Second in a series
Re “Chief Cooke’s Unique Gifts for Culver City”
In the midst of lauding former Chief Ted Cooke’s “amazingly visionary” education of the Culver City Police Dept. during his nearly 30-year reign, Allen Azran philosophized for a moment.
“Ted Cooke taught us, ‘Don’t do things just because you can,’” he said. “As a police officer, we have a tremendous amount of power. We have a tremendous amount of discretion.
“Just because you can impound somebody’s or just you can arrest somebody or just because you can issue someone a ticket, doesn’t make sense considering the circumstances. That was always taught to us.”
Mr. Azran, who retired last December as acting assistant police chief, said that a central lesson of the controversial Chief Cooke was “that we were not robots. We were allowed to use discretion.
“He was very strong. No doubt about that. But under Ted Cooke’s leadership, this police department grew from 50 or 60 officers to over 100. That was him recognizing what needed to be done in order to make this community safer.
“He had supportive elected officials who allowed the department to grow,” Mr. Azran said.
“Really, the foundation for where we are today is – and I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this – from Ted Cooke.”
(To be continued)
4 Comments on “Ted Cooke’s Legacy Shines Brilliantly”
Ted Cooke did many good deeds for individuals and the city. Glad Azran reminded the columnist that there is more to the Ted Cooke legacy than the naysayers would like revealed.
I had heard from my African American neighbors that he was pretty racist.
It is easy to call someone a racist, but without him publicaly showing you proof, it is just his opinion. I can say as a life long resident neither my husband nor I ever found that to be the case. He was tough on crime which made our city a good place to live back when Culver City was not the destination it is today. Culver City PD is and has been as diverse as the city under Ted Cooke and under our current Chief’s leadership.
I understand your point of view Ms Wasserman. It’s the opinion of a few people of color and I am new to Culver City however I understand he hired one of the officers that was fired following the beating of Rodney King. I guess that wasn’t terribly smart if he was keen to reach out and represent all members of the community. I can’t imagine that sent the right message to the large African American and Latino population here in Culver.