L.A. Noir Part 16

Remarkably, no one had died during the first two days of rioting in Watts. That changed Friday night. Sometime between six and seven, the first resident of Watts died, an African American caught in the crossfire between police and looters. He would not be the last.

Friday night brought something no American city had ever seen before: a full-scale urban war, one in which firemen and ambulances were fair game. Snipers repeatedly opened fire on the hundred-odd engine companies that were fighting fires in the area. That night, a fireman was crushed and killed by a falling wall. As the shooting intensified, the dying began. At six thirty, twenty-one-year-old Leon Watson was gunned down, standing outside a barbershop. Two hours later, a deputy sheriff was fatally shot with his own gun while struggling with three suspects. The killing came quickly now. One hour later an unarmed Watts resident was killed by police outside a liquor store. Three unarmed companions were wounded. The next civilian died three minutes later. The next, two minutes after that. And so it went. The streets of Watts were washed with blood.

Desperate to restore order, police officers and sheriff's department deputies joined with more than a thousand Guardsmen, on foot, to sweep the streets. By 3 a.m., some 3,300 Guardsmen had been deployed. Yet still the violence raged. Throughout the night, hundreds of reports of snipers firing on the police were called into the 77th Street station. Not until the following evening, when Lieutenant Governor Anderson imposed an eight o'clock curfew on a forty-six-square-mile area of South Los Angeles and more than 13,000 National Guardsmen had deployed, was order restored. That Sunday, Chief Parker reappeared on the airwaves. His presence was not helpful. An attempt to a.s.sert that authorities had regained control-"Now we're on top and they're on the bottom"-was misinterpreted by many as an endors.e.m.e.nt of white supremacy. Not until Tuesday morning was the curfew lifted. More than a thousand people had been wounded and treated in area hospitals. Thirty-four people had died during the rioting. Nearly four thousand people had been arrested. Six hundred buildings had been damaged by looting and fire, primarily grocery stores, liquor stores, furniture shops, clothing stores, and p.a.w.nshops (which seem to have been targeted primarily as repositories for guns). Some 261 buildings were totally destroyed. But as the fires died down, a new conflict flared up. At issue was the question of who was to blame.

TO GROUPS like the NAACP, the ACLU, SNCC, and others on the left, responsibility clearly rested with Chief Parker, Sam Yorty, and the Los Angeles power structure. Community organizer Saul Alinksy recommended that both Parker and Cardinal McIntyre-"that unchristian, prehistoric muttonhead"-be removed. As the embers of Watts still burned, Dr. Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles, where he criticized the Parker/Yorty administration and described the riots as "a sort of blind and misguided revolt against the nation and authority."* King's critical yet conciliatory comments were not welcomed. Governor Brown described King's visit as "untimely." African American Angelenos were hardly more welcoming. At a meeting in Westminster, he was heckled by the predominantly black crowd. One member of the crowd stood up and said that the community needed "people like Parker and Yorty down here-not Dr. King. They're the ones responsible for what's going on." King's critical yet conciliatory comments were not welcomed. Governor Brown described King's visit as "untimely." African American Angelenos were hardly more welcoming. At a meeting in Westminster, he was heckled by the predominantly black crowd. One member of the crowd stood up and said that the community needed "people like Parker and Yorty down here-not Dr. King. They're the ones responsible for what's going on."

King agreed and promised to do everything he could to get the mayor and the police chief to attend a meeting, adding, "I know you will be courteous to them." The crowd laughed. Neither Yorty nor Parker had set foot in Watts since the riots.

Still, King tried to follow through on his promise. Mayor Yorty was not receptive. In a closed-door meeting, Yorty excoriated the civil rights leader for daring to mention "lawlessness, killing, looting, and burning in the same context as our police department." He also rejected the idea of a civilian police review board. King left Los Angeles shaken by white obstinacy and by the rise of a new black militancy.

To Mayor Sam Yorty and Chief Parker, the cause of the riots was clear-and had nothing to do with King's psychological mumbo jumbo. The quick spread of Molotov c.o.c.ktails, the inflammatory printed handbills that appeared in Watts on Thursday, the reports of men addressing the crowds with bullhorns, the movements of youths in cars through areas of great destruction-Parker felt like everything pointed to the involvement of the Communist Party, the Black Muslims, or both. Parker did not believe that radicals had started the violence; he did believe that they had moved into a chaotic situation and made it immeasurably worse. His department, with its vaunted intelligence apparatus, had not failed. Instead, they had engaged with a deadly foe. Even as the violence on the street wound down, the LAPD prepared to hit back.

At 2 a.m. on the morning of August 18, just days after the violence had finally subsided, the LAPD launched an all-out attack on what it saw as the epicenter of the violence-the Muslim Temple at 5606 South Broadway, headquarters for the Los Angeles chapter of the Nation of Islam. The ostensible cause of the raid was an early-morning anonymous phone call to Newton Division, claiming that the Black Muslims were stockpiling weapons. As the police were breaking down the door, they came under fire-or so they later claimed. Officers later explained that "pellets" had started "pounding" their cars. So the police opened fire. In all, somewhere between five hundred and a thousand rounds of ammunition slammed into the two-story stucco structure. Eventually, the occupants of the Temple signaled that they were ready to surrender. Fifty-nine Nation of Islam members were arrested. No guns were found. Three weeks later, a judge blamed the incident on the LAPD's "imagination" and dismissed charges against the nineteen men charged with felony offenses. When African American councilman Billy Mills demanded that Parker come before the council to explain the raid, Parker refused, saying, "I suggest he read the City Charter and find out what his powers and limitations are."

