Appointing former New York City Police Commissioner William
Bratton as the new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department may
strike fear into the hearts of local criminals, but that
doesn’t mean Los Angeles residents will be sleeping
soundly.
Bratton had such a strong record of reducing crime in New York
it fueled a national rethinking of the way police deal with crime.
Previously, crime experts and police focused on such factors as
drug use and socio-economic factors when trying to explain
deeply-ingrained crime in certain communities, but they never
really considered what effect a strong police force could have on
city crime rates, independent of these factors.
What concerns some L.A. leaders are the well-known rumors in New
York that racial profiling and overagressiveness were components to
Bratton’s successful police force ““ components the LAPD
has had too much of recently.
The public, especially in minority communities, largely
distrusts the LAPD due to widely publicized police beatings and
reports of racial profiling ““ not to mention the Rampart
Scandal. For the LAPD to be successful, the residents must trust
them. This might be difficult since Bratton will be seen as an
outsider, and because a local Latino candidate with LAPD experience
was turned down.
It would be great to see the crime rate in Los Angeles plummet
as sharply as New York’s did during Bratton’s time, but
Bratton needs to be as tough on his officers’ conduct as he
is on crime if the culture of distrusting police in Los Angeles is
to be abated as well.