NY crime-buster to take over troubled Los Angeles police

The police chief credited with spearheading New York's dramatic fall in crime during the Nineties was given perhaps the toughest law enforcement job in America yesterday: turning around the perennially troubled, scandal-ridden, morale-battered Los Angeles Police Department.

The appointment of William Bratton, a pioneer of intensive zone-by-zone policing in New York's toughest neighbourhoods, as the LAPD's new chief marked a radical change in the way the Los Angeles force has traditionally liked to run things. Mr Bratton is by far the most prominent outsider to take on a job that has been intimately bound up in the power politics of the City of Angels, and in the secretive, inward-looking culture of the LAPD itself.

His appointment was largely the doing of LA's Mayor, James Hahn, who boldly dismissed the previous chief, Bernard Parks, a career LAPD man and an African American vigorously championed by many of the black voters who secured Mr Hahn's election 18 months ago. Mayor Hahn infuriated many inside and outside the LAPD, but he also caused others to reconsider his reputation as an ineffectual civic leader. Yesterday, he was hailed in many quarters for his courage in wanting to bring about the most wide-ranging reforms of the police department in half a century, with the caveat that if Mr Bratton fails, Mayor Hahn will almost certainly go down with him.

The LAPD has never fully recovered from the impact of the riots 10 years ago, when its hardline tactics, systemic racism and inability to discipline its own officers were widely blamed for creating the climate in which the streets could be set ablaze. Some of the racism has dissipated, thanks to the appointment of two black chiefs in a row, Willie Williams, who came from Philadelphia but was considered a weak choice from day one, and Mr Parks, who took over in 1997.

But many of the problems raised in an official inquiry into the LAPD, led by the former US secretary of state, Warren Christopher, have never been addressed, notably the high level of police brutality and the failure to discipline wayward officers adequately.

The undoing of Chief Parks was the so-called Rampart scandal, in which gang-busting cops were found to have fabricated evidence, brutalised and almost killed numerous suspects and trafficked drugs. Hundreds of cases had to be thrown out because of tainted evidence, and the city is still fighting over the hundreds of millions of dollars claimed in compensation. LA is almost 1,000 officers short, violent crime has increased and the murder rate rose 40 per cent last year.

Mr Bratton has a tough reputation. But he lost his New York job after 27 months, with a jealous Rudy Giuliani, the then mayor, accusing him of excessive self-promotion and indulging in lavish travel for himself and his friends.