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"This is beautiful community relations," argues the chief. "The policeman gets to know people. They identify with him, and the chances of one of them throwing a rock at him or at a police car are less. It's the most expensive way of deploying policemen, but in the long run it could very well turn out to be the least expensive." Other cities that had cut back on foot patrolmen are also discovering new virtues in old ways. "When I was walking a beat," remembers St. Louis' Chief Brostron, "the policeman knew the good people and the bad ones, the joints and the gambling dens. The officer in the car today doesn't have that contact." Still, with the huge expenses of foot patrol, no chief can possibly plan to abandon the economies or the speed of the prowl car or bring back the man on foot in anything like the old numbers.
Monsters with Badges. The Reddin blueprint pays attention to the young—rather self-consciously. Fourteen officers, each known as "Policeman Bill," are assigned to the city schools' first, second and third grades, where they tell children about the policeman's job. It all sounds a little cloying. Even so, before one "Policeman Bill's" visit, a survey showed, ghetto children portrayed cops as monsters with whips and flashing silver badges. After he left, they scrawled kindly father figures. To woo teenagers, almost always the troublemakers in ghetto disturbances, the L.A.P.D. has experimentally hired twelve youths for help on such minor but ticklish assignments as mediating family disputes. The program so far has shown encouraging signs of success.
Reddin's schemes for better commu nity relations have not worked miracles or turned Watts into a place where happy kiddies constantly listen to stories from avuncular cops. Nonetheless, police are relatively safe in Watts, something that cannot be said for all the nation's ghettos. Though most members of minorities like Reddin's ideas, many Negro militants still refuse to talk with the police. Some, like US (US is black people; whites would be THEM) Chief Ron Karenga, insist that Chief Parker's out-and-out hostility would be preferable to Reddin's firm amiability. The police, says Karenga, are still a neocolonial force in the ghetto. "They are not protecting us. They are controlling us." Karenga complains that the only function of Reddin's community councils is to release Negro frustrations through talk, without bringing effective action. Arthur Garcia, a Mexican-American spokesman, claims that only yes men sit on his community's councils. Felix Gutierrez, another Latin leader, notes that the L.A.P.D. still refuses to lower the height requirements so that Mexican-Americans, who tend to be shorter than other Angelenos, can join the force. (By contrast, New York has cut an inch off its previous 5 ft. 8 in. minimum to attract more Puerto Ricans.) One Mexican-American says that a riot in L.A.'s Latin ghetto would have been inconceivable two years ago; now, he fears, "things might start to blow around here."