The following day, the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times noted with evident satisfaction that the "taboo" on white men entering the Temple "had been broken." The paper further reported that while no guns had been found, the temple was full of seditious literature, including hundreds of leaflets that provocatively read, "Stop Police Brutality." Police actions only bolstered the Black Muslims' standing. Soon thereafter, Marquette Frye, the young man whose stop had sparked the Watts riots, joined the Nation of Islam. noted with evident satisfaction that the "taboo" on white men entering the Temple "had been broken." The paper further reported that while no guns had been found, the temple was full of seditious literature, including hundreds of leaflets that provocatively read, "Stop Police Brutality." Police actions only bolstered the Black Muslims' standing. Soon thereafter, Marquette Frye, the young man whose stop had sparked the Watts riots, joined the Nation of Islam.

THE STREETS of Watts weren't the only place where the LAPD went on the offensive. During the riots, the ailing chief had at times withdrawn from command decisions. However, he had kept up a busy schedule of television appearances, during which he forcefully criticized the rioters and defended the department. Now that the riots were over, Parker was ferocious in defending his men's performance and his own legacy. Instead of sulking or hiding, he launched a media blitz.

Watts was not a failure of the department, the chief insisted. What had happened was a bad Highway Patrol stop on a hot day that gave the Communist Party and its allies the opening they had long hoped for. It did not matter that the men with the bullhorns were later identified as members of local community groups or that the cars moving with suspicious ease through the combat zone almost certainly contained gang members, not Communist Party organizers. The LAPD had not failed. Nor had Chief William Parker. He had not missed black Los Angeles's anger and alienation. On the contrary, Chief Parker maintained that Watts had proved him right.

As evidence of a large conspiracy failed to turn up, Chief Parker turned to another explanation-one that emphasized black migration, the civil rights movement, and ma.s.s psychology. He was not shy about making his case. "A great deal of the courage of these rioters was based on the continuous attacks of civil rights organizations on the police," declared Parker on CBS Reports CBS Reports later that month. later that month.

"They're attempting to reach these groups ... by catering to their emotions," declared Parker (an emotional man who had no patience for that quality in others). "'You're dislocated, you're abandoned; you're abused due to color,'" Parker continued, mimicking and mocking the att.i.tudes of civil rights supporters. The civil rights movement had unleashed the virus of civil disobedience-the belief that people "don't have to obey the law because the law is unjust." At the same time, a huge surge of black migration had "flooded a community that wasn't prepared to meet them." (Parker didn't hide his own feelings about the matter: "We didn't want these people to come in," he told the panel.)* Both factors laid the foundations for the uprising. One thing was for certain: The LAPD was not to blame. Both factors laid the foundations for the uprising. One thing was for certain: The LAPD was not to blame.

"I think we are almost s.a.d.i.s.tic in the way we're trying to punish ourselves over this thing without realizing what we have destroyed is a sense of responsibility for our own actions," continued Chief Parker. "We have developed a shallow materialist society where everyone is a victim of their environment and are therefore not to be blamed for anything.... If you want to continue to live in that society, good luck to you."

On August 29, Parker appeared on Meet the Press Meet the Press, the most respected of the Sunday news shows. There he faced off against host Lawrence Spivak and journalists from NBC News, Time Time, and the Washington Post Washington Post. The questioning was polite-Parker was introduced as the most respected law enforcement officer in the United States, after J. Edgar Hoover-but pointed. Parker was asked about the causes of the riots, the lack of black officers on the force, and the persistent allegations of police abuse against minorities. His responses were unyielding. The rioting was sparked by a botched arrest by the California Highway Patrol. The LAPD had only a handful of Negro lieutenants because it was hard to find qualified Negroes willing to work in such an underpaid, underappreciated profession. Isolated verbal abuse of minorities was perhaps a problem, but so was the fact that eight hundred of his officers had been physically a.s.saulted in the performance of their duties during the course of the previous year.

The response to these appearances was overwhelmingly positive. Parker claimed that in the weeks following the riots and his media appearances, he received 125,000 telegrams and letters-"ninety-nine percent of them favorable." The city council, the American Legion, the Downtown Businessmen's a.s.sociation-virtually every major interest group in the city rushed to proclaim its admiration for Los Angeles's indispensable chief of police.

CALIFORNIA Governor Pat Brown begged to differ. By 1965, Brown was an old foe of Parker's, having clashed repeatedly with him over wiretaps, capital punishment, and other criminal justice issues. Brown suspected that frustration over discrimination and high unemployment was behind the riots, not Communist agitators or some spreading malaise of lawlessness. On August 19, he appointed an independent commission, the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, headed by former director of Central Intelligence John McCone, to examine the cause and course of the riots. Brown charged the commission with delivering a thorough report as quickly as possible. The commission heard directly from more than seventy-nine witnesses; its staff interviewed hundreds of people, including ninety arrested during the riots. Twenty-six consult ants queried another ten thousand people.

