Talk:William H. Parker (police officer)

Bogus Claims from a Leftist Revisionist ??
Any references for 'systematic suppression' of blacks and hispanics or is this just more left-wing revisionist history?

Whoever edited the Talk page to decry so-called "leftist revisionism" on this page must have decided to over-correct by adding totally unsubstantiated (and un-sourced) claims such as "Parker... is credited with transforming the LAPD into a world-renowned law enforcement agency" which makes perfect sense in the parallel universe where he wasn't responsible for the handling of Bloody Christmas (1951) or the Watts Riots.

It's not leftist revisionism, it's pretty well-known by anyone who doesn't have a political ax to grind... hopefully someone will source it. Having statements in this entry directly saying "the sentence above this one is a lie!" is downright silly, someone knowledgeable and unbiased REALLY needs to come along and straighten this entry out. 67.49.83.252 04:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a familiarity with Discourse would help our anonymous friend and a link or reference to Institutional racism would help this entry?Rykalski 19:03, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a very shallow and error ridden mini bio of Chief Parker, written by a very biased contributor. I suggest you have more input to this Wikipedia entry.

An HBO documentary produced in 2005 gives evidence that Parker practiced institutional oppression against black Americans, cited by historian Mike Davis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arspading (talk • contribs) 04:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Not only did Bastards of the Party -- the HBO doc sighted above -- mention that Parker deliberately harrased black Angelinos and was personally disgusted by "race-mixing," but he recruited LAPD officers straight out of the South and sometimes directly out of the KKK. Also -- what is this? "and the entrance into the media of overtly anti-police politicized journalists" Jonnylieberman (talk) 17:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Well he may have been a racist, but this business about recruiting people from the KKK is a lie. The LAPD during Parker's time as chief would automatically disqualify any applicant who had been involved with the Klan. And this business about the LAPD deliberately recruiting white officers from southern states is counter-intuitive (for several reasons) and there's no substance to it. Just because someone repeated it in a documentary doesn't make it so. The LAPD did, however recruit BLACK officers from southern states at that time. That may have been where the story originated. If you read the LA Times article "Watts Riot 40 Years Later" you'll see a black LAPD officer mention that that's how he was recruited.

One thing I did want to point out - the entry states that Parker was awarded a Silver Star, however in the photo of him wearing his ribbons (in one of the links) he is not wearing a Silver Star on his ribbon rack, just the Purple Heart. That alone tells me that he was not awarded the SS.

Last but not least - the whole entry is POORLY WRITTEN. The entire thing needs to be re-written by someone who writes well.

Pardon me for not being familiar enough with the editing process. P1340 —Preceding undated comment added 15:25, 31 March 2009 (UTC).

Parker on the Watts Riots: "One person threw a rock, and then, like monkeys in a zoo, others started throwing rocks." well now wasn't he a great non-racist man... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.234.102.112 (talk) 01:02, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

“An HBO documentary produced in 2005 gives evidence that Parker practiced institutional oppression against black Americans, cited by historian Mike Davis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arspading (talk • contribs) 04:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)”

HBO doesn’t make documentaries, and Mike Davis is no “historian.” 2603:7000:B23E:33EE:C884:B510:DE1E:181F (talk) 23:25, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Please added sourced material going forward
Can sourcable material be added going forward? I know that is alot to ask, but it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. --Tom 17:36, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

This article includes some conclusions about Parker's tenure: "Parker Center redux? Proposal causes anger and confusion" by Joel Rubin, April 14, 2009, Los Angeles Times.  Will Beback   talk    20:29, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

L.A. Noir
A new book revolving around Parker and Micky Cohen had some interesting information about both characters. As a student in the LAUSD I was in awe of Parker and what he did with the lowest ratio of police to populace of any major US city. Saltysailor (talk) 05:10, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Death
There is not a word about his death. I recall people years later saying he died at his desk, but I was looking here to see if that was literally true. If anyone has a reference about his death, please add.  Randall Bart    Talk   16:30, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

According to the official LAPD website, Chief Parker reportedly died of a heart attack after attending a dinner where he received an award (http://www.lapdonline.org/history_of_the_lapd/content_basic_view/1110). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.15.239.112 (talk) 06:02, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

"thin blue line" coinage
This article has a sourced claim that Parker coined the phrase "the thin blue line", but a newer, possibly more reliable source claims that that's incorrect. A blog post here by the author of the legal-etymology book Lawtalk (ISBN 030017246X) specifically calls Wikipedia out on being wrong:
 * In many cases, we discovered that law-related expressions are much older than people generally believe, and older than the earliest cites in the Oxford English Dictionary. For example, I initially bought into the myth that Los Angeles police chief William H. Parker coined the phrase thin blue line in the 1950s (thanks, Wikipedia).  Not true:  in its laudatory metaphorical form (referring to the police as a line protecting the citizenry from crime), we traced this play on “thin red line” (referring to red-coated British soldiers in the Crimean War) back to a speech given by the Bishop of Coventry to the annual meeting of supporters of the Birmingham Police Institute in 1900–and as a literal reference to lines of policemen, all the way back to 1855.

