. LAPD Chief Bernard Parks has accused L. A.~ County District Attorney Gil Garcetti of stymie-ing his efforts to nail the dirty cops in the Rampart: scandal by refusing to prosecute them. Parks is- fight to point the finger at Garcetti for his foot-- dragging on Ramparts but it would have been evenbetter if he had pointed the finger at Garcetti fora his even more deafening silence and paralysis inthe shooting death of Margaret Mitchell. .But it Ts hardly likely that Parks would criticize Garcetti forinaction in the Mitchell case. From the start of the tragedy he has reflexively defended the officer who shot Mitchell. Even after thePolice Commission and the commission Ts inspector general em-phatically ruled that the shooting of Mitchell was oout of policy, ?Parks still stubbornly contends that the officer who shot Mitchellused bad tactics but did not violate the LAPD Ts shooting policy. -Despite Parks Ts puzzling view of the Mitchell shooting the PoliceCommission ruled correctly. The LAPD Ts guidelines on the use offorce clearly state that oforce may not be resorted to unless allreasonable alternatives have been exhausted. ? Several eyewitnessesto the shooting contradicted the police claim that Mitchell threat-ened the officer with a screwdriver and insisted that the officer neverattempted to use non-lethal weapons such as a baton, mace or pepperSpray to subdue her.Now that the inspector general and the Police Commission have| defied Parks and ruled that the officer misused deadly force thequestion is what will Garcetti do about it? He insists that he ismoving full speed ahead with his own investigation into the Mitchellsheoting and the Ramparts scandal. Yet the fact is that despite Parks Tlems that have plaguied this city for| far too many years.| Garcetti Must Act in.Mitchell ShootingJust the mere fact that he is try-ing to clean up someone else Ts messat the expense of the bad publicrelations and adverse press, speakshighly of his integrity and willing-ness to correct some of the wrongs.Bernie Parks could have stone-walled, denied the charges, madeall manner of excuses for the cul-prits.. Instead, he pushed for a thor-ough investigation of the chargesand has sought to rectify the wrongsthat may have been perpetrated byhis troops."At this point however, we needto look closely at his position andhow he got there. The problems thatexist within.she ranks of the LosAngeles Police Department did notstart when Bernie Parks becamechief. Neither did they begin whenWillie Williams took the helm.These problems have been aroundfor a long time. Unfortunately, no-body had the intestinal fortitude tobring them to the forefront. UntilBernie Parks.(URBAN Pt- "the more than 30 years that 1Los Angeles P Police Chief Bernard have been a part of the news media__ in Los Angeles, this is the first timethat a Los Angeles Chief of Police_ has,opened the sacrosanct ranks ofthe blue knights and allowed the~ public to see some of the real prob-wash,but when the dryer i is finished thereare only four | pairs of socks and anodd sock. What happened to theothers? .The things that are coming tolight now are not new. They hap-pened on other chief's watches, butnobody dared to buck the powerstructure and bring these things intothe open.Now that Parks has opened thedoor, there is that element that wantsto crucify him without looking athow the department got to this point.Former Chief Daryl Gates was notgoing to open that door. Neitherwas his predecessor, Ed Davis.These are two different kinds ofmen, but both of them held themorale of their officers in high es-teem and to break this kind of tradi-tion would surely destroy that mo-rale and perhaps injure that inbredloyalty to the department.Parks is indeed just as foyal tothe department, but it appears thathe wants the cleanest and most ef-fective police department in thecountry and is willing to do what-ever it takes to create that depart-ment. It would seem that it means- weeding out the bad apples and plac-ing them in public view, then so bePERSPECTIVE ohandled ere somehow lost i in theTt is. iad of like. the. way wewash our socks. We put in six pairs ?jin the role of a terim chief in a transitory seat,Through no fault of his own, he wasnot going.to make the grade, how-ever bright he might be. .Onthe other hand, Parks knew andknows the playing field. He has beenon it for 35 years. He has made somemistakes and he has made some en-emies. But the bright spot is that hisew admin black officers,a coming to a different kind of orga- "nization. He did not know, could _not have known the snake aa into~ which he had been tossed.In point to fact, he was an inenough.Men. like Joe Sek aieBroome, George Lewis, Billy_ Wedgeworth, Marion Johnson, Ron _-Banks, Jesse Brewer, Ron Nelson,and a handful of others were thepioneers of the black command level - officers. Butthe final decisions werenot theirs. It all