Riding (and Writing About) the Streets of L.A.

Picture this: Chief Bratton sits with us at the conference table in his office, a fat gold ring on his right ring finger and a gold watch peeking out from beneath his cuff. He offers us LAPD teddy bears and a Chief of Police coffee mug and talks of diagnosing the city like a doctor diagnoses a patient. His uniform is pressed, his black tie is clipped in place, and four silver stars are pinned to either side of his collar. Now, picture this: former gang member Bow-Wow leans against the wall in a conference room at Jordan Downs Housing Complex in Watts. He wears dirty gray athletic shorts that hang to his calves, a huge blue T-shirt and a blue baseball cap. His wiry arms and thin frame are simply hangers for his clothes. Blue tattoos snake out from beneath his sleeves and cover his forearms like veins. His face is pockmarked and he looks shy; he looks at no one. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft and his lingo and rhythm are hard to follow. But his message is clear. With two sergeants standing in the room, one with the look and stature of Ving Rhames, Bow-Wow says he gets no respect from the police. The two men, Chief Bratton and Bow-Wow, could hardly be more different, yet they are on the same team.

Bow-Wow is the high-risk intervention worker for the Watts Gang Task Force. It is his job to go to a crime scene or visit all parties involved in a murder to talk some sense into them. He deals with the hardest of the gangsters, guys who are itching to shoot someone because they were disrespected, because of a dispute over a girl, or because one of their gang or even a family member was shot and killed. He tries to calm everyone down and prevent retaliation. He tells them there will be repercussions for their actions. And his word carries weight; in his late twenties, he is already something of an elder and he carries his violent past like a badge. His brother is dead and everyone from his old gang is dead. He says he was twice on the verge of a life sentence. One of those times, “someone pissed off the judge and they threw out the whole case,” he says. His street credibility rests on his bad deeds, and every day he has to explain himself to those gang members that see him associating with guys in suits, like the two sergeants. The gangsters know there are undercover cops out there, some even dressed like gangsters, and they become suspicious. “Movies train these people,” he says. So he has to constantly reestablish his credibility with the gangs.

The big sergeant says this new collaborative approach to policing is already successful. To illustrate the shift in philosophy at the LAPD, he has Bow-Wow and another task force member stand in front of him. Then he switches places with them so he is in front. They disappear behind his massive frame. He says the police used to be the first ones the youth came into contact with but now they want community members like Bow-Wow and the other task force members to be first. The police should be the last ones they see, the sergeant says. He claims that Watts is the most successful example of this new approach to date. In the past year and a half, only one murder has been reported in the area and it happened last week, according to the task force and the two sergeants.

Still, the strain on Bow-Wow is apparent as we walk back to our van, ready to be escorted back to the freeway. I overhear him speaking with the younger sergeant, complaining about the lack of respect from both sides, saying that he wants to move on to something else soon. The sergeant tells him to “hang in there.” He says, “Anything new people are going to hate at first.”

While Bow-Wow is on the street putting out fires, Bratton seems to be looking at the big picture. We got to speak with him before we went to Jordan Downs. He struck me as an effective communicator. He was clear and he offered simple analogies when talking about big issues. The Broken Windows approach, for instance, is like weeding, he said. Police and community members have to strive to make the community look better so people feel safer first. Then they have to maintain the situation by going after the petty thefts and the vandalism. The approach is supposed to help control the behavior of those who might otherwise graduate on to more serious crimes. Bratton insisted several times that policing is about controlling behavior. When a person loses his job, he does not automatically go out and start committing crimes, he said. It was not the economic factor that caused him to commit the crime. Some of the changes we saw at MacArthur Park during our trip seemed to fall under this philosophy. More lighting, more open spaces, and cameras mounted high atop buildings on the perimeter were put in place to deter criminal behavior. These changes, coupled with non-criminal activities to keep people busy, such as the chess games going on in one corner of the park, helped to create a safer environment in an otherwise tough neighborhood.

But don’t think Bratton spends all his time at the office thinking about reform. About eight months ago, there was a shooting in Watts. One of the task force members called a captain at the police department, who immediately called Bratton at home. Bratton got out of bed and called the sheriff’s department. The supervising officer there went to the scene and so did Bratton. Bratton ran the crime scene himself. It was one of the few times, apparently, that the LAPD took charge over a joint-effort with the sheriff’s department. And it does show a police chief who is willing to get directly involved in the action.

After a day spent talking with police and Watts community members, Los Angeles looks a bit more complicated. The city has some real problems and a lot of ordinary people, sometimes underequipped or unskilled, are charged with solving them. In a project that looks like an army barracks (or a prison camp), the board members near begged for donations of backpacks for schoolchildren. Can police alone address such poverty? Can they give community members all the skills they need to fix their communities democratically? Is that even the police’s role? While everyone may have an opinion on how to prevent crime, they won’t always agree. After all, it’s not a simple problem. But at least for today, we got to see a chief of police and a guy named Bow-Wow working toward the same goal.