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The list was too short. Fuhrman wasn't on it, and new rogues keep coming. Last month Detective William Jang was charged with offering to fix a case in exchange for a $3,000 bribe, and a grand jury began investigating Detective Raymond L. Doyle for allegedly forging a judge's name on a warrant. These are the sort of rogue-cop tricks Fuhrman boasted about in his interviews with screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny. Yet on the day of the O.J. verdict, when Chief Williams commented on the public's obvious loss of faith in his department, he could muster nothing better than the police world's hoariest cliche: "The few bad apples that came out in the trial," he said, "are not reflective of the L.A.P.D."
Those words signaled a new low for L.A.'s first African-American police chief, who has been reaching for middle ground--trying to bolster morale without alienating the black community--but missing as often as not. Although Williams, unlike his department, still finds approval among the public, he hasn't won over his rank and file. In a recent poll by the city's police union, 83% of officers said they did not believe he can effectively lead them. "Willie wants to have the respect of the community and the loyalty of the department," says Ramona Ripston, executive director of the A.C.L.U. Foundation of Southern California. "But it's not possible. [Former Police Chief] Daryl Gates wooed the department. He didn't care what the community thought."
That strategy encouraged a martial policing style that led to the 1991 King beating, the crisis that forced the city's five-member police commission to replace Gates. Williams, who had been Philadelphia's chief, arrived in Los Angeles the next year promising to reform the department's "paramilitary mentality." But the outsider allowed Gates' entire command staff to stay on the job and failed to oust most of the 44 problem officers. He didn't remake the department, and he couldn't be the patrolman's pit bull, as Gates had been. So now he courts irrelevance.
"Williams keeps talking about reform,'' says Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, a former police commission president, "but I did not see him lift a finger to implement it." Greenebaum recently resigned to protest a scandal in which Williams accepted free lodging during five trips to Las Vegas, then lied about doing so. The city council backed Williams over Greenebaum's police commission, but Williams filed a claim against the city for leaking the report, then settled out of court--a shabby little sideshow to the O.J. spectacle.
Greenebaum and others point to some signs of progress. The police chief, for example, is now limited to two five-year terms. And a new inspector general, who reports directly to the police commission, may offer much needed oversight. The A.C.L.U.'s Ripston notes that brutality complaints have dropped. (They were down to 1,506 last year, from 1,825 in 1993.) Williams' boosters say the L.A.P.D. is more sensitive because of him, but no one credibly argues that the core problem has been solved. L.A.'s cop culture still has room for arrogant "cowboys" who ride roughshod over the civil rights of others while scoffing at cops who try to defuse street confrontation. "There's still an element that's being tolerated, if not promoted and allowed to thrive," says Greenebaum.