A month ago, not long after news broke that Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore had allegedly ordered an investigation into Mayor Karen Bass's scholarship to USC, a group of civic and religious leaders Black people gathered at a church in South Los Angeles to make some demands.
“If LAPD Chief Moore has ordered detectives to investigate our mayor, Karen Bass, based on a personal agenda, we ask that he resign immediately,” KW Tulloss, pastor and president of the Baptist Ministers Conference, told reporters. of the Angels. “What if she doesn't resign? “We are calling on the Los Angeles Police Commission to remove him immediately.”
Later, Tulloss told me that, until then, the Baptist Ministers' Conference had a “pretty decent” relationship with Moore.
“But at the end of the day, we all support our mayor and every time we feel like she's being undermined, those relationships can change,” she explained. “We have very few opportunities to do well. And I think our mayor is doing the best she can.”
“We rarely step up unless it's really important,” Tulloss added.
On Friday, Bass and Moore appeared before reporters at Los Angeles City Hall to announce that the chief would resign at the end of February, years earlier than many expected when he was appointed to a second term just a year ago.
The story is that Moore approached Bass to explain that “his schedule was moving forward to spend more time with his family,” the mayor explained. And, in fact, Moore choked up as he repeatedly talked about missing her daughter and wanting to retire and move in with her wife to be closer to her in her “golden years.” .
“It has been my honor and privilege to serve for more than four decades in the best police department in the world and for the last five and a half years as chief,” Moore said.
He will stay on to serve in an “advisory capacity” to whomever the Los Angeles Police Commission selects as an interim replacement while a nationwide search for a permanent successor is conducted.
In the meantime, I'm sure there will be plenty of speculation that the real reason Moore is leaving is because he got angry with Bass, to echo the outrage of those black civic and religious leaders.
In December, my Times colleagues Libor Jany and Richard Winton revealed a whistleblower complaint, accusing the chief of directing two LAPD detectives to investigate the then-newly elected mayor over a $95,000 grant she received for the program. of social work at USC.
That scholarship, although awarded years ago, became a point of contention in 2022, when federal prosecutors called it “critical” to their sprawling corruption case against a former USC dean and longtime political ally of Bass, the former Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley. Thomas.
Prosecutors never accused Bass of wrongdoing. But during her campaign for mayor, the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League spent nearly $2 million on television ads suggesting she was guilty of the same kind of quid pro quo corruption for which Ridley-Thomas was ultimately convicted.
So you can see how accusations that Moore wanted to investigate this could strike a chord.
The chief has repeatedly denied any involvement and did so again angrily on Friday. Bass, meanwhile, echoed Moore and said the whistleblower's complaint had nothing to do with his decision to retire early and that there was “no light” between them, a phrase that appears to be having a moment in Democratic political circles. . But I digress.
The truth is that none of this intrigue and political posturing really matters. Not for the people of Los Angeles.
There are so many much bigger reasons why Moore needed to leave early, and just as many reasons to hope the city can do better for Angelenos under its next boss.
When asked what his successor should prioritize, Moore rattled off a list.
“Listen, understand the needs of our communities. To understand perceptions,” she said. “Be aware of the city's overall efforts to look to Los Angeles [and ask] What does security mean to you?
“To ensure this department stays on a strategic path,” Moore added. “May we avoid the mistakes we have made in the past. Let us not try to force our way out. That not everything is a police function or police responsibility.”
I agree with all that. Too bad that, under Moore's leadership, the LAPD hasn't done enough on almost any of that, even as the department's budget has continued to rise.
There have been a number of cases involving officer misconduct, from gang unit cops accused of stealing and making illegal arrests, to the deputy chief accused of tracking down an officer with whom he had been romantically involved.
Before that, there was the sloppy work that led an LAPD bomb squad to accidentally blow up an entire South Los Angeles neighborhood in 2021. After carelessly stacking too many fireworks in a containment container and then detonating it, Cars were overturned, windows were broken and homes were destroyed, upending the lives of dozens of working-class Latino residents.
And it was a year ago, this Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, that hundreds of people headed to Venice and stood outside, in a cold, relentless downpour, at a vigil in memory of Keenan Anderson, a black man who He went into cardiac arrest and died after being repeatedly tased by Los Angeles police officers. .
Anderson received the most attention because he was the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. But he was just one of three men of color who died in the first weeks of 2023 after encounters with Los Angeles police.
All three were in the midst of mental health crises, and in each case, officers inexplicably failed to ask mental health workers to help deescalate the tension, despite previously agreed-upon reforms.
These cases, along with those of many other Angelenos who continue to die or be injured in police shootings, despite overall declining crime rates, led activists to call for Moore's resignation. They gathered on the steps of City Hall to ask Bass not to reappoint him for a second five-year term.
But last January, a month after Bass took over as mayor, she endorsed Moore, but with some caveats. In a letter to the Police Commission, she called for more reforms to the LAPD.
“The three deaths underscore the need for continued and meaningful reform of how the city approaches public safety,” Bass wrote.
I would settle for a new chief who prioritizes enforcing reforms already on the books, whether that's finally reining in the heavy-handed tactics officers use against activists and journalists during protests, or addressing the racial profiling that apparently still prevails. as detailed in the latest report from the California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board.
Melina Abdullah, founder of Black Lives Matter-LA and one of Moore's fiercest critics, believes it was “the people,” fed-up Los Angeles residents, who forced the chief's resignation. And it's true that even the Baptist Ministers' Conference had apparently had enough.
“During my tenure, I know I've made mistakes and missteps,” Moore said Friday. “But I am also confident that my work has been successful on a broad spectrum of issues that no other law enforcement agency in this country can match.”
Los Angeles can still do better.
