Police: Behind the Blue Curtain

There will be no respect for the law until there is a respect for the rights of others. In the meantime, the police will be at the eye of the storm: a subject of intense controversy, not because they are responsible for the conditions with which they deal but because, like the mountain, they are there.

Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s words last week were directed at a group of men who knew all too well what he was talking about. The occasion was the 74th annual meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, in Kansas City, Mo. With the fiery summer of 1967 still a fresh memory, the 1,200 assembled chiefs had little else but riots on their minds. Even the new product exhibits reflected it, with everything from a chemical that makes streets too slippery for running looters to armored personnel carriers bristling with gun ports, floodlights and tear-gas nozzles. At one afternoon-long meeting of the chiefs of the 21 largest cities, says San Francisco Chief Thom as Cahill, “we never mentioned bur glary, robbery, organized crime or any thing else but riots.”

Problems & Solutions. Criticized from all sides for being either too easy or too tough on rioters, the chiefs were tired of being whipping boys, and their mood mirrored the edgy morale of line cops back home. Partly to buck up that mo rale, Lyndon Johnson made a surprise visit to the Kansas City convention, told his audience that “much can explain — but nothing can justify — the riots of 1967” (see THE NATION). The chiefs applauded him enthusiastically, but it was the chance to mingle and exchange problems and solutions that gave the I.A.C.P. meeting its real value—a value that, coupled with the association’s other activities, has dramatically increased its reputation in the past six years.

The I.A.C.P. was founded in 1893, but after the ’20s and ’30s, when it helped push police reform, it faded into little more than a great-to-see-you group. Then, six years ago, Quinn Tamm arrived. A careful FBI agent who had made his way up to the rank of assistant director, Tamm found six staffers working out of makeshift Washington offices when he took on the I.A.C.P. job. Now there are 70 on the staff, and the association has its own building. The white-haired, leathery-faced Tamm, 57, has placed particular emphasis on upgrading the training and community image of police. With the help of various public and private grants, the I.A.C.P. this year alone has run 33 two-week courses for supervisory personnel and has provided consultant services to the community relations programs of 20 departments.

“Clean & Paint.” By far the major undertaking of Tamm’s men, however, is the work they do analyzing individual police forces in excruciating detail. One recent 498-page study of New York’s finest called for a complete overhaul of the organizational machinery; then it described just how the new one should be set up, from the elimination of the slot for the department’s No. 2 man right down to a cutback of the city’s much admired but outmoded mounted patrolmen. In another study, Boston’s force was told to raise salaries, lower the compulsory retirement age and get civilians to do clerical work. Baltimore’s cops were brusquely told that they did have an organized crime problem, no matter how loudly they insisted otherwise. The 1965 Baltimore report also outlined a whole new set of street-by-street beats and noted dryly that an effort should be made at police headquarters to “clean, paint and illuminate as many of the halls and offices as is practical.”

Such criticisms are rarely ignored, if only because the cities themselves pay the cost of the studies (they can run to as much as $100,000, take up to a year to prepare). The jolting indictment of the Baltimore force prompted the resignations of the commissioner and his chief inspector. In New York, a twelve-man board is considering the I.A.C.P. recommendations and is expected to implement many. In fact, the nation’s police forces are so anxious to hear what is wrong with them that there are currently 22 that have paid in advance for studies. One of the 22 that is due next week is a report on the Dallas department. “Law enforcement used to be pretty insular,” says Los Angeles Chief

Tom Reddin. “I call it the blue curtain.” But now, with Quinn Tamm poking at the curtain, constructive self-criticism is bringing the police into closer touch with the public.