The testimony of many of the African Americans who appeared before the commission and Chief Parker, Police Commission president John Ferraro, and Mayor Yorty was strikingly at odds. Witnesses such as councilman Tom Bradley and state a.s.semblyman Mervyn Dymally expressed some sympathy for the plight of law enforcement officers attempting to patrol a dangerous ghetto. Yet they also insisted that the LAPD was both too slow to enforce the law in black neighborhoods and, when it did act, too often did so disrespectfully-sometimes even brutally. Negroes, testified a.s.semblyman Dymally, "generally expected the worst from police and got it."

Parker, Ferraro, and Yorty rejected this critique. In his testimony before the McCone Commission on September 17, Parker put forward his a.n.a.lysis of what had happened-to a strikingly sympathetic audience. According to Chief Parker, Watts reflected the general decline of law and order throughout the United States. Parker's rambling testimony, with its strange third-person references to himself (e.g., Negro leaders "seem to think that if Parker can be destroyed officially, then they will have no more trouble in imposing their will upon the police of America ... because n.o.body else will dare stand up" to them) would later be described by the historian Robert Fogelson as "bordering on the paranoid." But McCone and most white Angelenos found it perfectly reasonable.

Civil rights leaders attacked Parker for provocative comments, particularly his "we're on top and they're on bottom" statement. Critics interpreted this as an endors.e.m.e.nt of the status quo. It was possible that Parker's remarks in that particular instance were simply descriptive. But there is no mistaking the drift of Chief Parker's comments. Despite his earlier experiences as a Catholic in an aggressively Protestant city, Parker had never been sympathetic to the civil rights movement. Its embrace of civil disobedience horrified him. He did not see the history of hundreds of years of legal oppression. He did not see the horrifying indignities that African Americans in his own department such as Vivian Strange or Tom Bradley (who once dressed up as a workman in order to go look at a house in a majority-white neighborhood he was considering buying so as not to draw unwanted attention) routinely faced. This was a tragic failure of empathy for the chief of a great African American city.

Yet for many years, Parker's comments on race had a certain balance: He criticized civil disobedience but also disdained the "pseudoscience" of racism. He foresaw a time when "a.s.similation" would remove racial conflicts. But as the 1960s progressed, any sense of balance fell away. Bill Parker had denied that blacks in Los Angeles experienced racism in any significant way. Now he actively played on white fears of black and brown violence to rally support for the police department.

"It is estimated that by 1970," he told viewers of ABC's Newsmaker Newsmaker program on August 14, "forty-five percent of the metropolitan area will be Negro; that excludes the San Fernando Valley.... If you want any protection for your home and family, you're going to have to get in and support a strong police department. If you don't, come 1970, G.o.d help you!" program on August 14, "forty-five percent of the metropolitan area will be Negro; that excludes the San Fernando Valley.... If you want any protection for your home and family, you're going to have to get in and support a strong police department. If you don't, come 1970, G.o.d help you!"

Given such comments, it is hardly surprising that Chief Parker's relationship with his critics did not improve. Back in Los Angeles at a city council meeting in September, Councilman Bradley attempted to pin down Parker on the "shadowy organization" that Parker constantly (albeit elliptically) referred to in his talks about the Watts riots.

"Can you identify the organization?" Bradley asked the chief.

"I have my suspicions," replied Parker. Then he turned the question around on Bradley. "Perhaps you can. You're closer to those people."

PARKER'S combative appearances belied his fragile health. That October, he returned to the Mayo Clinic, this time for heart surgery. In his absence, the department took a few small steps toward a less combative posture, a.s.signing African American lieutenants to five critical divisions (Public Information, Newton, 77th Street, University, and Wilshire) to serve as community relations officers. But when rumors began to circulate that Parker might be about to retire, Yorty urged him to return to the job.

On December 2, 1965, the day before Parker was scheduled to return to Los Angeles, the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, which was known simply as the McCone Commission, issued its report. Written largely by commission vice chairman Warren Christopher, it attempted to tack between the two camps. The rioting was dismissed as the handiwork of a disgruntled few, not a ma.s.s uprising driven by legitimate concerns. As to whether the LAPD's style of policing was to blame for the outbreak of violence, the McCone Commission report was coy. It reported "evidences [of] a deep and longstanding schism between a substantial portion of the Negro community and the Police Department," and mentioned the frequent complaints of "police brutality" (a phrase the report placed in prophylactic quotation marks, lest the commission be accused of confirming that such things occurred). The report also noted that "generally speaking, the Negro community does not harbor the same angry feeling toward the Sheriff or his staff as it does toward the Los Angeles police." Indeed, the McCone Commission correctly observed that "Chief of Police Parker appears to be the focal point of the criticism within the Negro community."

"He is a man distrusted by most Negroes," the report continued. "Many Negroes feel that he carries a deep hatred of the Negro community."

