LAPD Chief Charlie Beck's Poodle/Political Problem

Charlie Beck is a cop through and through, but last week he was introduced wholeheartedly to a world apart from crime stats and pressed blues: He became, essentially, a politician. Urged on by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who picked Beck as the 55th chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, the longtime cop accompanied him on a series of town hall meetings, at which Beck repeated what seemed to be well-coached talking points, including, “Cops count, character counts.”

As Villaraigosa backslapped, Beck gave his canned speeches and answered questions about graffiti, gangs and senior lead officers. The pair showed up in South Los Angeles, Van Nuys, El Sereno, the Westside and other spots before an expected easy confirmation by the Los Angeles City Council.

In South L.A., the splashing of the gleaming, new Exposition Center pool could be heard during Beck’s chat. At Van Nuys City Hall, the lights seemed to flicker each time the topic of terrorism was raised, spooking the silver-haired crowd. At the El Sereno Senior Center, soliloquies were dished out under a disco ball.

At one point in El Sereno, Beck established some distance between himself and the departed Chief William Bratton, the man who pushed him for the job. He said that while Bratton cleaned the top ranks of the LAPD and installed progressive, transparent leadership unseen in the department of old, Beck would make sure rank-and-file officers followed suit.

“A really difficult challenge for him was to drive it deeper because he doesn’t understand the rank and file at the level that is needed to push this deeper,” Beck said. “I do. That’s the difference.”

The Eastside crowd went wild. The lifelong law enforcer, whose father was a cop and whose children are cops, was already putting on a show. He’d raised eyebrows by sending out an introductory note, using the mayor’s e-mail account last week, causing some to wonder if Beck is entirely too close to the TV-loving, politically struggling Villaraigosa.

The thing is, Beck’s not running for office. In this sometimes-bizarre city, prospective chiefs don’t meet and greet the public before they get the job. The campaigning happens after the mayor has made a selection from a short list created by the Police Commission. Beck’s an insider, sure, but one whose own evolution took him from company man to reformer — and he isn’t a problematic choice for most.

Rather, for some City Hall critics, a problem lies with a backroom process that was so rapid and, perhaps, so prejudiced toward the man backed by Bratton that few outsiders applied for what is the brass ring of the police world.

“Beck was never in doubt,” says Ron Kaye, former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News and publisher of ronkayela.com. “The dog-and-pony shows after he’s been selected by the mayor, and going to meet the council for a bunch of softballs ... it was always a done deal. There wasn’t any real process or search that was conducted.”

While tiny Beverly Hills conducted a three-month, nationwide search just for a new city manager, the nation’s most prestigious policing job was all but filled after about a month. Community meetings to gather input for the mayor-appointed Police Commission, which chose three finalists, were not half as well-publicized as Beck and Villaraigosa’s after-the-fact town hall meetings.

“We’re meant to be passive bystanders,” argues Kaye, “being sold whatever they want to sell.”

While two anonymous outsiders were on a list of semifinalists, such big-gun names as San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon and Miami Police Chief John Timoney did not turn up as finalists. The process was seen by some as a mayoral ramrod down the public’s throat of Bratton’s favorite soldier.

The town hall meetings only serve as fresh opportunities for Villaraigosa to get television time on the issue of crime.

UC Irvine Law School Dean Irwin Chemerinsky, a longtime City Hall watcher, doesn’t mind the rapid regime change but says, “My own preference would have been if they went outside the department” for chief. “I think part of Bratton’s success was that he was an outsider.”

The mayor insists that his choice of Beck was not preordained by the influence of the uberpopular Bratton. “I had a completely open mind from the beginning,” he tells L.A.Weekly. Although it is widely known now that the Police Commission was irritated when Villaraigosa undercut it by publicly announcing during the summer that a chief would be chosen by the fall, making it all but impossible politically for the Police Commission to launch a serious nationwide search that takes months, one commission member, Alan J. Skobin, says, “I don’t believe that Beck was anointed. I really don’t.”

And while many people seem to agree that Beck will continue the seven years of crime-reducing work by Bratton, some would have cast their votes differently — had they been given the chance.