"CHP advises their officers are in pursuit of a vehicle failing to yield southbound Paston-Foothill. Vehicle is a white Hyundai, license 2KFM 102." That message, broadcast at 12:47 a.m. on Sunday, March 3, 1991, by the Los Angeles emergency police dispatcher began one of the most disturbing episodes in the history of American policing. Moments later, the pursued vehicle left the freeway, and Los Angeles police officers joined the chase. Within minutes, the vehicle driven by Rodney King Jr., an African-American, was stopped on Foothill Boulevard. Rodney King left his car and George Holliday, a bystander with a video camera, recorded four Los Angeles police officers brutalizing Rodney King as some 20 other uniformed officers watched.

The police behavior was confirmed by three other eyewitnesses. But it was the vivid pictures of Rodney King, unresisting, and prone on the ground, being repeatedly kicked, hit with batons, and jolted by a taser gun, that shocked and sickened people everywhere. Television showed us pictures that do not fit the image we have of American police officers.

Mr. King was arrested and taken to the hospital with numerous injuries. The bones of his right eye socket were broken, and he suffered 11 broken bones at the base of his skull. The police joked about the beating on their radios and filed their reports. Rodney King's attorney prepared to file a complaint ofbrutality, and the police and legal bureaucracies proceeded at their usual pace until the videotape was shown on television the next day.

The Rodney King incident and the subsequent riots are not things that can only happen in Los Angeles. The conditions that produced the police behavior and attempted cover-up and the subsequent riots, are present in all large American cities and are linked to the high rates of crime and violence in the United States.

I believe we have not truly understood the magnitude of disillusionment with law the Rodney King incident caused, nor the ultimate impact it is likely to have on race relations, crime, and the economy. Los Angeles during the riots was like a scene from Beirut. Widespread fires, shootings, assaults, and looting led to the loss of more than 50 lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in property. Eight thousand troops were deployed before the disorder was finally brought under control. Unless policies are implemented to reverse present trends, the United States is likely to suffer more such mini-civil wars. The resulting instability will devastate the economy and cause a loss of capital and jobs to more stable areas such as Europe and Asia. And, we know more poverty and joblessness can only increase crime and racial tensions. Therefore, presidential candidates should specify now, how they intend to deal with the increasing polarization of our country. What are the details of their national strategies to prevent crime and disorder?

The Thin Blue Line Is Faltering

The FBI Crime Index indicates that there were almost fifteen million serious crimes committed in the United States during 1991, and that almost two million of those crimes were violent. So far there has been a sharp increase in both. The rate of violent crime is now the highest in three decades, and murder rates show that life is indeed cheap in the United States; an American is murdered every 20 minutes, and someone is hit by gunfire every 16 seconds. In addition, emergency room statistics and surveys indicate an increase in use of illegal drugs despite claims from Washington that we are winning the war against drugs.

At the same time, police forces across the country are suffering embarrassing disclosures. To name just a few: The mayor, the commander in chief of the police in Washington, D.C., was convicted of drug crimes by federal investigators after local officers were apparently ordered not to investigate.

In Detroit, Mich., and Rochester, N.Y., the police chiefs themselves were convicted of stealing confidential drug investigation funds. In San Francisco, the police chief had to be dismissed after it came to light that he had abused his authority by encouraging police officers to seize a newspaper containing an uncomplimentary picture of him.

In Milwaukee, police officers responding to-a call from citizens to help a dazed and helpless young man took him back to the man who would kill him. The cops shrugged it off as a gay quarrel, thus, allowing serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to continue his grisly career of murder.

In Dayton, Ohio, an officer in a neighborhood program aimed at drugs burned a drug suspect with a hot iron. In Miami, Hispanics rioted when six narcotic officers accused of beating a drug dealer to death were acquitted. In Boston, the FBI released a report castigating the police for slanting evidence in the Stuart case. Detectives produced false evidence implicating black men in the murder of a white woman. In this highly publicized case the woman's husband claimed she was murdered when their car broke down in a black neighborhood. It turned out that the husband had killed her and the white detectives had been all too eager to gather phony evidence that would have convicted an innocent man. A commission investigating the Boston police sharply criticized the police chief for his out-of-control department and implied that the chief had been selected not for his management ability but because of his long friendship with, and loyalty to, the Mayor.