had. to be cleared atthe top.and he is making the decisions. Hehas the courage to make choicesthat are not always popular but nec-Now Bernie! Parks sits at the top ~-- ~approach to the problems has beenclean and above board. He has asked "no quarter and has given none. Thechips are falling where they may andhe is letting the lady with the twoedged sword have her way.It may not be pleasant for every-one involved. Clearly some careersmay be short-stopped. Some folkmay be out of work, but then, per-haps we shouid consider that every-body dressed in LAPD blue shouldnot be there.What we must remember at thisjuncture, is that no chief of policefor this city has shown the cajonesof Bernard Parks. At least not in thepast 30 years.Oh yeah, people will start topoint fingers and make charges ofall kinds. The bottom line here issimple. This (the police miscon- oessary nonetheless.He has thrown open the flood:gates of publiccriticism for the aeof the department and for the goodof the total community. He knowsthere will be backlash. Still he hasmade the stop.All of this takes courage and Twillingness and indeed, a desire to: )create a better police department.that serves and services the entire |community.Because he has had the guts toopen this Pandora Ts Box, he is to becommended and even revered. No °other chief saw fit to take this step...Those people who are talking about __.him stepping down need to climb |back under their respective rocks.and come out at the end of the next.millennium.ee,aaaWelfare to Work With Less Work Availableinspector general to that effect.anger at him he has not brought any charges against the officersaccused of wrongdoing in the Ramparts case.Even more disturbing he has given no indication what if anythinghe T ll do about the officer who shot Mitchell. Given his anemic recordin prosecuting officers accused of misconduct there is no reason toexpect that his office will initiate waves of prosecutions against theRamparts officers let alone against the officer who shot Mitchell.In defending himself against Parks Ts charge of inaction in theRamparts scandal, Garcetti claimed that he can Tt and won Tt pros-ecute officers until he has iron-clad evidence and testimony that willmake the charges against them stick. Yet the Mitchell shootingseems to be a made-in-heaven fit for the elevated standard of proofthat Garcetti requires when the alleged perpetrators are police °officers. There is solid eyewitness testimony that the officer actedimproperly. The LAPD Ts guidelines on shooting were clearly vio-lated. There is an official ruling by the Police Commission and theThis is far more proof than Garcetti or for that matter any prosecu-tor has ever needed to arrest, prosecute and ask for a prison term forordinary citizens accused of crimes. Even in the beating of blackmotorist Rodney King there was not the mountain of evidence thereis in the Mitchell shooting that the officers acted improperly. Thevideotape and public outrage were enough to propel then LAPD chiefDaryl Gates to recommend that the officers who beat King be pros-ecuted and for District Attorney Ira Reiner to take the case to trial.A prosecution by Garcetti in the Mitchell shooting would domuch to silence those who perennially accuse him of invisibility andparalysis on the issues of police misconduct. It would show that heis capable of taking legal and moral responsibility for going afterthose who break the law even when they wear a uniform and a badge.And, perhaps most importantly, it would reassure the public that aMitchell shooting won't happen again(Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a nationally syndicated columnist andthe director of the National Alliance for Positive Action. He can beheard on KPFK Radio, 90.7FM, Tuesdays, 7-8 p.m.)Educationis the KeyKnowledge is the Roadand Success is the RewardThe question ofhow the changingdemographics ofCalifornia has already begun to playout in certain areas of Southern Cali-fornia. The emerging Latino opoli-tic ? has several ocamps ? (much likethe black community) that have verydisparate views as. to how their em-powerment should come about, andat whose expense.It Ts interesting to watch theVillariagosa and Beccara camps asthey talk ocoalition ? politics in po-.. Sitioning themselves for a non-par-tisan mayoral run, while on the otherhand watching the Molina andPolanco camps or ig its time fornos winI] difference (margin. swing) where "BETWEEN THE Lincs GY coWhy are Black Politicians Looking Past the 55th Assembly Districtsense of urgency some think is pre-mature. At the same time blacks arenot doing much to resist the powergrab. In fact, black political repre-sentation is slipping and slippingfast. On the state level, the Califor-nia Legislative Black Caucus hasshrunk from 12. members to sixmembers over the past five years,all the remaining members repre-sent districts in Southern Califor-nia.Last