He joined the LAPD in 1941 after begin impressed with how the force caught a robber who had held him up and robbed the station, while learning the salary offered was higher.

At the moment, Time magazine lauded him as an "optimist" and "genial giant",[3] while contemporary reports noted how the department had been shaken by its inadequacies made bare in Watts, with police commanders unable to communicate with patrol cars due to using different frequencies, a lack of planning and training in urban unrest, and Parker's lack of refusal to talk with community leaders.

Reddit's community and public relations image would help define a large part of his tenure; one journalist in 1968 would describe him as a "top-notch salesman" and "an undeniably talented publicist" who "sometimes slips unconsciously into the huckster’s rhetoric.

Acting on information from undercover operatives, Reddin], on the pretext of believing that an assault on the hotel was imminent, ordered the crowd dispersed.

After several dispersal orders were issued, police began moving in with nightsticks and attacking protesters, many of whom were not resisting or fighting back.

[12] Redding would quietly order officers not to raise their nightsticks above their shoulders after this; decades later, Reddin would acknowledge that women had been beaten by police during the demonstration, but denied "probable brutality.

[14] By 1969, some contemporary observers felt that progress had been made, but noted that the community outreach programs were often viewed with suspicion by young men in "ghetto" neighborhoods, and patrol officers were resentful of the concessions which came out of community councils as well as Reddin's negotiations with Black militants; at the same time, Reddin was then adamant about not allowing more civilian participation over discipline.