Want to re-do Parker Center? Here's where to start ...
by Bill Murray

The first step in making a significant change to the "status quo" at Parker Center is an easy one, and meaningful to every officer, City official and Angeleno ... get the Commission a new meeting room. The press and public clamor for a way to be included in what's going on at Parker Center.

The recently refurbished City Hall has at least two rooms available for Commission meetings, rooms where television hookups exist ... and there's plenty of space for the community.

And frankly, the community is tired of being excluded.

The LA City Council meets in it's chambers but three times a week, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You're familiar with the spacious accommodations if you've ever caught a Council session on CityView, Channel 35.

The Police Commission has already met there, too, when it was considering the reappointment of Bernard Parks.

In that case, everyone was able to view the proceedings live on TV, because City Council has state-of-the-art facilities for itself, including flat screened monitors scattered throughout the room so that everyone present has a good view.

And then there's the Public Works Room just down the hall, also not used all the time. It's almost as big, and every bit as well appointed.

But even holding the meetings across the hall in the Parker Center Auditorium would be a step in the right direction.

Anything's better than the room the Commission's using now.

On a busy day, especially on a day the press decides to show up, its "standing room only" with people outside waiting in the hallway and angling at the doorway for any seat as soon as it becomes available.

Each local television station that decides to send a crew occupies at least three potential spots for community members, usually standing room along the rear wall, one for the reporter, one for the cameraperson, and a third for the tripod and camera itself.

A sign on the wall proclaims that the current locale can accommodate 60 people. But that's misleading. The first two rows of seats are reserved for City folk, Commission staff, Mayor's officials, City Council representatives and the like, and no doubt they need to be there.

Consent Decree people, Monitors from Kroll, are often in attendance, as are a variety of "special" (invited and self-invited) guests. They all get seats.

Then there's the problem of the administrative LAPD commanding officers who arrive early (most of them work in the building) and occupy the majority of the remaining seats. They attend because there's an agenda item or two on which they are expected to give a report. Often two or three officers are there for each item, and often there are several.

On occasion there have been a dozen or more brought to the meeting so that they could be seen by the Commission and receive special recognition.

At last week's meeting there was a single agenda item that dealt with prostitution. Apparently that's what drew the press. By my count there were a total of 18 "Regular" Agenda Items, along with numerous others devoted to Reports from the Commission, the Chief of Police, the Inspector General and the Executive Director.

Significant, pointed and intelligent discussion ensued on many of these topics, with Commissioners asking questions and expressing their points of view. But several Agenda Items had to be continued until future sessions. There just wasn't time to get through it all.

And where was I for most of the meeting? Along with several other community members I was standing in the hallway outside the room (again) craning to hear the single small speaker that's supposed to carry what's said at the meeting to those of us who couldn't fit inside.

I was standing there, scribbling notes, trying to make sense of what was being said (at the end of the day I'd taken 11 pages of them).

About 30 to 40 other people were in this hallway, most of them talking to each other, oblivious to the courtesy they'd need to display if we who wanted to hear were to understand what was going on.

The knob that controls the volume for this speaker is located just inside the Commission room doorway, about chest high on a wall. People keep leaning their back on it, turning the volume down, or off. Then there's the problem of Police Commissioners and those who come before them not speaking into the microphones. If one leans back or does not speak directly into these mikes, their audio is not carried anyway.

As the press departed, several chasing Tom LaBonge down the hallway for a soundbite about prostitution, the room began to have some space. First ones allowed in? Some "special" guests.

Finally, when sufficient officers had made their presentations, there was room for some of us from the community.

You want to re-do Parker Center? That's going to take money. As a Mayor's aid said at the last Commissiojn meeting City Hall does not have any more money and will have to be "creative" to find the funds even for the current budget (translation: take some things away from the community, or tax it higher).

Now don't get me wrong. Everyone of these people probably needs to be in attendance at the Commission meetings, and everyone who does manage to get there comes away impressed with how much the new Chief of Police, the Department itself, and the Commission that runs it are doing.

If you're going to build a case for spending money, I suggest letting the community see why.

Because otherwise all we get is hyperbolic and incorrect information, and sometimes downright lies, spread by even those who should (and do) know better.

Just last week, in an open community forum, I read the following audacious e-letter posted on a public email group list. They were written by a City Councilperson. This is part of the response to a question as to why there were not more patrol cars in a specific neighborhood:

I could not believe my eyes ...

And left unchecked, without the community being informed by being invited into the meetings (preferable on television) this kind of bad mouthing the Department will suceed in making an already difficult job for the Commission and new Chief that much worse.