But the commission raised these issues only to dismiss them. "Chief Parker's statements to us and collateral evidence such as his record of fairness to Negro officers are inconsistent with his having such an att.i.tude," the commission declared. "Despite the depth of feeling against Chief Parker ... he is recognized, even by many of his most vocal critics, as a capable Chief who directs an efficient police force that serves well this entire community." This, of course, was precisely the proposition that many African Americans rejected. Christopher concluded the section on the policing with the Parkeresque declaration: "Our society is held together by respect for law." The police, it continued, were "the thin thread" that bound our society together. "If police authority is destroyed... chaos might easily result." The commission also echoed Parker's rhetoric about the civil rights movement: "Throughout the nation unpunished violence and disobedience to law were widely reported and almost daily there were exhortations here and elsewhere to take the most extreme and illegal remedies to right a wide variety of wrongs, real and supposed."

The report's criticism of the Police Commission was more pointed. It noted, with wonder, that "no one, not a single witness, has criticized the Board for the conduct of the police, although the Board is the final authority in such matters. We interpret this as evidence that the Board of Police Commissioners is not visibly exercising authority over the Department vested in it by the City Charter." Yet the commission's recommendations-that the Police Commission meet more frequently, request more staff, and get more involved, were strikingly naive. The Police Commission's powerlessness was not simply a matter of its occasional meetings and limited resources. It also reflected a deliberate, decade-long strategy by Chief Parker to a.s.sert the prerogatives of the professional policeman over those of the casually involved citizen. A mere exhortation was hardly an effective remedy against as skilled a politician as Bill Parker.

To many on the left, the McCone Commission's report was a bitter disappointment. A January 1966 a.s.sessment by the California advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights criticized the report for ignoring warnings, such as the one sounded by a.s.sistant attorney general Howard Jewell, that the bitter conflict between Parker and civil rights leaders might well lead to riots. But to Parker, even mild criticism smacked of a personal attack.

Back on the job after a six-week period of rest and recuperation, he responded with characteristic bluntness.

"I think they're afraid I'm going to run for governor," Parker told the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times. "[T]his is just a political attack on me in an attempt to use the Police Department as a scapegoat and to repeat the completely false charge that the Police Department caused the rioting."

In fact, it was Mayor Yorty who was planning to run for governor against Pat Brown-as a law-and-order conservative. Not surprisingly, Yorty backed Parker's response to Watts 100 percent. Politically, Parker had become a potent symbol of law and order. Personally, Yorty worried about Parker's health. On December 16, Yorty wrote to the Police Commission to propose appointing a civilian police administrator to a.s.sist Parker in his job. Nothing came of the idea.

Forced to choose between Chief Parker and his critics, L.A.'s elected politicians went with the police. In March 1966, the city council voted to commend commend Chief Parker for his management of the department and the "pattern of realistic human relations" he had established with the city's African American community. Only three members of the council, Tom Bradley, Gilbert Lindsay, and Billy Mills, voted against this curiously worded expression of support. Chief Parker for his management of the department and the "pattern of realistic human relations" he had established with the city's African American community. Only three members of the council, Tom Bradley, Gilbert Lindsay, and Billy Mills, voted against this curiously worded expression of support.

Parker's popularity dissuaded the city's elected officials from criticizing him directly. "It's most plausible that Chief Parker is the most powerful man in Los Angeles," mused Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler to a publisher Otis Chandler to a Washington Post Washington Post reporter that summer. "He is the white community's savior, their symbol of security." reporter that summer. "He is the white community's savior, their symbol of security."

Privately, however, many recognized that Parker was the major obstacle to improved race relations in the city. On March 4, 1966, an FBI agent who'd attended a special panel on Watts at the National a.s.sociation of District Attorneys in Tucson reported on his conversation with L.A. district attorney Evelle Younger and Judge Earl Broady, a member of the McCone Commission and an African American. Both Younger and Broady described Parker's "ingrained action [sic] [sic] against Negroes" as "the major stumbling block to any problem of effective community relations." Younger also identified the LAPD's failure to recognize or promote black officers as a major problem. Both men said that they believed Parker would have resigned by now if not for demands from civil rights groups such as the Congress of Racial Equality that he step down. (Parker didn't want to lose face.) Younger also confided that Chief Parker was a very sick man. Less than a week later, Parker was hospitalized for "a temporary cardiac incapacity." Not until June 1 was Parker able to resume command of the department. against Negroes" as "the major stumbling block to any problem of effective community relations." Younger also identified the LAPD's failure to recognize or promote black officers as a major problem. Both men said that they believed Parker would have resigned by now if not for demands from civil rights groups such as the Congress of Racial Equality that he step down. (Parker didn't want to lose face.) Younger also confided that Chief Parker was a very sick man. Less than a week later, Parker was hospitalized for "a temporary cardiac incapacity." Not until June 1 was Parker able to resume command of the department.

