Ironically, the LAPD Is Now Our Greatest Hope for Restoring Civic Unity and Peace : Elections: Passage of Propositions M and N would speed the city’s healing process by giving Williams the chance to humanize his department.

Of all of the institutions that have failed the City of Los Angeles since the beating of Rodney M. King, the Los Angeles Police Department has perhaps the most to answer for.

It was the LAPD’s tolerance of an internal culture of racism and sexism that excused nearly 20 of its officers from stepping in and stopping the beating. Then, during the civil unrest in April and May, the department failed to fulfill its most basic mission: protecting people and property. For almost 24 puzzling and terrifying hours, its inept performance created the impression that the city could be looted and burned with impunity.

But for the once-proud, nationally praised LAPD, the cruelest blows of all were the scathing and exhaustively documented reviews of its operations by the Christopher and Webster commissions, whose members were drawn from the very business and law-enforcement communities that provided the department with its staunchest support.

Now, however, in a stunning twist of irony, the same department that has for years been a divisive, sometimes hostile, force can serve as the vehicle for a demonstration of civic unity and peace--if Propositions M and N pass.

Proposition M, a bond measure, would provide money for a new communications system, including 911 calls. N provides for a parcel tax to hire 1,000 new uniformed officers over the next five years. Each measure needs a two-thirds majority to pass. If both measures win, the total estimated cost to the typical homeowner would run about $99 or $100 a year.

Given its recent performance, can the LAPD reasonably expect city residents to tax themselves for what amounts to a departmental wish list? The answer is yes--both because of the reality of the department’s past and the potential of its future.

Neither the people of Los Angeles nor the Christopher or Webster commissions ever lost faith in the overwhelming majority of the LAPD’s approximately 7,800 officers. It was the department’s leadership, especially that of ex-chief Daryl F. Gates, they criticized and ultimately came to distrust. Today’s officers should not be punished for the failings of yesterday’s chief.

The debacle surrounding the King beating and the spring civil unrest have also revealed the city’s civic infrastructure to be broken almost beyond repair. Surprisingly enough, the LAPD may be the one prominent civic institution that can be quickly turned around.

The leadership change in the LAPD is the first key to its rehabilitation. Chief Willie L. Williams has brought a new vision to Parker Center, a vision of community-based policing, which he effectively implemented in Philadelphia. Community-based policing puts officers in the streets instead of behind desks and asks them to spend as much time working with local residents and businesses to prevent crimes as they do to responding to crimes. Virtually every community and ethnic group has endorsed the concept.

Los Angeles must give community-based policing the chance to work. In an ever-more crowded, ever-more diverse city, the alternative--an intensification of the paramilitary style favored by the Gates-era LAPD--can only lead to unacceptable levels of tension and conflict.

Propositions M and N also carry great symbolic weight. Several of the cities associated with the worst unrest of the 1960s have never fully recovered. If Los Angeles is to escape a similar fate, the city’s residents must offer some sign to each other, and to the outside world, that they are willing to make a collective bet on a future that works.

Politically, the heightened levels of internecine bickering and maneuvering set off by Mayor Tom Bradley’s retirement make it unlikely that a consensus will be achieved anytime before the April mayoral election. Economically, the cautious pronouncements of Peter V. Ueberroth concerning Rebuild L.A.’s progress do not augur well for the speedy return of the more than 40,000 jobs lost to the disturbances. Only the public-safety issue seems amenable to rapid and measurable progress. If the LAPD is able to put 700 new cops on the street within a year--200 from the first year’s Proposition N funds and 500 from the implementation of studies showing that the department has too many personnel in desk jobs--residents of every community in the city will reap the benefits.

If Los Angeles needed any proof, 1991 and 1992 have amply demonstrated that no city can function effectively if its police department is estranged from its populace. Williams has started the process of reconciliation by offering his vision of a new, service-oriented department. The voters can keep the momentum toward civic unity going by approving Propositions M and N.