Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Friday, November 16, 2001

 

Page 3

 

Police and Administration Expert Rouzon Appointed to Board of Governors

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Gov. Gray Davis yesterday appointed Joseph Rouzan Jr., Inglewood’s city administrator and a longtime LAPD officer and later police chief in nearby cities, to the State Bar Board of Governors as one of six “public,” or non-attorney, members.

The 23-member board sets policy for the State Bar, the licensing body for California attorneys. Most members are elected by lawyers from geographic districts around the state.

There remains one public member vacancy.

Rouzan, 69, is a New Orleans native who grew up in Los Angeles. His father was a jazz musician but later became a painter for the Los Angeles Police Department.

In a 1993 interview, Rouzan dated his interest in police work from a flyer his father sent him while he was serving overseas in the military.

He became an LAPD officer. In 1973 he earned his MBA from Pepperdine, writing a thesis on the effective recruitment of minorities and females in a police department. At the time the LAPD was under a federal court mandate to improve such recruitment efforts. Then-Chief Ed Davis appointed Rouzan to supervise the project.

Davis also made Rouzan commanding officer of the Police Commission. He supervised the officers and civilians who made up the commission staff and serve as the department’s liaison with the five mayoral appointees who set Police Department policy.

Rouzan served as police chief of Compton and Inglewood, as Compton’s city manager, and as a police management consultant.

He also became the first head of the Citizen Police Complaint Commission created by the voters of Long Beach in the wake of a highly publicized incident of alleged police misconduct there which was captured on videotape.

After Los Angeles’ own videotaped police beating of Rodney King, voters in 1992 passed a package of reforms that included an executive director for the Police Commission. After Rouzan failed in his quest to succeed Darryl Gates as police chief, Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to be the first executive director.

Rouzan also had a consulting firm, which won a city contract to reorganize the Police Bureau of the Los Angeles Department of Airports.

Appointment to the Board of Governors requires state Senate confirmation.

 

Copyright 2001, Metropolitan News Company