Erasing the Thin Blue Line

"Although it's true that Parker took what was then widely regarded as the country's most corrupt urban police department and imbued it with an aura of integrity, he also turned it into a small, highly mobile paramilitary organization whose relations with the city's African American and Latino communities were utterly poisonous. His public statements regarding black Angelenos varied from the merely patronizing to the clearly racist. During the Watts riots, for example, he described the department's progress in suppressing violence by saying, 'We've got them dancing like monkeys on strings.'"

Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times contends that the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters should not be named for former Chief William H. Parker.