Charlie Beck, chief-designate of the Los Angeles Police Department, visited with reporters, editors and members of The Times' editorial board Wednesday, the day after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his nomination of Beck as the next LAPD chief. In some areas, Beck distinguished himself (though cordially so) from former Chief William J. Bratton, pointing out that his method of effecting change by focusing on rank-and-file officers differs from his predecessor's emphasis on establishing policy and working with political leaders. Beck expressed support for greater transparency in police oversight (the subject of a Times editorial Saturday*) and Special Order 40, the department mandate that prevents officers from initiating police action for the purpose of determining someone's immigration status.*

Below are audio clips of the session; I've included notable quotes by Beck on each topic. Segments two through eight begin, in order, with questions posed by Times staff members Jim Newton, Patt Morrison, Nick Goldberg, Marjorie Miller, Joel Rubin, David Lauter, Eddy Hartenstein and Newton. The first clip doesn't begin with a question.

LAPD reform, from the ground up

"You'll think of me as more of a cop's chief rather than a leader-manager with vision."

"I have a similar vision to his, but my character's different. I think I'm a better-suited leader to drive the changes down."

Federal consent decree

"All of the issues that the consent decree was created to address, I agree with, and those will continue. Now, some of the mechanics have become ill-suited because either we've reached universal compliance on them, but that doesn't necessarily declare victory on the issue. There are other ways to do this monitoring that is smart."

Transparency in police oversight

"My core belief is that when you become a police officer -- and you're entrusted with life, liberty and life and death of people in the community -- that you give up some right to anonymity that most other people enjoy. Unfortunately, state law doesn't agree with me on that."

Relationship with the Police Protective League

"I think the union is a huge ally. I think that a manager that ignores the authority and power of a union, such as some of ours have done in the past, ignores a huge opportunity to mold his workforce. So the union is very important. Do I think we're going to agree on all issues? No."

Immigration and drug enforcement

"I believe in Special Order 40. I believe in not just the words on paper, but the spirit of Special Order 40. I think that especially in Los Angeles, that we have to represent everybody, that everybody has the right to quality police service, regardless of status. I don't think that we should be an arm of the federal government in enforcing immigration laws specifically. However, if we make a legal arrest on another charge, and a criminal is monitored by Immigration, then they should have access to him."

LAPD size

"I think we are a police department that the majority of residents in Los Angeles feels comfortable with, and that's largely due to the increase in size."

"At 10,000 [officers], we can start to address core issues, because you are able to provide that basic level of service and add on the problem-solving piece. So I think that size that we're at right now should be looked at as a floor, the basement."

Beck's leadership team

"The team that got us here in the first place is still here. Nobody is being thrown out; nobody has told me that they're leaving. I intend to use the players that we have."

Work outside Los Angeles

"I'm going to go out a lot more than I would have if Bill Bratton had never been here, but I certainly won't travel as much as he did. This is my home, this is where my family is, this is where all my avocations are, all the things I like to do, so I'm going to be -- I'm a local boy, always have been. So that's the way I'll be as a chief."

Lessons learned from predecessors

"If I ever become a detriment to this police department because of my personality, because of something I did, then I'm gone."

"It's more important that the Los Angeles Police Department and the city of Los Angeles do well than it is that Charlie Beck does well. So I think that is the key lesson."

-- Paul Thornton

*Update: The Times' editorial on transparency in the LAPD is now online; click here to read it.

*Update 2: A retired LAPD captain kindly wrote to inform me that my previous summary of Special Order 40 -- "the department mandate that prevents officers from obtaining the immigration status of detained suspects" -- was incorrect.

Photo: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief-designate Charlie Beck. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

The Times editorial board and columnist Tim Rutten both throw their support behind Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's choice of Charlie Beck to lead the Los Angeles Police Department. The board likes Beck's credentials as a reformer, but notes the work still to be done on that front. Rutten echoes that sentiment, and throws in a few more issues that matter to the City Council.

On a less sanguine note, Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that neoconservatives transformed the Republican Party into an interventionist, big-government operation with no conservative policy agenda. Them's fighting words! Good thing they came out of Crane's word processor and not, say, Rutten's.

And Jeff Bleich, chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees, laments the slow death of the California dream. No, not the one about having a house on the beach. That died a long time ago. He's referring to "the promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here":

Speaking of schools, the editorial board criticizes a bill by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) that combines some common-sense reforms to the public system with ill-considered ones. And, although it agrees that colleges and universities could do a better job controlling costs, it defends the decision by some to pay top dollar for top-drawer presidents.