Anyone have a copy of that book to get a more specific cite? And how should this article be updated? To remove the claim entirely, or mention it as a common confusion, or Parker as perhaps a popularizer of the term? --Delirium (talk) 17:17, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have one of the books used to support the claim that Parker coined the term "thin blue line" and it doesn't exactly say that. The book is L. A. Noir (a book about Parker and Micky Cohn). That book (p. 190 of the Kindle version) says that Parker helped produce a TV program called "The Thin Blue Line" that aired on a local LA station for a brief time in the 1950's. The show was what used to be called "public service broadcasting" and was a panel discussion (with Parker frequently a panel member) about various issues relevant to the police. According to the book, the program took it's name from a famous battle in the Crimean war where a small thin line of British infantry stopped a Russian cavalry charge of many times more men. However, the book does not claim that Parker coined or was the first to use that term to refer to the police. I plan to change this in the article but I want to look at a couple more sources before I do, just wanted to comment now in case anyone wants to discuss it or recommend other references. The blog post Lawtalk isn't a very good reference. Blogs are usually not considered good primary references because they are published with no peer or editorial review. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:01, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Ridiculous Bias Herein
With a brother who is a federal officer (and good friend) and having written extensively about cops, I'm far from anti-police. That said, this bio is a comical hagiography. It either underplays or leaves unmentioned Parker's explicit instructions about treatment of non-white Angelenos and his obstruction of investigations into even the most egregious police behaviors. I'm strapped for time but I'll try to make efforts to steer this more closely to reality, as the bio at this point is a discredit to the city and to those who suffered under Parker's treatment. RobotBoy66 (talk) 09:47, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * If you have good references that document these instructions or any other aspect of Parker's life that you think should be included to make the article more balanced, please list the references here. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 03:05, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Reference for Parker Winning Order of Italian Solidarity?
In the Early Years section it currently says: "His other awards included the French Croix de Guerre with silver star and the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity." There is no reference for anything in this section. I'm going to add at least one reference that I've found that supports most of that section (the book L.A. Noir about Parker and Micky Cohen) but nowhere in that book could I find a reference to the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity. I haven't finished the book yet but I have an eBook and I tried various searches but couldn't find any awards from Italy. Does anyone know where this is documented? If no one can provide a good reference for this fact I'm going to delete it, although I'm going to wait until I finish the book to make sure it's not there but I just didn't search for the right words. I also plan on re-phrasing the stuff about Parker winning the Purple Heart for the invasion of Normandy. The way it's worded now it implies (at least this is what I thought when I read it) that Parker actually participated in the storming of the beaches which he didn't he was wounded when a column he was in (5 days after the beach landings) was strafed. As far as I know he was never in the front lines of combat. Not that I think that diminishes the medal, I just think it pays to be as accurate as possible. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 03:02, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Removing claim about Parker serving on Civil Defense during Cuban missile crisis
The article currently states at the end of the Parker as Chief section: "Parker served on the Los Angeles County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960s" The reference for this is a dead link. When I tried to recover it in Wayback the best I could find was this:   Businessman Louis Lesser of this city has been named to the new county Civil Defense and Disaster Commission which doesn't support the claim. In any case, even if it's true it's IMO not really relevant enough to someone as famous as Parker to even merit inclusion. It doesn't flow in the article in any cohesive sense, it's as if someone just tacked a point on to the end. I'm just going to remove it. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:42, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Some pending changes
I'm currently working on a new version of this article. I'm re-writing at least one section and am going to post the revised version some time soon but I wanted to document some changes I'm making now just in case I forget to document them or if I forget the reasons for the change when I'm finally ready to go live with the new version. One of the changes is I'm removing the sentence: "Parker's experience with military public relations in World War II was used to develop an effective media relations strategy for the police department" There is no reference for that claim and in the book L.A. Noir the author describes Parker's war time service and says nothing about Parker being involved in public relations. He was a G5 officer involved with things like maintaining order in liberated areas (e.g., Paris) and de-nazifying the German police force. Indeed, given Parker's personality (this is documented in everything I've read about him both those who are great admirers and strong critics) the idea of him working in public relations is highly unlikely. Everyone who commented on his personality noted that he was the exact opposite of a "people person". He was very straight laced and not the kind of person who easily made friends. Gene Rodenberry who worked for Parker before creating Star Trek even said that Mr. Spock was modeled after Parker. I'm also removing the IMDB reference for Parker's participation in Dragnet. IMDB is not considered an acceptable Wikipedia reference. See IMDB as Reference. Parker's participation in Dragnet is documented in L.A. Noir and I'll use that as a reference instead. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 01:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm also going to remove the link to "LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.,..." The link is broken and when I search for it in Wayback it says that the link was not archived. I'm (tentatively) keeping the reference, it's to a book so there doesn't need to be a link. I'm currently reviewing the book to make sure it actually supports the claims that it is used to support in the current article. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 02:22, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I've finished my basic changes. Added more references, rewrote text to make it consistent with the refs and removed some unsourced claims. I may come back later and add a new section or expand an existing section to add a bit more balance on issues regarding Parker's vies on communism, the left, and race. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 04:43, 29 May 2019 (UTC)