ABSTRACT
The seeds of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD's) meltdown and the death of the professional model were planted inside the department over a decade before the King incident. This contention is supported by a main cause identified within the statements of officers: extreme discontent with the department's hiring and promotion practices. There are two possible explanations or outcomes that were likely to result from the increased hiring of women and minority officers within the LAPD following the Blake consent decree. The first can be referred to as the conformity explanation and the second as the individual identity explanation. These perspectives and their likely relationship to the LAPD organizational meltdown are explained. Perhaps the most salient theme discovered was that affirmative action had caused the officers to become divided along race and gender lines. In fact, some of the statements provided by both rookie and veteran minority officers claimed that racial tensions within the LAPD organization were high.