-- Jon Healey

Illustration: Ted Rall / For The Times

Let the speculation over recently reelected L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's gubernatorial ambitions resume, beginning with this blogpost. He already said he wasn't interested in the job (at least this time around), but that was before San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of the race today, leaving former governor and California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown as the last man standing in the Democratic Party field. Villaraigosa has a few natural advantages; namely, he would be the only nonwhite candidate and the only hopeful from Southern California in the field (Republicans Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell are all from the Silicon Valley, and Brown emerged from political exile as mayor of Oakland before becoming attorney general).

Back before Villaraigosa announced his non-candidacy in June, former state Sen. Tom Hayden predicted in a Times Blowback piece that Villaraigosa would run but that his chances in a two-man race against Brown weren't good:

Hayden was responding to a Feb. 27 Op-Ed article in The Times by Marc Cooper, who made the case against a run by the mayor:

What do you think? With Newsom out, should Mayor Villaraigosa take a shot at becoming Gov. Villaraigosa? Take our unscientific poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on Oct.11. Credit: David Cannon / Getty Images.

An ounce of enforcement is worth a pound of new laws. Or something to that effect. The editorial board points out today that Los Angeles could more effectively limit the proliferation of marijuana clinics by enforcing existing state law against for-profit operations than by dithering over municipal restrictions.

The board mourns the deaths of more than 100 men, women and children in a Pakistani car-bombing, saying that such terrible events should convince Pakistanis that the fight against violent Islamic extremism is their fight too:

More than anything [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton can say, a series of assaults that have taken the lives of more than 500 civilians this year should serve to convince typical Pakistanis that this is not just a U.S. war. The United States and Pakistan have a common enemy in Islamist extremists, and the Pakistani state is fighting for its survival.

And the board urges President Obama to stand by his deadline for closing Guantanamo:

The legal axiom that "justice delayed is justice denied" applies with special force to Guantanamo. Whether they are dangerous terrorists or, like many of those already released, bystanders caught up in a post- 9/11 dragnet, these detainees have languished for years without adequate due process.

On the other side of the fold, a consultant to a documentary on convicted murderer Leo Frank writes about his 1915 lynching in Georgia. The subsequent campaigns either to vilify him or clear his name echo today, with haves and have-nots viewing the same events from markedly different perspectives.

And the battle continues over the Human Rights Watch reports earlier this year on the Middle East. Robert Bernstein, who helped found the organization, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times slamming the group's Middle East division for what he called bias against Israel. Today, a Middle East reporter for Time magazine hits back at Bernstein on our op-ed page:

Bernstein is just plain wrong that the organization's Middle East program focuses on Israel's alleged human rights violations while ignoring those committed by Arab governments and the Iranian regime. Even a quick glance at Human Rights Watch's website, where recent reports are posted, shows that the majority of those on the Middle East relate to countries other than Israel. According to Human Rights Watch, it has produced 1,776 total documents on the Middle East since 2000 -- 250, or 14%, of which were devoted to Israel.

--Karin Klein

Photo of the aftermath of the Pakistan bombing, Credit: Arshad Arbab / EPA

 

 

 

 

 

The police commission picked three finalists in its search for Los Angeles' new police chief, and the editorial board says each possesses many of the qualities needed to succeed atop the LAPD. Just so there won't be any confusion on that point, the board also describes what those qualities might be. The board also notes that two proposed ballot measures are due to be submitted today to enable and call a state constitutional convention, and it all but endorses them in a near-desperate plea for functional governance in California.

On the Op-Ed page, Raphael J. Sonenshein, former executive director of the city's charter reform commission, accuses rookie City Atty. Carmen Trutanich of not understanding what a city attorney is supposed to do in this town. Columnist Tim Rutten gives a highly nuanced defense of the push to reveal who is contributing to efforts in other states to put Prop. 8-style bans on gay marriage on the ballot. Musing about the Northwest Airlines flight that overshot its destination by 150 miles, Peter Garrison, a pilot and contributing editor to Flying magazine, reveals just how boring it is to fly a modern airline jet. And columnist Doyle McManus dissects the Obama administration's decision-making process on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan:

Credit: Ted Rall / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

The new LAPD headquarters won't be dedicated until later this month -- more about the name of the building in a bit -- but when it is, the first official shift to show up for work will see some sadly familiar names.

The identities of the 200-plus LAPD officers who've been killed in the line of duty over 102 years are graven on brass plaques in a 5.5-ton memorial wall dedicated Wednesday night; replicas of their badges fill cases that visitors will pass to walk into the new building. Well, not quite fill; on the memorial wall and in the badge cases, there's room left for more names, more badges, as will in time follow.

For decades, a memorial fountain outside Parker Center did the honors for the dead officers -- it was dedicated in 1971 by Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, who later served prison time for the Watergate coverup.

But that monument fell to pieces when it was being moved to make way for a new jail. The Los Angeles Police Foundation raised nearly three-quarters of a million dollars for the new memorials. 