month. at the Urban IssuesBreakfast Forum of Greater LosAngeles, new Legislative BlackCaucus Chairman, AssemblymanRod Wright discussed the need toexpand the Caucus and implementstrategies whereby blacks wouldre they could and make thethem, foo sto gai winnerschinks thesWelfare reform seems to be oneveryone Ts lips. In California, oWelfare to Work ? is the label for this state Ts ototal reform ? effort to right the systemic wrongstoward poor folks. One of the nation Ts foremostauthorities on race and poverty offers a frame-work within which to analyze and better under-stand the near intractable problems and chal-lenges of providing effective service to the poorby meeting their basic needs. Dr. William JuliusWilson Ts seminal work, oWhen Work Disap-pears ? (1966), sets forth a provocative theoryabout the world of the new urban poor and isalready the definitive sounding board for emerg-ing welfare reform strategies and programs.Wilson contends that the consequences ofhigh neighborhood joblessness are more devas-tating than those of high neighborhood poverty.A neighborhood in which people are poor butemployed is different from a neighborhood inwhich people are poor and jobless. Many oftoday Ts problems in the inner-city-crime, familydissolution, welfare, low-levels of social orga-nization, etc. "are fundamentally a consequenceof the disappearance of work.The public debate around the causes of thedisappearance of work is not productive becauseit seeks to assign blame rather than recognizingand dealing with the complex and changingrealities that have led to economic distress formany Americans. Explanations and proposedsolutions to the problems are often ideologicallydriven, according to Wilson.Thus, those who endorse liberal ideologyhave tended to emphasize social structural fac-tors, including race. Those who endorse conser-vative ideology tend to stress the importance ofvalu s, attitudes and styles in explaining thedifferent experiences, behavior and outcomes ofgroups. According to this view, group differ-ences are reflected in the culture.Wilson attempts to demonstrate in his bookthat social structural factors are important forunderstanding joblessness and other experiencesof the inner city poor, but that there is muchthese factors do not explain. Although race isclearly an important variable in the social out-come of inner city blacks, much ambiguity re-mains about the meaning and significance ofrace in certain situations. Cultural factors doplay a role, but any adequate explanation ofinner city joblessness and poverty should takeother variables into account. Social psychologi-cal variables must be integrated with social struc-tural and cultural variables. Wilson insists thatwe need a broader vision that includes all of themajor variables and, even more important, re-veals their relative significance and their inter-action in determining the experiences and lifechances of inner city residents. This vision guidesWilson Ts interpretation and integration of theresearch reported in oWhen Work Disappears. ?Wilson highlights problems in order to in-form the public and social policy debates. Socialresearchers who wish to inform and influencepublic policy are more likely to focus on acommunity's problems than on its strengths.Their purpose is to stimulate thought so that -policymakers, concerned citizens, journalists andothers will have a basis for understat.ding suchproblems and the need to address them. Giventhe reemergence of the discussion concerningthe importance of generic endowment, Wilsonpoints out that it is urgent that social scientistsonce again emphasize, for public policy pur-poses, the powerful and complex role of thesocial environment in shaping the life experi-ences of inner city ghetto residents.Since the publication of oThe Bell Curve ? in1994, a genetic argument has resurfaced in pub-lic discussions about the plight of inner cityresidents. This controversial book by RichardHerrnstein and Charles Murray argues that re-gardless of social, economic or ethnic back-ground, low intelligence is the root cause ofmany of our social problems..Herrnstein and Murray attempt to demon-strate that ocognitive ability ? as measured byintelligence tests, powerfully predicts not onlyearnings but a range of other outcomes fromparental competence to criminal behavior. oTheBell Curve ? questions the extent to which theenvironment influences group social outcomes.and whether intervention programs can com-pensate for the handicaps of genetic endow-ment.Wilson argues the importance of understand-ing and communicating the overwhelming ob-stacles that many ghetto residents have to over-:come just to live up to mainstream expectations ~*~ Tinvolving work, the family and the law. Such ......expectations are taken for granted in middle-class society. Americans in more affluent areashave jobs that offer fringe benefits; they Tre ac-customed to health insurance that covers paidsick leave and medical care. They do not live in;neighborhoods where attempts at normal child--rearing are constantly. undermined by social forcesthat interfere with healthy child development.Wilson believes that it Ts just as indefensibleto treat inner city residents as superheroes whoare able to overcome racist oppression as itis toview them as helpless victims. His central argu-ment is that the disappearance of work and the. .'