like to thank LAPD chief Charlie Beck for his generous time, and for teaching me what it was like to be him as a street cop operating in hostile territory and as he rose through the ranks to become chief.

Bill Bratton—who is second only to the LAPD as a character in
Blue
—was also a key source for this book. The detailed interviews I conducted with him and his wife, Rikki Klieman, were invaluable in writing about the Bratton eras in Los Angeles and New York.

Similarly, Alfred Lomas, Andre “Low Down” Christian, and Ron Noblet were essential to the writing of
Blue.
Ron was key in helping me understand L.A. gangs and in introducing me to Alfred and Andre—who in turn were extraordinarily generous in sharing their life stories as a framework to tell the larger tale of Los Angeles gang life in the era of crack wars and record homicides.

Over the years I’ve spoken with so many cops it’s impossible to mention them all. For the writing of this book, however, I particularly want to thank Sergeant Curtis Woodle, former LAPD assistant chief George Gascon, Deputy Chiefs Pat Gannon and Michael Berkow, and, going back to the 1990s, Chief Willie Williams, Officer Ray Perez, the late Assistant Chief Jesse A. Brewer, and Brien Chapman.

The same holds true of all the non-cops I spoke with who worked within and around the department. Especially helpful were Connie Rice, Peter Bibring, Mike Yamaki, Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, Gerald Chaleff, Anthony De Los Reyes, Johnnie Cochran, Jack Weiss, Katherine Mader, Ann Reiss Lane, Steve Cooley, and Merrick Bobb—a man of astounding grit and courage and a pioneer in monitoring law enforcement organizations, who taught me how to view police departments as living, breathing institutions.

Over the years it took me to write
Blue
I was fortunate to be working at John Jay College’s Center on Media Crime and Justice and on the Center’s daily Criminal Justice news site,
The Crime Report
(
TCR
). My friends and colleagues there—Ted Guest, Cara Tabachnick, Ricardo Martinez, Graham Kates, and Katti Gray—were a joy to work with and learn from. This was especially true of the center’s director and
TCR
’s executive editor, Steve Handelman, an award-winning former foreign correspondent who, as the soul of both our center and
TCR
, has kept our small crew always striving for excellence.

At Simon & Schuster, there a lot of people to thank: Roger Labrie, who bought my book; Karyn Marcus, who as my editor championed
Blue
and always gave me sage advice; Emily Graff, a young editor who picked up where Karyn left off, and with great skill and tact successfully completed the editing of this book, despite having to work with an often crotchety old journalist; and S&S’s attorney Eric Rayman, who vetted this book. I also grew to deeply respect S&S’s publisher, Jonathan Karp, who on a number of occasions personally assured me of his support for
Blue
, and then kept his word.

Additionally, I’m deeply indebted to the extraordinary Emily Maleki, who, in the midst of giving birth to and then raising twins, never once faulted in her expert researching, fact-checking, and manuscript preparation for
Blue;
to Dr. Benjamin Bloxham; and to the late A. J. (Jack) Langguth—not only for his suggestions in the writing of
Blue
but also for his friendship and mentoring for over thirty years.

Finally, I’m most grateful to my wonderful family: Judy Tanka, Andrea Domanick, Ashley Hendra, Teresa Tanka, Carol Domanick, David Deitch, Anthony Domanick, Cynthia Domanick, and Jason and Avram Deitch.

ANDREA DOMANICK

JOE DOMANICK
is an award-winning investigative journalist and author and an associate director of John Jay College’s Center on Media, Crime, and Justice, City University of New York. His first book,
Faking It In America
, was optioned for film by New Line Cinema; his second book,
To Protect and To Serve
, won the 1995 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book; his third book,
Cruel Justice
, was selected as one of the Best Books of 2004 by the
San Francisco Chronicle
. He lives in Los Angeles.

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

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Also by Joe Domanick

Cruel Justice:

Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State

To Protect and To Serve:

The LAPD’s Century of War in the City of Dreams

Faking It in America:

Barry Minkow and the Great ZZZZ Best Scam

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NOTES

Abbreviations

AP:
Associated Press

CNS:
City News Service

LADN
:
Los Angeles Daily News

LAHE
:
Los Angeles Herald Examiner

LAT
:
Los Angeles Times

NPR:
National Public Radio

NYDN
:
New York Daily News

NYT
:
New York Times

PRI:
Public Radio International

SCPR:
Southern California Public Radio

UPI:
United Press International

WSJ
:
Wall Street Journal

PART ONE: SOMETHING OLD

Alfred Lomas, Wednesday, April 29, 1992

sitting in a Florencia 13 crack house
: Alfred Lomas interview.

Reginald Denny beating
: Hazen, ed.,
Inside the L.A. Riots
, 50; “The Untold Story of the LA Riot,”
U.S. News & World Report
, May 23, 1993;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 49; “Fit Punishment for the L.A. Mayhem,”
NYT
, December 9, 1993; “Bad Cops,”
New Yorker
, May 21, 2001.

fifty-six times in eighty-one seconds
: “Juror Says Panel Felt King Actions Were to Blame,”
LAT
, April 30, 1992; “The Police Verdict; Los Angeles Policemen Acquitted in Taped Beating,”
NYT
, April 30, 1992; “National Guard Called to Stem Violence After L.A. Officers’ Acquittal in Beating,”
Washington Post
, April 30, 1992;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 33. Various accounts of the length of the beating have been given, ranging from eight-one to ninety seconds, depending on the point at which the action on Holliday’s tape becomes discernible.

Monadnock PR-24 batons
: “Training: A Casualty on the Street,”
LAT
, March 18, 1991; “Friend Relives Night of Police Beating,”
NYT
, March 21, 1991; “Police Get a Handle on New Stick,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, January 26, 1992.

[
LAPD
]
officers . . . acquitted of all ten accounts against them but one
:
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 6.

Rodney King beating/injuries
: “The Man Swept Up in the Furor: Friends, Family Say King Was Sometimes Lost but Never Violent,”
LAT
, March 17, 1991; “Tape Forever Ties Victim to Beating,”
NYT
, March 20, 1991;
Los Angeles Times
,
Understanding the Riots
, 33.