From King to Obama:Witness to a Turbulent History by Hutchinson Earl

Author:Hutchinson, Earl [Hutchinson, Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Manuscript Template
Publisher: Middle Passage Press
Published: 2015-02-06T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8 - The Fire This Time

The on-set camera crew and sound technicians had long since departed from the sound stage at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles and the lights had dimmed. But we sat there for a short time afterward engaging in bare knuckles, heated debate. This was February, 1995. My at one moment fierce opponent and at another moment jovial associate was former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates. We were co-commentators for the station during the O.J. Simpson trial. On and off the set, we went at it on everything from the Rodney King beating, the LA riots, the LAPD’s war on gang and drug violence, police misconduct and shootings, and of course, the Simpson trial.

These were the issues that tore Los Angeles for a decade before. They did more to poison relations between the LAPD and minority communities, especially African Americans, than any other. Our debates were so intense that we continued the battle of words as we walked to our cars in the parking lot. After a while this became a routine, we’d spar on the set, and continue sparring as we walked to our cars.

There were moments when Gates would sigh in exasperation that I and other critics just didn’t understand what he had to face running a department that was under resourced, got little political and public support, and yet was expected to be a kinder, gentler department while battling a spiraling gang, drug and violence problem. I listened to his heart-felt pleas that he sincerely tried to make change, even reform. He repeatedly cited the number of officers that he disciplined and terminated for misconduct and other offenses, but said that his hands were tied by city officials, the police union, and the public who wanted more and tougher policing and were loath to see officers removed. He cited the community policing programs that he tried to put in place. Yet, he pleaded, nothing he did seemed to matter. He and the LAPD were still relentlessly maligned.

This was no play act or parking lot revisionism of his LAPD role to convince me that underneath the tough cop’s cop exterior he was a marshmallow soft reformer. Gates passionately believed that he had done the best that he could against the odds to move the LAPD into the modern era. As we parted, I always wondered which Daryl Gates I was talking too, the maligned, misunderstood reformer, or the chief whose name was synonymous with a department that in the decade immediately preceding the King beating and the riots, had become the nation’s poster police agent for a dysfunctional, brutal, racist, shoot-first, police department.

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