Our country is a nation of immigrants, and unless you are a Native American, you are a product of people who came from other countries in search of a better life here in the United States. Notwithstanding the ongoing debates about all of the issues surrounding immigration, we all recognize that our country has benefited greatly from the past generations of immigrants from throughout the world who make up the United States of America. While there certainly is a need for better processes and adherence to laws, we need and will continue to benefit from robust and reasonable immigration processes.

A study of American history makes clear that immigration has not always been popular and that immigrants have not always experienced prosperity and warm welcomes upon arrival on our shores. In addition to the often lack of “warm welcomes” in many cities, another major problem has always been the presence of immigrant criminals and other types of unscrupulous people who are themselves embedded in those same communities.

Many recent arrivals in the United States are unfamiliar with our laws and practices and are easily misled by people who benefit from such misimpressions.

We need to look no further than the Tong in San Francisco, Black Hand and Mafia in New York and Chicago, MS-13 from El Salvador, Somali Outlaws in Minnesota, numerous Mexican gangs in Los Angeles and a number of violent and nameless entities from Russia, Armenia and elsewhere. These criminal enterprises thrive because of language barriers that retard the assimilation of large numbers of immigrants from communities where law enforcement has difficult challenges in distinguishing honest people from criminals and where the biggest victims of criminal behaviors are most often other immigrants.

The cultural and legal differences between the United States and the countries from where people immigrated from are also very significant factors. Some countries tolerate behaviors that are serious offenses elsewhere, and the role of elected and appointed officials — including the police — are often factors that further complicate the desire to ensure the safety of the citizens in our emerging immigrant communities. Many recent arrivals in the United States are unfamiliar with our laws and practices and are easily misled by people who benefit from such misimpressions.

While I thought I had a pretty decent understanding of the complexities of immigrants and their relationships to policing, my assignment as the area commanding officer of Wilshire Area of the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1980s made clear that I was somewhat of a “babe in the woods” when it came to delivering police services to a rapidly growing immigrant community, in this instance the Korean community. I approached my duties with goodwill and enthusiasm and rapidly met with community leaders from all the various segments of the Wilshire communities, including those from Koreatown.

Although it took a while, it eventually became clear that some of those people who portrayed themselves as community leaders were self-serving opportunists who claimed their exalted status solely because they spoke English, and most of those people they claimed to represent did not! Looking back, the strong desire of my colleagues and me to make inroads into various communities likely caused us to sometimes accept people who portrayed themselves as such without a greater degree of vetting than actually occurred.

As the then-newly assigned command officer, I mistakenly thought that I had made rapid inroads into the Korean community when a person the Wilshire Division had previously accepted as a community leader started making frequent visits to my office, always with other people who were introduced as prominent business people. The community leader, who I will call Mr. Kim, always introduced his guest and interpreted a brief introductory conversation, and always asked if I would pose for a photograph of me along with himself and the guest; something that, with the assistance of my secretary, I was more than happy to do.

The first “red flag” went up during my personal visits to various Korean establishments, where those photos of me and the owner were always prominently displayed at entrances to the businesses. Then, in a series of conversations, I came to realize that Mr. Kim was not all that well thought of by many of the community members that he claimed to represent and that he was literally selling my influence by virtue of the photographs with me that he was orchestrating.

In Korea, a close relationship with a person in a position of special responsibility conveys special stature as a friend of that person, and the photos of people with me were being marketed by Mr. Kim as conveying special influence. At about this same time, I learned that Mr. Kim was soliciting Koreatown business owners to join our police community council, with him charging a fee that he pocketed!

My irritation was strong, and my actions were nearly instantaneous. First, Mr. Kim was removed from the community council and banned from the station. Next, I contacted our department’s photography section and spent a few hours walking the streets of Koreatown and taking a photograph with every man, woman and child that I could find, then sent each of them an autographed photograph of us together. I wanted to make clear that a photograph with me was a symbol of goodwill and conveyed no special influence or access of any kind!

While the overwhelming members of the Korean community were ethical and a joy to work with, that command tour of duty yielded no shortage of criminal and ethical challenges that I needed to address and unravel. A major issue was crooks who identified themselves as able to facilitate the approval of conditional use permits and beverage licensees for community members who were trying to establish businesses, a very complicated and difficult process even under the best of circumstances when done by true professionals.

Especially tragic were several situations where families had invested all their savings into locations where there was no hope of permit approval, with months of being strung along and being bilked for thousands of dollars by crooks who kept their business hopes and dreams alive.

Among my greatest assets in dealing with crooks and opportunists in the Korea community was the LAPD’s eventual establishment of the Asian Task Force. This was made up of the few Asian officers by this time who had joined the department, along with law-abiding and great citizens from the Korean community who played — and continue to play — a major role in facilitating the Korean community into the mainstream of Los Angeles, and who make a major impact in the department’s effort to best serve that great community and those wonderful citizens.

As I have often said, to the extent that I possess any wisdom, it
is a reflection of my scar tissue. Some of my many scars came from my experiences as the commanding officer of the Wilshire Area. If I could do it all over again, I think I would move a bit slower in my efforts to make inroads and work a bit harder to vet those people who I initially accepted as community leaders.

I hope that those who follow me in the leadership trenches will benefit from my haste and my mistakes in the arena of developing inroads into emerging immigrant communities, as well as my candor in acknowledging a few things that I could have done better. It is always good to learn from your mistakes, but it is even better if you can learn from mine!