.consequences of that disappearance for bothsocial and cultural life are the central problems " :in the inner city ghetto. To acknowledge that theghetto still includes working people and that "nearly all ghetto residents, whether employed ornot, support the norms of the work ethic, should ? -not lead one to overlook the fact that a majorityof adults in many inner city neighborhoods are ,jobless at any given point in time.The book also emphasizes that the disappear-ance of work and the growth of related problemsin the ghetto have aggravated an already tense *racial situation in urban areas. The nation Ts .*response to racial discord in the central city andto the growing racial divide between the city and "suburbs has been disappointing. :Wilson Ts vision promotes values of racial:,and intergroup harmony and unity and he rejects :the commonly held view that race is so divisive that whites, blacks, Latinos, and other ethnic -groups cannot work together in acommon cause.His vision encourages Americans to see that theapplication of sound programs to combat inner ..city problems would benefit everyone. Wilson _believes that this vision, supported by public ?thetoric of interracial unity, is essential to ad-dress the problem of the inner city. &bs # wtand other officials looking past the55th Assembly seat?It would seem that if SouthernCalifornia is the last strong holdfor state house representation(given there is no black represen-tation in Northern California), we'dbe odigging in ? for any seat wherewe stood a chance to win. Wouldn Ttwe? There seems to be a concertedeffort not to get behind KeithMcDonald's candidacy. I Tveheard .all the sides on this. oPeople aretired of nepotism (we' ve been tiredof it) ? because the black candidatehas a mother in Congress that for-merly held the seat, Yeah, but he Tsan elected official now and the pro-tocol (generally) is to support yourfellow officials. Particularly onanopen seat. oHe can Tt win becausehe lost before," Well, that is thea oa sgasanentpaign "that Ts another article. ? True,but it Ts no reason to concede theseat. oHis politics ain Tt right. ?This, of course, is alluding toMcDonald working for the man he Tsseeking to replace in the Assembly,Dick Floyd, who is also running foroffice "in one of the traditionally oblack ? State Senate seats, againstwho many see as the community Tschoice, Ed Vincent.Then there's the underlying is-sue that nobody wants to touch or |talk about, the issue of othe dueling-Congresswomen ? which nobodywants to be nowhere near, muchless in the middle of. That's one ofthose things you ojust leave alone, ?as another insider told me, but it isthe biggest contributor to the with-holding of the Legislative BlackCaucus endorsement,Everybody knows owho's tied oto who. ? But still, is that a reason to po abi pi svsnary anniehe Ts termed out, there Ts no need toconcede it any longer. Why not takeit back, now? .The likelihood is that bothVincent and McDonald could winif the Caucus made oholding power ?the priority versus othe personali-ties. ? Hell, in politics, everybody's in bed with everybody at one pointor another. Why oplayerhate ?- McDonald for playing the game theway most of them have played it atsome point in time. oDon Tt hate theplayer, hate the game. ?- So now they want to leave himout there for himself, or as one offi-cial told me, oIf his mama don Ttsave him, he won't be saved,. ? Well,that Ts conceding power. The LatinoCaucus is putting money, powerand influence behind Long Beach "City Councilwoman JennieOropeza Ts candidacy. McDonald Tsgot the endorsement of labor, lawcratic Party Ts endorsement at thelast convention earlier this month. ,The Black Legislative Caucus, in:the meantime, are pushing candida-cies in San Jose and San Diego withmoney and manpower, but lettingone go in their own backyard. Howmuch sense does that make? Noneat all,With the 2001 redistricting com-. ing up after this Census period, the «55th District's line will be redrawnfor sure, if there is not a black rep-resentative in that seat. The seatwill be gone. The power shift in:litical representation may becom-ng, but it will come even quicker if. ay concession games thathave |ing to do with our ability tohold a seat, but our ability to with.4hold our help when its needed, |?The Black Legislative Caucus "needs to come on board with theirendorsement. The 55th Assemblyir-_selis ot one we edo concede, a} tH