Long Beach, Calif., a city of more than 400,000 is dissatisfied with its police department and considering disbanding it. Who will they hire? The Los Angeles Sheriffs Department, itself under investigation for corruption, brutality and racism.

This list of police departments in trouble is only a sample, but it shows a national pattern where even white citizens, let alone minorities, find it increasingly difficult to trust their police. How did we get to such a state? And what can be done about it?

The malaise in policing reflects our society and our politics. The King incident reveals our differences. Whites and minorities, haves and have-nots, suburbanites and city dwellers. We talk at each other, not with one another. Our words flash past the other's, hissing through the air like rounds from military assault rifles.

Most whites say, the police behavior on the King tape was wrong and the jury verdict unfortunate, but these things happen; it does not justify rioting. Minorities say, how much can we put up with? Police brutality and racism, discrimination and poverty are constant and they caused the riots. Whites say, people are accountable for what they do. We cannot allow looting, arson and assault. We must respect the law. Minorities ask, who holds the cops and politicians accountable when they break the law? Why is it that so many minorities are sent to prison while whites escape justice? Why should we respect the law? Whites say, we did not move away from cities because we are racist. We moved because we are sick of crime and violence. Minorities say, we live more and more in two societies — separate and unequal. Whites say, throwing money at problems does not work; look at the welfare system. Minorities will have to drag themselves up the economic ladder like other minority groups did during our country's history. Minorities say, hold on. Whites have ruled America and created the conditions producing drugs, crime and violence. You cannot walk away now and say it is our problem to solve.

And so it goes. Group competition and hostility have always been part of American society, and the police have always been in the middle of this group conflict and always criticized for being part of the problem and not part of the solution. Understanding what went wrong is essential if we are to improve. Most whites and indeed most police officers do not realize that historically many complaints of discrimination against the police were justified. The first American police forces were established in the 1840s when cities were controlled by corrupt political machines interested in their own continued power and not police reform. Ironically, the first sustained police reform movement started in Los Angles after World War II.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s California did away with partisan local elections; in Los Angeles the police chief was, in effect, given lifetime tenure in office and independence from elected officials. This politically independent form of policing was, until recently, thought necessary to prevent police corruption. But as recent events in Los Angeles have shown, the city paid a heavy price for violating a basic rule of democracy: The military and the police must be under civilian control.

The Christopher Commission appointed to investigate the Los Angeles Police Department after the King videotape, found institutionalized police racism and unnecessary use of force covered up by a police code of silence and complicit police management. Both the police and those they serve were dehumanized by the police culture. The commission's findings vindicated years of complaints by the city's minorities and repudiated the denials of those complaints by the police chief and the police union.

If the police are controlled by a heavy hand from city hall, however, we get equally bad results. For example, years ago, when Officer Frank Serpico of the New York City Police Department reported that some of his fellow vice officers were corrupt, one of the mayor's top assistants tried to squelch the investigation because the mayor was coming up for election and could not afford a fight with the powerful police union. The police department, with city hall support, tried to suppress Serpico's complaint until media disclosure led to a scandal and appointment of an investigation commission. In both Los Angeles and New York, the establishment, locally elected officials, police brass, and police unions fought against exposure and reform.

We have been both too demanding of our police and not demanding enough. We demand that they engage in wars to stop crime and drug use when it is clear that such efforts do not work and alienate the minority community. And, we do not demand enough when we tolerate conditions permitting racist, brutal and unprofessional cops to remain on the police force.

The Police, Crime and Drug Abuse

For more than a decade the United States has engaged in a highly publicized war on drugs. Police arrest rates are at an all-time high, our courts, inundated, our jails and prisons let violent criminals out to make room for new arrivals and our state and local governments are in fiscal crisis, closing schools and laying off teachers as we build more prisons and hire more police, judges and correctional personnel. Yet, our crime rates are soaring, drug abuse is increasing, and the purchase of firearms continues at its frantic and destructive pace. Clearly, the law-and-order model has not lived up to the promises of our tough-talking politicians.

