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Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing

Brooklyn BookBeat

August 24, 2015 By Peter Stamelman Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Joe Domanick, author of “Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing.” Photo by Andrea Domanick
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Simon & Schuster’s publication of Joe Domanick’s “Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing” could not be more timely, coming at the height of a national conversation about public trust in policing. The ubiquity of video and social media has only intensified this dialogue. While the book’s subject is ostensibly the LAPD, the issues and questions it raises apply to every police department from Ferguson to Baltimore to New York.

In fact, the book contains many deep connections to New York, the most noteworthy being the hiring in 2002 of William J. Bratton to be chief of the LAPD. (In his acknowledgements, Domanick writes that Bratton is “second only to the LAPD as a character in ‘Blue.’”)

At the time Bratton became chief, the department was reeling from the fall-out from the 2000 South Central Rampart Division Corruption scandal, the failed policies of his two immediate predecessors and the deep mistrust of both the black and Latino communities. Bratton arrived with great expectations: he had been hired based on his reforming both the New York City Transit Police and the NYPD.

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Domanick writes: “By institutionalizing efficient policing tactics such as COMPSTAT — which mapped, tracked, and swiftly and skillfully massed officers in in areas where crimes were occurring — and holding captains accountable for crimes in their precincts, Bratton proved that cops could actually play an important part in long-term crime reduction, as opposed to simply reacting to individual crimes after they occurred, as they’d done in the past.”

But successfully implementing the strategy, and getting buy-in from the third largest police department in the U.S., in a city encompassing an area of 473 square miles and a population of approximately 3.8 million people, was (and is) a tall order. As Domanick points out in his nuanced epilogue, the jury is still out regarding Bratton’s legacy in Los Angeles.

While the book is filled with important insights and compelling situations and characters, perhaps Domanick’s most impressive accomplishment in the 400-plus page opus, is managing to keep so many storylines running so smoothly: the department’s beginnings as an extension of Los Angeles’ conservative, reactionary business interests; the controversial tenures of William Parker, Edward M. “Crazy Ed” Davis and Daryl Gates; the ‘65 Watts riots; the 1991 LAPD beating of Rodney King; the 1992 riots following the acquittal of all four cops on trial for the beating; the 1994 car chase, arrest and subsequent 134-day trial of OJ Simpson, ending in an October, 1995 “not guilty” verdict and the reaction that followed that acquittal; the 2000 South Central Rampart Division corruption scandal; the 2002 hiring of Bratton to reform the LAPD (and his subsequent 2014 return to New York to lead the NYPD ), and, finally, Charlie Beck’s promotion to chief, a choice Bratton very much supported and championed.  (With all these characters and locations, my only quibble is the absence of photographs and maps, especially for non-Angeleno readers.)

In a telephone interview, I asked Domanick how he managed to be so comprehensive yet never lose his narrative momentum. “I was trained as a journalist, I’m used to telling complicated stories,” he explained. “I wanted each character and incident to represent something. Since I had done all my interviews before I began writing, I knew what I had and how I wanted to structure it. And I knew I wanted the book to read smoothly.”

He also knew early on that he wanted Charlie Beck, Bratton’s successor as LAPD chief, to be the linchpin of the narrative. “I had known Charlie Beck from early in his LAPD career and had interviewed and profiled him many times,” Domanick told me. “He had, and continues to have, the ability to think both strategically and analytically. And he has a charismatic warmth that puts people at ease.”

Beck is also the son of a retired LAPD deputy chief, the brother of an LAPD officer and the husband of a Los Angeles County sheriff. In addition, his son and daughter are LAPD officers. If Bratton is the book’s intellectual heavyweight, Beck is its heart and soul.

By his scrupulous research, and in his forceful writing, Domanick makes it clear that even with a Bratton or a Beck at the helm, there are no easy answers for the issues and problems confronting all big city (and small — look no further than Ferguson) police departments today. His book is a bracing corrective to the idea, bandied about politicians and right wing radio hosts, that there are quick fixes.

Our nation’s police departments have been broken for a long time; as Domanick makes strikingly clear, fixing them will take commitment, determination, innovation and endurance. A good way to start should be adding a copy of “Blue” to the syllabus of every police academy in the country. No rookie should hit the streets without having read it — and it wouldn’t hurt to buy some extra copies for the top brass.

Peter Stamelman, who grew up on Eastern Parkway, lived and worked as a talent agent in Los Angeles from 1975-2005. He has written for Sight & Sound, New West, Playboy, Scene 360 and Screen Magazine. He still remembers watching Dragnet on the family Philco.


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