He’s Driving Capt. Parker in Heaven
In tribute to the late Daryl Gates, former LAPD Chief, I am reposting a story I told last year as part of a Chicago Public Radio event. I apologize again for the typos, etc… this is my rough notes for the story I told out loud that night.
I also want to recommend the LA Times obit of Chief Gates, linked above. He was an fascinating figure in Los Angeles’ history, and the country’s. He was an incredibly polarizing figure, especially along racial lines, but he would have denied, quite sincerely and fervently, being a racist. In my view, he had a very simple view of the world: there were good guys, and bad guys, and his job was to protect the first group and aggressively pursue, arrest, and if need be kill the second. That the second group seemed to be mostly Latino and African American was an accident of history or sociology or maybe personal choice, who knows. In fact, he probably bristled at the people who pointed out that the wrath of the LAPD seemed to fall so often on minorities… they were the bad guys; what did race have to do with it? Why, he was proud to serve with many fine Black and Latino officers…
I lived in the city he helped to burn and I knew people who feared Gates’ officers because of the color of their own skin so I can’t help but think the city and the country is far better off now that he and his generation have left positions of power, particularly positions wielding deadly force. But it’s worth a moment to consider, at his passing, how he looked at the world, and how, at some deep level, he simply could not understand why people were so mad at him.