On July 5, 1966, Chief Parker sent a memorandum to the city council that represented a serious attempt to come to terms with the city's public safety needs. In it, Parker returned to one of his favorite themes: the need to increase the size of the LAPD. The memo noted that in October 1965, L.A.'s ratio of police officers per thousand residents had fallen to a mere 1.87-little more than half of New York's 3.31 officers per thousand. Yet while L.A.'s population had risen 17 percent since 1958 (and serious crime had risen 47 percent), the size of the police department had actually fallen. One table comparing the number of police per 1,000 residents in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles made a powerful case for Parker's argument that Los Angeles had made a disastrous decision to underinvest in its police force: The memo concluded by noting that "if the recommended [police] manpower rate for 1958 were projected to a police-officer-per-thousand ratio in 1965, Los Angeles would need 11,010 police officers"-double the size of the current force. As for the chances of this happening, even Parker considered the idea "academic." Thanks to his insistence on high standards (of a certain sort), the LAPD couldn't even fill the much smaller number of positions that were currently available. But Parker's fundamental a.n.a.lysis was almost certainly correct. Los Angeles was underpoliced-criminally so. It still is.

On the evening of July 16, 1966, Bill Parker went to a banquet at the Statler Hilton Hotel to receive an award from the Second Marine Division, which was celebrating its seventeenth annual reunion. He received a plaque citing him as one of the nation's foremost police chiefs. After a few brief remarks, he walked back to his table, where Helen was sitting, while a thousand Marine Corps veterans gave him a standing ovation. He sat down, then, suddenly, he leaned back and started gasping for air. Slowly he crumpled to the floor. His heart had finally failed him. After almost thirty-nine years on the force, Chief William H. Parker was dead. He was sixty-one years old.

The public responded to Parker's death with an outpouring of grief. Mayor Yorty declared himself to be "shocked and heart-broken."

"Los Angeles and America will sadly miss our courageous and beloved Police Chief Parker," Yorty declared. "He was a monument of strength against the criminal elements."

Governor Pat Brown (a frequent Parker antagonist) praised the chief for his "courageous commitment to the rule of law." Even adversaries such as A. L. Wirin had admiring words. Although they had "disagreed sharply on most subjects," the civil liberties attorney declared, "I have admired him throughout the years as an efficient and dedicated police officer."

Said councilman Tom Bradley, "I regret the death of a man who did much to change the image and practices of the police department, although he often spoke from emotion without considering the effect of his words."

Only Thomas Kilgore, the western representative for Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, seemed willing to dissent: "His death will be a loss in the sense he put together a strong, disciplined police force. But I think his death will be a relief to the minority community, who believe he woefully misunderstood the social revolution taking place."

At the funeral home, Parker's casket was given a twenty-four-hour police honor guard. The day before the funeral, Parker's body was brought to the City Hall rotunda to lie in state. More than three thousand mourners came to pay their respects and view Parker's body. The funeral itself was scheduled for 10 a.m. the following day at St. Vibiana's cathedral. Police and church officials alike were caught off guard by the ma.s.sive turnout. Thousands of Angelenos-including Gov. Pat Brown, Republican gubernatorial nominee Ronald Reagan, and Mayor Sam Yorty-and police chiefs from sixty cities filled the cathedral for the requiem high ma.s.s, with Cardinal James Francis McIntyre as the officiant. Another 1,500 people lined Main Street to listen to the ma.s.s on loudspeakers and, afterward, to observe the hea.r.s.e carrying Parker's body, escorted by 150 LAPD motorcycle officers. The funeral procession to Parker's grave site at the San Fernando Mission Cemetery was seven miles long. There, a military honor guard buried Chief Parker with full honors while the American Legion Police Post 381 band played "Hail to the Chief" as the casket was moved to the grave site. Taps was played, a rifle volley fired, and then Chief Parker was lowered into the earth.

* In November 13, 1965, In November 13, 1965, Sat.u.r.day Review Sat.u.r.day Review article, King offered the following explanation of why rioting had broken out in Los Angeles: "Los Angeles could have expected riots because it is the luminous symbol of luxurious living for whites. Watts is closer to it and yet further from it than any other Negro community in the country. The looting in Watts was a form of social protest very common through the ages as a dramatic and destructive gesture of the poor toward symbols of their needs." article, King offered the following explanation of why rioting had broken out in Los Angeles: "Los Angeles could have expected riots because it is the luminous symbol of luxurious living for whites. Watts is closer to it and yet further from it than any other Negro community in the country. The looting in Watts was a form of social protest very common through the ages as a dramatic and destructive gesture of the poor toward symbols of their needs."* During the same interview, Parker also made it clear that "less than one percent" of L.A. County's 600,000 African American residents were involved in the violence. During the same interview, Parker also made it clear that "less than one percent" of L.A. County's 600,000 African American residents were involved in the violence.

28.

R.I.P.

"I don't want to be rude, but I got to beg off this thing."-Mickey Cohen.

WILLIAM PARKER was dead, but the system he had created lived on.

On July 18, Parker's old rival, chief of detectives Thad Brown, was sworn in as chief of police. This time, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was quick to convey his congratulations. The new chief responded in the proper fashion. ("It is encouraging to know that I may rely upon your confidence and support in the great task that lies ahead," gushed Brown in reply.) But Thad Brown was only an interim chief. From the beginning, he made it clear that he would not take part in the civil service examination that would select the next permanent chief of police.

During his life, Parker had made no secret of who he thought the next chief should be. "Meet Gates," he'd tell other (more senior) officers in the department. "This officer is going to be chief someday." But a few months before his death, Parker had confided to his young protege his doubts that this would come to pa.s.s.

"I've always thought you would be the next chief, but if I have to leave now, you're too young," he told Gates. "You don't even have your twenty years in."

"What difference does that make?" Gates asked.

"You can't afford to take this job unless you have twenty years, and you have your retirement benefits. Because if something happens, if you're forced to resign, you wouldn't want to stay at a lower rank. So you'd leave and you wouldn't have anything," Parker replied. Parker died when Gates had been on the force for nineteen years. Nonetheless, after Parker's death when the civil service exam for a new chief was held, Gates took the test, as an inspector. But the top score-and the position of chief-went instead to Gates's old instructor at the Police Academy, Tom Reddin. One of Reddin's first actions was to request the intelligence file on himself.

"The notions in it," he later recalled, "were almost laughable, and most of them were wrong." But this did not lead Reddin to disband the intelligence unit. Instead, he expanded its operations further. Even the department's oldest friends fell within its purview, including the former attorney general of the United States, Robert Kennedy.

IN EARLY 1968, Robert Kennedy began a last-minute campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. On June 5, Kennedy scored a huge win over front-runner Eugene McCarthy in the California Democratic primary. The celebration party was held at the Amba.s.sador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard.

In 1960, the LAPD had provided security to John F. Kennedy during the Democratic convention. (Secret Service protection was not then offered to candidates before they became the nominee.) The LAPD would normally have provided security at the Amba.s.sador. However, Kennedy's staff wanted no police officers to be visible. Just two months earlier, Dr. Martin Luther King had been a.s.sa.s.sinated in Memphis. The presence of uniformed officers at the Amba.s.sador was seen as simply too provocative. Instead they relied solely on former FBI agent William Barry and two professional athletes he employed.

"Kennedy's people were adamant, if not abusive, in their demands that the police not even come close to the senator while he was in Los Angeles," recalled Daryl Gates.

But under normal circ.u.mstances, that wouldn't have been the end of the story. For many years, the LAPD had secretly protected (and monitored) the activities of visiting VIPs by ensuring that local livery companies used undercover policemen as drivers. Most VIPs never knew, but Kennedy's people did. They arranged for their own driver. As a result, there was no chance that a plainclothes LAPD officer would be at Kennedy's side when, shortly after midnight, the candidate slipped out of the fifth-floor ballroom of the Amba.s.sador Hotel, where he'd just delivered a rousing victory speech and, exiting through its kitchen, encountered Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian angry about Kennedy's support of Israel during the Six-Day War. As Kennedy was shaking hands with a busboy, Sirhan stepped out from beside a refrigerator and opened fire with a .22 caliber pistol. Two bullets entered the senator's upper torso. One, fired from a distance of one inch away, entered the back of his head.

Four LAPD patrol cars were circling the Amba.s.sador. The police arrived within minutes, after Kennedy's entourage, which included Kennedy's bodyguard and the writer George Plimpton, had wrestled Sirhan to the ground. Kennedy was rushed to the Central Receiving Hospital, and then taken across the street to Good Samaritan Hospital for surgery. It was no use. Twenty-six hours later, at 1:44 a.m., June 6, 1968, Robert Kennedy was p.r.o.nounced dead.

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, the warden at the federal penitentiary in Springfield called Mickey Cohen into his office.

"There's a call from Washington, and he's going to call back, like, say, one o'clock, so get showered and prepared," he said, brusquely.

When Cohen returned, he found his old pal the columnist Drew Pearson on the line. Needless to say, it was highly unusual for the warden of a federal prison to put a newspaper columnist through to an inmate.

"We're going for [Vice President Hubert] Humphrey for president," Pearson informed him, "and I'll a.s.sure you that if he becomes our president, you're going to be given a medical parole."

This sounded good. Naturally, though, Mickey wanted to know why Pearson was willing to do such a tremendous favor.

"I'm gonna use you again in the campaign against Nixon," Pearson informed him. When Nixon first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1950, his campaign manager and attorney, Murray Chotiner, had asked Mickey Cohen to raise $75,000 for the campaign, a considerable sum in those days. Cohen responded by throwing a fund-raiser at the Knickerbocker Hotel. Said Cohen later: "It was all gamblers from Vegas, all gambling money, there wasn't a legitimate person in the room." Cohen had told Pearson about it. Now the columnist wanted to go public with the information.

Cohen was amenable. He'd long since soured on Nixon, whom he considered to be a "rough hustler, like a G.o.dd.a.m.n small-town ward politician" who dressed like "maybe... a three-card Monte dealer" and was an anti-Semite to boot. "Go ahead if that's the way to go," Cohen replied.

A series of accusatory columns by Pearson duly appeared. Mickey was ecstatic. Pearson a.s.sured him that a medical parole was simply a matter of time.

"I got a definite promise from LBJ that one way or another, if Humphrey wins or loses, you're going to get a parole or a medical parole at least," Pearson a.s.sured him. News of the payoff spread throughout Washington. Rival columnist Jack Anderson ran a story saying that President Lyndon Johnson was considering a Cohen pardon as a reward for "dirt" Cohen had provided to Drew Pearson on Richard Nixon.

Cohen wrote brother Harry to let him know that "the fix was in." It wasn't. Humphrey lost, and LBJ left office without granting Mickey a medical parole. Mickey didn't even bother to ask his old acquaintance Richard Nixon. There was nothing for Cohen to do but serve out the remainder of his sentence.

ON JANUARY 6, 1972, Mickey was released from the Springfield federal penitentiary. Despite extensive physical therapy for nearly a decade, Mickey still needed help with the most basic tasks, such as getting dressed and standing up. Age, ice cream, and, of course, his nearly fatal braining with the lead pipe had made Mickey an old man. But life beckoned still. The night before his release, Cohen bade good-bye to such dear friends as Johnny Dio. "Before you leave a prison after eleven years of being incarcerated," he said later, "the most exciting day is the day before."

Once again, a crowd of reporters gathered for Cohen's release. The frumpy little man who emerged wearing a white T-shirt, windbreaker, and rolled-up chinos bore little resemblance to the suave prisoner who had entered prison a decade earlier. "To h.e.l.l with this rotten joint," Cohen muttered, as he was helped to brother Harry, who'd come to pick him up-in a brand-new white Cadillac. Their first stop was Hamby's restaurant in downtown Springfield, where Mickey gorged himself-two orders of ham and eggs, three gla.s.ses of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a Danish pastry. Then he got a shave, a haircut, a ma.s.sage, and a manicure. As always, he left a tip that was "extraordinary ... particularly for a small town." Then he went to a hotel and showered "for a couple of hours, I guess."

From Springfield, Mickey and Harry, along with a young man named Jim Smith, who suddenly appeared in the capacity of caretaker, drove to Hot Springs, to visit bootlegger Owney "The Killer" Madden's widow and soak in the waters. (Owney had pa.s.sed away during Mickey's time in the joint.) Cohen hoped that the hot springs would help him "correct my walking at least forty to fifty percent, anyway." Instead, several weeks of hydrotherapy weakened him badly. The food, however, was marvelous. The manager of the Arlington Hotel "still remembered me from my heydays" and made sure Mickey got plenty of Italian cuisine.

"They brought out big silver things full of food, and the chef himself was out there dishing it out-every kind of pasta, every kind of chicken, veal, everything you could imagine," Cohen recalled.

Then it was on to New Orleans, to see Carlos Marcello. ("We talked about the old times, among other things.") Only then did Mickey Cohen return to Los Angeles.

What he found there stunned him. The Sunset Strip he had once known was gone. Its elegant nightclubs were shuttered. Teenage punks and rock 'n' roll had taken over what had once been Hollywood's grandest boulevard. Elegance was no more. Broads now walked around "with skirts up to their neck." Harry and Cohen caretaker Jim Smith tried to explain the fashion for miniskirts and, well, the sixties, but it was hard to understand. Even crime was bewildering and different.

"Today, it's a whole new setup, because you got punks running around. Kids go in, and people give them their money, and they still kill them afterwards," Mickey lamented. In fact, Mickey Cohen was about to discover just how strange the new criminal underworld was.

In February 1974, Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley by one of the decade's most bizarre criminal terrorist groups, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Founded by an escaped African American convict who had adopted the nom de guerre "Cinque" (after the leader of the 1839 slave ship rebellion on the Amistad) Amistad), the SLA espoused a strange blend of Maoist terrorism and Black Power ideology. In the early 1970s, the group a.s.sa.s.sinated a popular African American Berkeley school superintendent. Several members were convicted and incarcerated for the killing. Hearst was originally seized in order to facilitate a hostage exchange. But two months after her kidnapping, the story took a bizarre twist: Hearst took part in a bank robbery-as an SLA member. The video footage of Patty Hearst-who had adopted the name Tania-was a news sensation. The Bay Area was now too hot for the SLA. So Cinque decided to go south to his hometown of Los Angeles. That's when Patty's father Randolph called Mickey Cohen.

Mickey Cohen had always revered William Randolph Hearst.

"He was a benefactor for me throughout my career and when I needed him," Mickey would later explain, perhaps in reference to the Hearst papers' favorable coverage of Mickey during the Al Pearson beating trial. "There was nothing the Hearst people could call on me for that I would refuse or not attempt to do."

So when Randolph Hearst called Mickey (at the recommendation of the San Francisco Chronicle's San Francisco Chronicle's crime reporter) and asked if he'd be willing to use his contacts in the underworld to locate Patty, Cohen was happy to oblige. Calling on certain acquaintances in the African American "sporting world," Cohen soon made contact with some figures who might-or might not-have been SLA members or a.s.sociates. A half dozen meetings ensued, all of them preceded by elaborate, multicar evasive maneuvers intended to throw off any cops who were trailing Cohen. Mickey was frankly jittery at the early meetings. Although he respected SLA members for their skill as lamsters, Cohen didn't get the underground anti-Vietnam War movement. The SLA guys, in turn, viewed Cohen as a "square" because he didn't drink and had never tried drugs. After a while, though, things got chummy. So chummy that Cohen felt a deal was within reach. Through his reporter-contact at the crime reporter) and asked if he'd be willing to use his contacts in the underworld to locate Patty, Cohen was happy to oblige. Calling on certain acquaintances in the African American "sporting world," Cohen soon made contact with some figures who might-or might not-have been SLA members or a.s.sociates. A half dozen meetings ensued, all of them preceded by elaborate, multicar evasive maneuvers intended to throw off any cops who were trailing Cohen. Mickey was frankly jittery at the early meetings. Although he respected SLA members for their skill as lamsters, Cohen didn't get the underground anti-Vietnam War movement. The SLA guys, in turn, viewed Cohen as a "square" because he didn't drink and had never tried drugs. After a while, though, things got chummy. So chummy that Cohen felt a deal was within reach. Through his reporter-contact at the Chronicle Chronicle, Cohen summoned Patty's parents down from San Francisco to L.A.

They met over dinner at Gatsby's. Patty's mother was nervous, probably because the maitre d' came over early to inform them that they were being monitored by men from the LAPD intelligence division. She told Mickey that she was worried that her daughter might now be so committed to the SLA that she would not return to her parents' custody willingly. That didn't seem to concern Mickey. But what Catherine Hearst said next did.

"We may be making a mistake bringing Patty back," Mrs. Hearst continued quietly. "We may be bringing her back to do thirty, forty years in prison."

That was it for Mickey.

"Lookit," he told them, "if the situation is such that you folks don't know whether she's going to go to prison or not, I don't want no part of it." It was against Cohen's code of ethics to send a lamster to prison. Cohen was done with the Hearsts.

"I don't want to be rude," he told them, "but I got to beg off this thing."

Mickey's muscle days were over. But as the threat of violence that had long been a.s.sociated with him dissipated, he now became what, arguably, he'd long wanted to be-a celebrity. When he went to the fights, real celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Redd Foxx would come over to say h.e.l.lo. (Mickey appreciated the fact that Sinatra always greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and the more formal "Michael.") Although Cohen's tips were sadly reduced ("I maybe used to tip a barber twenty dollars, I maybe tip five dollars now"), he still wore tailor-made clothes and luxurious robes. He still dined at restaurants such as Chasen's, Perino's, and Mateo's, even though it now took him four or five hours to get dressed to his standards. At theaters such as the Shubert, Cohen was a fixture on opening night. His sources of income remained mysterious. (His attorneys had won a settlement from the government for failing to protect Cohen in prison; however, the government had reclaimed most of the money as payment owed it for overdue taxes.) Friends like Frank Sinatra once more kicked in "gifts" to tide him over. Rumor had it that Cohen had resumed bookmaking.

In September 1975, Mickey checked into UCLA Medical Center, complaining of pain from an ulcer. It turned out he had stomach cancer. His doctors informed him that he had only months to live. Mickey used the time to relate his life story to the writer John Peer Nugent. The highly idiosyncratic result was In My Own Words In My Own Words. The following summer, Mickey Cohen died at home in his sleep, leaving $3,000 in cash, which the IRS promptly took. With back taxes, penalties, and interest, he still owed the U.S. government $496,535.23.

Epilogue.

"This city is plagued by hostility, rage and resentment. It could happen again."-former FBI director William Webster, October 1992 IN 1969, LAPD officer-turned-councilman Tom Bradley decided to challenge inc.u.mbent mayor Sam Yorty for the city's top elected office. Bradley presented himself as a statesman who would address the city's biggest issues-rapid transit, business growth, racial harmony. His base of support came primarily from the city's African American community, which made up nearly 20 percent of the population, and from the liberal, heavily Jewish Westside, but it also included some surprising members of the city's downtown business community, most notably the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times. To this formidable challenge, Yorty responded with a simple and devastating rejoinder: If Bradley was elected, Yorty charged, the police force would resign en ma.s.se, leaving (white) Angelenos defenseless before the (black and brown) criminal hordes.

Just before the vote, chief of police Tom Reddin resigned to take a job as a news commentator (at a salary of $100,000 a year). Rumors immediately arose that Reddin had left rather than face the possibility of serving under Mayor Bradley. Despite Reddin's denials that politics played a role in his decision, Bradley lost the general election.

Reddin's decision to step down gave Gates another shot at the chief's position. This time, however, the recently divorced inspector scored poorly on the oral portion of the civil service exam and placed third on the list. At the top was Deputy Chief Ed Davis, whom the historian Gerald Woods would later describe as "a Protestant version of Bill Parker." Like Parker, Davis was an innovator. His concept of "team policing" (which Davis referred to as "the basic car plan") called for a.s.signing officers to small geographic areas where they could work with residents to identify and solve crime problems. It prefigured what is today called community policing. Davis also eliminated the practice of awarding black officers low scores on the oral component of civil service exams, which had long limited the promotion of African Americans. But if Davis's reforms were in some ways progressive, his personal style was not. Like Parker, he was also an outspoken cultural conservative. No one was safe from his derision. White liberals were derided as "swimming-pool Communists." h.o.m.os.e.xuals were "fruits." In general, Davis encouraged his officers to treat "the counterculture" as an enemy.

Few dared to complain. In 1973, Bradley once again challenged Yorty, along with California state a.s.sembly speaker Jesse Unruh and former police chief Tom Reddin. This time, Bradley was the front-runner. He carefully crafted a "law and order" platform that promised unyielding support for the police. This time, he won, beating Yorty soundly in another runoff to become Los Angeles's first African American mayor.