The reception and the speeches before the dedication had to be moved inside because of unexpected rain. It was, said departing chief William Bratton, as if the memorial had been ''washed by God.'' When the crowd moved outside for the final ceremonial, and the families of the dead officers laid white roses on the monument, the evening skies had cleared and, across First Street, City Hall looked like an enormous white votive candle.

The dedication is the latest in a whole lot of events jamming into October before Bratton lays down his shield at the end of the month; the formal dedication of the building is on October 24.

Within the building's half-million square feet is a huge space for the COMPSTAT data tracking and management system Bratton introduced and swears by, and the tenth-floor offices taking the place of the sixth-floor command staff offices in Parker Center. Those halls are hung with pictures from the department and the city's history: Charles Manson in custody, actress Thelma Todd slumped in death in her car, a copy of a bank robber's cheery stick-up note, a somber black-and-white photo of investigators reenacting the ''Onion Field'' murder of officer Ian Campbell.

The chief's suite, with its own terrace, has a huge LAPD badge with four stars instead of a badge number carved into the double wooden doors of the chief's inner office, soon to be occupied by ... well, that's another big end-of-the-year event for the department: the naming of a successor to Bratton. Of the two dozen applicants for the job, about six will be interviewed by a civilian panel, which will give the names of three finalists to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is expected to decide by mid-November which one will walk through those double doors as the next LAPD chief.

At least that successor will have a name. I'm still thinking the new building needs a good handle. The old building was called the Police Administration Building for its first eleven years, until Police Chief William Parker died suddenly, and the city put his name on it. "Parker Center'' has some history and resonance; even if you don't like that history, it just sounds less drab and cumbersome than ''LAPD headquarters,'' which is why we need to do better than a name that sounds like it came out of a kit. C'mon, LA -- New York has ''One Police Plaza,'' and even though it sounds like a name dreamed up by a studio production design team, it's a whole lot better than ''police headquarters.''

Mayor Tom Bradley was a cop himself, but with his war with Chief Daryl Gates during his mayorship, he's  too contentious a figure to have his name on the LAPD's building. ''Parker Center'' is out of the question; the city would sooner name its new edifice after Pretty Boy Floyd. It's possible that in time, the city might name the building after Bratton, but I expect City Hall is pretty wary of going that route.

In the meantime, you know that if the city doesn't come up with a name, Angelenos will, on their own, find some nickname, and nicknames, once they stick, are almost impossible to get un-stuck.

Suggestions?

-- Patt Morrison

Photo: LAPD Captain Daryl Russell examines the Los Angeles Police Foundation Memorial to Fallen Officers in August. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Matthew Continetti, associate editor of the Weekly Standard, gets the Op-Ed page rolling this morning by accusing President Obama of being organized labor's Santa Claus. The First Community Organizer may believe that unionization helps lift workers into the middle class, Continetti writes, but the numbers don't support that argument:

Speaking of a unionized workforce, columnist Tim Rutten urges the state Senate to waive some California environmental rules to let developer Ed Roski Jr. build a football stadium in the City of Industry. Why?

Alllll-righty then. Closing out the page, Anna Husarska, senior policy advisor at the International Rescue Committee, laments the "huge human cost" of the Taliban's operations in Pakistan's Swat Valley and the government's counteroffensive. The image above is an illustration of the psychic toll; it's a drawing by a schoolgirl in the Swat Valley named Sheema.

On the other half of the opinion pages, the Times editorial board blasts the L.A. Department of Water and Power for the fabulous parting gifts it's planning to shower on departing chief H. David Nahai. We like how Nahai defied union leaders (the Opinion page's méchants du jour) to bring in more renewable power from outside the district, but we still don't see the need to pay him his salary for the rest of the year:

The board also says the Federal Trade Commission's new guidelines for online advertisers could put too much scrutiny on bloggers and amateur product reviewers. And it warns that the Supreme Court's review of a case involving the giant cross in California's Mojave National Preserve threatens to "blow a gaping hole" in the 1st Amendment's wall between church and state.

-- Jon Healey

Should California teachers be evaluated based on their students' performance on test scores? That's the subject of dueling pro vs. con commentaries on today's Op-Ed page. On the pro side is state Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, who says California must change a law forbidding such evaluations if it is to qualify for millions of dollars in federal funds, and that the system would help school districts reward exceptional teaching and weed out instructors who can't make the grade. On the con side is former LAUSD teacher Walt Gardner, who points out that teachers in low-performing schools are often dealing with kids from very poor families who are dealing with pressures that make learning a serious challenge, and expecting teachers to overcome such obstacles on their own is unrealistic.