For many years our national policy said we cannot acknowledge that there are underlying causes of crime because that would undermine the individual responsibility and the sense of values needed in a democratic society. Law and order proponents pointed out that even in the poorest ghettos, many if not most people do not commit crime; therefore there is no root cause of crime, arguing that people will not commit crimes if they fear being locked up. So, we increased arrests, swamped the courts and overburdened our prisons.

Unfortunately, this economic, rational behavior model does not affect many people who violate the law, especially those from the inner city. I spent the first 10 years of my police career in Harlem and saw a great deal of crime and violence adding to the misery of people forced to live there because of the color of their skin. In one case, I arrested a burglar wrapped in stolen garments who fell from the top of an apartment building when the rope he used to lower himself into his victims' windows broke. Probably, the most valuable thing he had taken was a bottle of Old Grandad bourbon which, incredibly, did not break during his fall. The burglar never regained consciousness and died a few days later. But to this day the question one of his elderly victims asked me sticks in my mind. "Officer," he said, "why did he steal from me? I don't have anything."

Why, indeed? Under the rational behavior model in which the threat of incarceration looms large, the forty-five-year-old burglar would not have risked his life and freedom for so little gain. Nor would today's teenagers deal in dope and gunfire when such activity is likely to bring death or imprisonment before they reach the age of twenty. But, if that kind of behavior is all you see as a child you are likely to act the same way.

During my years in Harlem I also helped thirteen-and fourteen-year old girls into ambulances to take them to the hospital to have their first babies. Poor areas like Harlem, then and now, are denied the opportunities for birth control and abortion routinely available to the more affluent. You do not have to be a Harvard criminologist to know that the child born to a teenage mother in Harlem is more likely to go into the streets and to get into gangs, crime and drugs than the same child born in Scarsdale, regardless of the calculations of law-and-order economists. I might mention that this sexual behavior was occurring long before the "Murphy Brown" television show was even a gleam in the eye of a producer.

The truth America shrinks from is that although we cannot say that every child exposed to a slum environment turns into a criminal, the ones who do not are not "normal" among their peers. The proliferation of powerful firearms means, of course, that -these children without hope have easy access to deadly weapons. Poverty, illegitimacy, illiteracy, welfare dependency, school failure and discrimination may not cause everyone to commit crime, but they produce neighborhoods with such high levels of crime and violence that a cycle of failure and hopelessness is inevitable. The increased likelihood of arrest and imprisonment have not improved life in the slums, where life expectancy has actually diminished as the drug war, police arrests and imprisonment accelerated. The past decade has shown us that we need dramatic new ways to educate youngsters to help them develop a sense of right and wrong that creates respect for the rights of others. The criminal justice process is only effective when it reinforces societal values.

Trying to understand why rioting, crime and drug abuse occur does not mean that we excuse such behavior anymore than a physician's attempt to understand the causes of disease indicates a lack of concern for the patient. The challenge is to make the values of inner city kids match those of more fortunate youngsters. It is not an easy task but we know some things that do not work and a few that show promise.

The Causes and Effects of Bad Policing

Paramilitary policing occurs when the police subculture is remote from the community. To give you an example. A woman approached me one day when I was on foot patrol in Harlem.

"Excuse me officer," she said "I know you're busy."

I was not at all busy. As I recall I was standing there mentally lamenting the fact that my favorite baseball team was leaving the Polo Grounds to move to San Francisco.

"I don't want to disturb you," the woman continued, "but I was just robbed."

I remember wondering what kind of image we had with people. But, at the time, the police felt their job was to arrest criminals and citizens got in the way. The New York City Police Department even had a rule that members of the force were forbidden to engage in unnecessary conversation with the public. In other words, cops were busy looking for criminals. Later research showed that without public cooperation in reporting crime and serving as witnesses the police cannot be effective.

Paramilitary policing never got the message. It never lived up to claims that tough impersonal arrest-happy- cops reduce crime. On the contrary, crime increased in paramilitary Los Angeles and decreased under community-based policing in San Jose. Community-based policing may not have been the only factor leading San Jose to becoming the safest large city in America but it helped.

Under community policing, officers do more than just respond to calls and arrest law breakers. The cops meet with and work with neighborhood residents to prevent graffiti, clear abandoned cars from the streets, obtain needed streetlights, stop signs and a variety of other amenities that make an area livable. In short, the police are part of a community trying to improve, instead of aloof warriors against crime. The San Jose experience shows that significant reductions in crime are possible without resorting to paramilitary policing that exacerbates racial tensions and increases the potential for Rodney King-type incidents and riots.

Bad policing such as we saw in Los Angeles is easy to spot and difficult to prevent. People frequently ask why Daryl Gates has not been dismissed as police chief after accusations of insubordination, incompe tence and lack of stability. The reason is that the Los Angeles police commission, which supervises the police department, is not sure that the civil service commission would uphold its dismissal. Under civil service rules, Gates could appeal such a firing to the civil service commission causing a time-consuming, costly and uncertain legal process.

Daryl Gates' behavior may make it hard to believe that he cannot easily be removed from office; yet it is even more difficult in most cities to fire rankand-file officers. Most police scandals arise when bad cops go undisciplined and then get in worse trouble. This lack of discipline stems from a number of factors: For example, the mayor and members of the city council are usually anxious to be endorsed by the powerful police unions, which, like the National Rifle Association, are skilled in exploiting the fear of crime. Another factor is that one payback for political support is appointing people to civil service commissions who are sympathetic to employees brought up on charges. Commonly across the United States, civil service commissions overturn police discipline even in cases of serious misconduct. When I was police chief a number of San Jose politicians, motivated by self interest, sided with the police union to limit management authority.

Police chiefs are understandably cautious in bringing disciplinary actions that may not succeed because they can them be attacked by the police union and sued by the accused officers. As a consequence, too many people who are unfit to wear a badge escape discipline or are reinstated by civil service commissions.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of officers are dedicated professionals who risk their lives daily to keep our communities safe; unfortunately, the code of silence, which is nurtured by police unions and rarely acknowledged by police chiefs, is alive and well in every sizable police agency. As the Rodney King case made clear, the few bad cops are often protected by that code. Sadly, the corrupt, racist, or brutal minority do great damage to their victims, the community and the reputation of their fellow cops.

When I became police chief of San Jose, I found a Los Angeles-type police department with a racist culture, a number of brutal officers and a strong code of silence. Through the years, with the help of dedicated people in the organization, unfit officers were weeded out and a community partnership model of policing replaced the military model. But it was a close call. I received a vote of no confidence from the police union, which opposed every reform. My boss, the city manager, was fired, and the word was I was next. There was a police strike and a campaign by the union to remove me as chief. I was spared only because the political power of the police union was broken when the council member whom the union supported for mayor was sent to prison for extortion relating to a zoning change. Cities need a better balance between the power of police unions and neighborhood-based coalitions.

The Police Executive Research Forum made up of the most progressive police executives in the United States, suggests that police chiefs be selected through a nonpartisan, professional hiring process and be given a five-year contract with clearly specified duties as well as procedures for removal for misconduct or incompetence. This ensures that the chief will be sensitive to the community and at the same time able to stand up to improper political influence.

Professional hiring and reasonable tenure for the police chief also undermine the code of silence that exists because police officers are afraid that political pressure might cause them to be punished unfairly. A police chief should, regardless of fear of losing his job, support officers who are properly doing their duty. Cops, however, like voters this year, are not filled with confidence in the integrity of politicians or those who serve at their pleasure. Interestingly, it is the establishment — the politicians and the police unions — who are fiercely opposed to the possibility of a professional and independent police chief.

Some cities, angry over police brutality, have established citizen review boards, which unfortunately have not improved either police performance or public confidence. I believe review boards strengthen the code of silence and may lower the level of service.

Someone recently told me that when visiting New York he chatted at a party with a policeman who worked in Harlem. "Isn't that dangerous?" He asked. "Not if you mind your own business." The policeman responded.

During the early stages of the riot in Los Angeles we saw the tragic result when the cops "minded their own business" and abandoned neighborhoods and innocent citizens to mobs.

