A low-key leader with an open mind and a focus on community relations
Scott was raised in a military family, eventually settling in Birmingham, Ala. Some of his relatives who were active in the civil rights movement were sprayed with fire hoses and attacked by police dogs, he said in a 2015 interview with The Times. He kept that historical perspective in mind during his 27 years at the LAPD, particularly when managing volatile relationships between the police and the community in South L.A.
“You cannot say, ‘Forget it,’” Scott said. “An 82year-old African American man grew up in a place where they had to live through some of the things that were happening 50 years ago. They aren’t going to forget that, and neither should we.”
When homicides skyrocketed in South L.A. in the beginning of 2016, Scott was among the architects of a command center that deployed elite Metropolitan Division officers to crime hot spots. On many nights, the officers were charged with stopping drivers who had committed traffic violations and then seeing if there was a legal reason to search for drugs or weapons.
That approach, coupled with cooperation from gang intervention workers to stop retaliatory killings, was necessary to reduce the violence, Scott said in a September 2016 interview with The Times, when he was deputy chief of South Bureau. But he also articulated the long-term cost of locking people up.
“If you are an 8-year-old depending on your father to provide for you, and now you see your father going away in handcuffs, who are you going to be mad at? Your father or the police officer who took him away?” he said.
When Scott left for San Francisco at the end of 2016, Chief Charlie Beck praised his “tactical skills, intelligence and kindness.”
In San Francisco, Scott is trying to turn around a department reeling from a racist text-message scandal and the controversial police killing of a black man named Mario Woods.
Shortly before Scott’s arrival, the U.S. Department of Justice had released a study showing that San Francisco police disproportionately used force against minorities, also stopping and searching them more frequently than whites. Scott is working to implement reforms recommended by the Department of Justice and has pushed to arm all his officers with Tasers.
The San Francisco Police Department has about 2,000 officers, compared with 10,000 at the LAPD.
John Burris, a Bay Area civil rights attorney who represented Woods’ relatives, said Scott has an open mind on officer discipline and has sometimes tussled with the city’s combative police union.
“He came to meetings early and did not, like other chiefs in the past, automatically assume the police’s position,” Burris said.
Capt. Jay Roberts described Scott as measured and low-key, with a management style that emphasizes collaboration. “He holds you accountable but in a very friendly way — smiling, laughing, with humor built in,” Roberts said. “His strength is that people don’t have their guard up when they enter the room. He’s able to bridge gaps.”
At a news conference earlier this week, some African American community leaders said they were supporting Scott not because of his race but because he can connect with South L.A. residents and understand their uneasy relationship with the LAPD.
“No one knows South L.A. like Bill Scott does,” said Najee Ali, president of Project Islamic HOPE. “We want Chief Scott to come back home to his city and his community, because the city needs him and South L.A. needs him.”
Departing from recent precedent, Mayor Eric Garcetti did not initially release the list of three finalists, citing respect for their confidentiality, but the names were reported by The Times using sources with knowledge of the process. The secrecy was seen by some observers as an attempt to protect Scott from a backlash in San Francisco. Scott has def lected questions about whether he applied for the job and has not responded to requests for an interview.
“I’m a man of my word, first and foremost,” Scott told ABC7 San Francisco the day his appointment as chief was announced. “My intent is to be here as long as the city and the citizens and people will have me here, and to get the job done.”
But with Beck’s retirement and the death of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who appointed him, Scott’s ambitions turned back to Los Angeles.