Meanwhile, physicist Frank von Hippel aims to debunk claims from the nuclear-power industry that reprocessing nuclear waste is a solution to our problems with storing the highly radioactive materials. Not only is it extremely expensive, it fails to reduce the stream of long-lived nuclear waste and provides access to weapons material that could fall into dangerous hands.

Today's editorial page notes the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros. by pointing out that the $700-billion federal bailout that followed helped prop up the nation's financial system, and without it the economy would undoubtedly be in worse shape than it is. Nonetheless, now that the economy is on the rebound, "it's time for the administration and the Federal Reserve to lay out a strategy for pulling the government out of the financial industry."

The Times also weighs in on prospective furloughs or layoffs for city employees, who in tough financial times may be sacrificed in order to keep alive Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ambition to keep hiring more police officers. Though that seems unfair, it's the right thing to do for Los Angeles.

And we give a boost to a package of state bills aimed at fighting animal cruelty, including a ban on puppy mills, a crackdown on dogfighting (thanks Michael Vick!), and a measure mocked by the governor to forbid docking (cutting off) the tails of cattle.

Photo by Seth Perlman / AP

Threats and intimidation enliven the Op-Ed page, courtesy of two former Los Angeles Times scribes who've gone on to pen books.

Miriam Pawel details how the United Farm Workers switched from backing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to increase Central Valley water supplies to opposing it. Backed by the Change to Win union coalition, Pawel writes, the UFW established a $1 million fund to campaign against Schwarzenegger's water bonds in a "clumsy attempt at political blackmail." And Michael Krikorian recounts how five LAPD officers came to train four handguns and a shotgun at him and his girlfriend's son on a recent night in Hancock Park.

The Opinion Manufacturing Division also offers two takes on President Obama's speech Tuesday to students. Columnist Tim Rutten gushes about the speech and the president's Q&A session with a group of Virginia high-schoolers, then urges Obama to take the same approach and tone -- speaking plainly and personally but without condescension -- tonight in his speech to Congress about healthcare. The editorial board, meanwhile, frames the controversy that led up to the speech in the context of "what historian Richard Hofstadter called the 'paranoid style in American politics,' an ancient, exasperating form of discourse."

The board also urges the state Fair Political Practices Commission to adopt a proposed set of rules limiting how public agencies may use taxpayer funds in support of ballot measures, bond issues and other Election Day causes. And it urges the Los Angeles City Council to settle the dispute over the city controller's power to audit functions within the city attorney's office:

City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Atty. Carmen Trutanich have accomplished something remarkable. They have given new life to a dispute between their predecessors that should have expired when the new term started July 1. Each made a campaign issue of cooperating to resolve the case of City of Los Angeles vs. Laura Chick, but each now claims the other is not cooperating. It's as if the contentious ghosts of termed-out politicians refused to leave and now possess the bodies of the new officeholders.

Credit: William Brown, TMS

-- Jon Healey

An extraordinary lawsuit--one that could change the balance of power between multinationals and the indigenous people in the countries where they pull resources from the ground--is nearing verdict in Ecuador, where extensive damage was caused by years of oil extraction: In the first of a two-part series, the editorial board reflects on the damage and the changes in corporate behavior that might come about as a result:

Today, a swath of the Ecuadorean Amazon the size of Rhode Island remains contaminated beyond imagining. At one site after another, oil hangs in the air, slideson the water's surface and saturates the land. Pipelines and waste pits left behind years ago still drip and ooze. Advocates for the plaintiffs have called the former Texaco concession area the "Amazon Chernobyl." Were it in the United States, it would easily qualify as a Superfund site. Neither side in the case disputes the devastation, only who should pay for it. Chevron says it is the state-owned oil company's responsibility; the plaintiffs say it is Chevron's.

On the other side of the fold, the op-ed page offers a trio of tributes to people of accomplishment who have contributed to modern society:

A former aide of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy reveals another side of the Senate powerhouse. He describes the personal, empathetic man who understood what it was like to lose loved ones and regularly called people who were mourning terrible deaths--such as the victims of the World Trade Center attack-- spending expansive amounts of time sympathizing and even crying with them.

Jim Newton, editor of the editorial pages, pulls from his years of experience covering City Hall to pay tribute to Robin Kramer, chief aide to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (and previously, Richard Riordan), who resigned from the mayor's office. Calling her L.A.'s leading grown-up, Newton praises the focus and level head she has brought to Villaraigosa's operation and wonders, with a measure of nervousness, what the mayor's operation will be like without her.

And two academics who have co-authored a book honor the iconic African American civil-rights figure T.R.M. Hunter--flamboyant big-game hunter, plantation owner, and surgeon to the poor. What, never heard of him? That's exactly the point. Now you will have.

--Karin Klein

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP