In 1992, Daryl F. Gates published Chief: My Life in the LAPD—a retrospective, and often unapologetic, defense of his controversial tenure as head of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Gates, who led the LAPD from 1978 to 1992, was the department’s second-longest tenured chief and his influence on policing in Los Angeles was profound. Chief was one of the first major autobiographies by a celebrity police chief—stylized, image-conscious, and deliberately curated—foreshadowing the rebrands of former police commissioners qua public intellectuals like Bill Bratton, who would find himself on the cover of Time only four years later.
As LAPD Chief, Gates initially embraced novel community-police partnerships (like founding the D.A.R.E. program in 1983) but soon pivoted away from community policing, instead reshaping the department’s image toward a more militarized and impersonal style of law enforcement. Never one to shy away from the spotlight or a chance to defend the department’s record, Gates became notorious for incendiary public remarks, once testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee that casual drug users “ought to be taken out and shot.” When questioned by a reporter about the LAPD’s high rate of chokehold deaths compared to other departments, he famously responded that this might be the case because Black people’s “arteries do not open as fast as they do in normal people.”[1]
Gates was a key architect in the transformation of American policing, an innovator of policing technologies whose tactics were widely adopted by departments across the country during his tenure in Los Angeles. And there is perhaps no figure more responsible for embedding militarization into the DNA of the modern municipal police department. Gates’ most enduring legacy may lie in his role as co-creator and popularizer of Special Weapons and Tactics teams—SWAT—with LAPD officer John Nelson during his tenure as inspector overseeing the Watts neighborhood. In a revealing passage in Chief, he discusses the origins of SWAT, recalling with pride the genesis of its iconic name:
One day, with a big smile on my face, I popped in to tell my deputy chief, Ed Davis, that I thought up an acronym for my special new unit.
“It’s SWAT,” I said.
“Oh, that’s pretty good. What’s it stand for?”
“Special Weapons Attack Teams.”
Davis blinked. “No.”
There was no way, he said dismissively, he would ever use the word “attack.” I went out, crestfallen, but a moment later I was back. “Special Weapons and Tactics,” I said. “Okay?”
“No problem. That’s fine,” Davis said. And that was how SWAT was born.[2}