Amidst unconfirmed reports that the police union’s heralded no-confidence vote against the chief was delayed at this morning’s meeting, evidence is emerging that leaders of the uprising are committed to a Last Man Standing battle.
Of the jaw-set Police Officer Assn. leadership, including Adam Treanor, Charles Koffman and Brian Fitzpatrick, a department-linked source told the newspaper:
“They want the chief out. Not just to be damaged goods with a no-confidence vote. They want him gone. They will do whatever is necessary in their view to achieve their goal.
“These are tough, seasoned veterans. I would not call them cowboys, in the derisive way that police critics mean it. Let’s say they are aggressive officers with individual, and I emphasize individual, grudges or gripes, depending whether you are for or against them.
“These officers are not to be mistaken for team players.”
She said that among four previously unreported demands/complaints are:
• Assault rifles, to guard a community the old police chief boasted was practically crime free.
• A Swat team for a community that rarely if ever has needed one.
• Unhappy with a work schedule known in the jargon as “12/3,” three days on, 12 hours at a time, and four off.
• Unhappy with L cars, or patrol cars manned by a single officer. Riding around for hours by yourself in a low-crime community can get boring.
The carefully nurtured roots of this nascent, months-long rebellion of indeterminate size — that has not borne detectable fruit — lie in a muscular philosophical difference between contrasting approaches to policing.
Arriving four years ago last month from a posting in Signal Hill, Police Chief Don Pedersen has dedicated his term to changing the culture of a department contemptuously described as stultified and internally conflicted when 28 years of Ted Cooke’s iron reign ended seven years ago.
Mr. Pedersen, a softer but not flimsier version of the traditional steely-eyed cop image, is 30 years younger than The Legend and an advocate of the modern concept of community policing. He has introduced banks of new technology, and he has become a man of the community.
Mr. Cooke, who saw his role differently, did not brook the smallest dissent. He was an oldtime cop and most of what that concept connotes. You were with him or against him, and that dictated how you felt about Mr. Cooke and his record longevity.
Many loved and many loathed Mr. Cooke, then and now, active and former officers.
Mr. Cooke’s flame, say his department supporters, burns as brightly today as the November afternoon he reluctantly accepted five-figure “bonus stipend” to reluctantly walk toward the horizon.
After his retirement, many officers said the one-man-rule had frozen the department for decades in a 1960s mentality. “Pedersen,” they agree, “has brought us up to about the year 2000.”
The Cooke style intoxicatingly appealed to other cradle-to-grave-minded officers in the way that some Soviet citizens mourned when the Soviet Union was toppled — no longer would their every need be taken care of.
