Asked recently for a job description, Connie Rice called herself a "civic entrepreneur" or a "democracy engineer." LAPD Chief Charlie Beck calls her "the conscience of the city" of Los Angeles -- and she has own parking space at police headquarters. That's a big change for a young lawyer who joined the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund here in 1990, promising a campaign of "impact litigation" against the LAPD and the Sheriff's Department, hoping to "redefine traditional civil rights in the 21st Century." That's just one of the ambitious goals she lines out in a remarkable book called Power Concedes Nothing: One Woman's Quest for Social Justice in America, from the Courtroom to the Kill Zones.