Although less dramatic, when cops shirk their day-to-day duties, the result for crime-ridden neighborhoods is equally tragic. Obtaining a balance whereby properly performing cops are confident of support and citizens are confident they will not be abused by the police is not an easy task, but it is a vital one.

A Blueprint for Change

The future well-being of our country depends on our ability to improve life for people in poor neighborhoods. As John Donne told us, "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." Improvement requires not only changes in policing, but also, leadership on the national and local levels.

National Action

1) On the national level we should declare an end to the war on drugs. War-like police lead to Rodney King-type tragedies that weaken efforts to instill positive values among minority youngsters. After the Simi Valley jury acquitted the four officers, an elderly black minister on a talk show asked a chilling questiop, "All my life I've counseled young men to stay straight and, despite temptations, to respect the law. What do I tell them now?"

2) Funding should be reversed; 30 percent goes for semi-enforcement, so that 70 percent of the budget can be for prevention and treatment. Reducing the demand for drugs will reduce black market profits and the gang violence associated with drug dealing.

3)We should declare a public health campaign against drugs. The consumption of cigarettes, hard liquor and high cholesterol foods has lessened without criminal sanctions. An educational campaign worked; the war on drugs has not.

4) We should immediately decriminalize marijuana, which is far less damaging than the drug alcohol. Decriminalization would allow law enforcement to invest more resources against murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, kidnapping and child molesting. The results of decriminalizing marijuana could also provide information as to whether laws affecting other drugs could be safely changed.

5) The federal government should expand programs such as Head Start, the Job Corps and Small Business Association loans to inner city businesses. Programs like Boot Camps and Civilian Conservation Corps should be made available to help teenagers in trouble.

6) Family planning programs should be provided to any neighborhood that requests them.

7) The federal government should support experimental Neighborhood Leadership Councils in identifying and solving community problems. Councils should be encouraged to explore ways to develop positive values among young people and to break the cycle of illegitimacy, illiteracy, welfare and failure.

8) Community policing programs associated with Neighborhood Leadership Councils should be established.

9) FBI training for local police should be expanded to emphasize community policing and the drawbacks of paramilitary policing and prejudice in law enforcement.

10) Military assault rifles should be outlawed and the Brady Bill restricting handguns passed independent of any national crime bill.

11) The president should convene a blue-ribbon commission to recommend new approaches to crime prevention and control.

State and Local Action

1) State laws should empower neighborhoods to establish Gun-Free Zones in which five-year mandatory prison sentences would be given to anyone carrying a loaded firearm in the zone without a license.

2) State laws that prevent publicizing information about police disciplinary actions should be repealed.

3) Local governments should provide opportunities for Neighborhood Leadership Councils to have input into police selection, training, supervision and community-based programing.

4) Local news media should inform their audience as to how the police disciplinary system and civil service system work.

5) Schools should provide mandatory elementary school classes on nonviolent ways to resolve conflicts.

6) Programs involving businesses in education and neighborhood improvement efforts should be encouraged.

Summary

The blue line has faltered, crime and violence have greatly increased, and drug abuse is at best unchanged but is probably increasing. Meanwhile, we are bankrupting our city, state and county governments through increased police, judicial and correc tional costs of the drug war. We have allowed a military style of policing required by a drug war that criminalizes and alienates minority youth while offering criminal-lifestyle alternatives that make mock efforts to motivate underprivileged kids to go to college and live successful law-abiding lives.

We have been both too demanding of our cops and not demanding enough. We ask them to prevent crime and drug use, yet allow a permanent underclass and ignore the history of mind-altering substances and black market profits that began after drugs were criminalized in 1914.

We allow unethical and brutal methods by the police, because we bought the law and order line that there is a war going on and we cannot get too picky about what our soldiers do to protect us from the "barbarians."

But we have the right to demand better service from the White House, the Congress, the State House, City Hall, police chiefs, the police unions and rankand-file officers. The beneficiaries will be all of us including the overwhelming majority of decent cops who risk their lives to protect us.

Joseph D. McNamara, former police chief of San Jose, Calif, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Mr. McNamara is the winner of the 1992 H.B. Spear Award for Achievement in the Field of Control and Enforcement.