President of L.A. Police Commission Resigns Post : City Hall: His departure is the second of a panel member in three weeks. He will join a group seeking to secure a World Cup bid for the city.

The president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners announced his resignation on Tuesday, marking the second time in less than three weeks that one of the panel’s five members has stepped down.

Robert M. Talcott, a police commission member since 1984 and president the last five years, is leaving the board Dec. 1 to join a committee of civic leaders to help bring the World Cup soccer tournament finals to Los Angeles in 1994, the mayor’s office announced.

“Bob has served with compassion and commitment on the Police Commission,” Mayor Tom Bradley said in a written statement.

“I regret to see him leave our Police Commission, but I know his services are greatly needed on our bid committee for the World Cup. With Bob an integral player on our team, I believe that we can secure the bid.”

The Police Commission, a panel appointed by the mayor, has broad oversight responsibility regarding Police Department policies. Commission powers include dealing with labor and management issues, citizens complaints and lawsuits against the department.

Talcott’s departure, coupled with the resignation Oct. 19 of 10-year commissioner Stephen D. Yslas, comes at a time when the police management at Parker Center has been beset with problems. The full Police Commission has been asked to appear before the City Council this month to explain its supervisory role over the Police Department, and a top-to-bottom management audit of the LAPD has been ordered by the mayor.

The resignations also give the mayor an opportunity to reshape the direction of the commission, which some detractors say has become a rubber stamp for Chief Daryl F. Gates.

However, Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler denied that the mayor has been upset with the commission.

“No way was the mayor disappointed,” Chandler said. “They’ve done a tremendous amount of work as the Police Department has grown in leaps and bounds. And Bob Talcott has led the commission for the last five years in a stellar fashion.”

Talcott, a lawyer who was appointed to the commission after questions were raised about the Police Department’s intelligence gathering operation, was in New York on Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. But in a telephone interview Monday, he strongly defended his work with the commission and said that the panel has always acted independently of undue influence from the mayor’s office.

“I have never received a request from the mayor to do business one way or the other,” he said. “When the mayor appointed us and drew us all together, he said he wanted us to exercise our independent judgments, that we were not to be automatons. Each member of the commission was selected because they had good judgment and responsibility and a desire to be helpful.”

He also stressed that the commission does not run the department’s day-to-day operations. He said that because the police agency is so complex, it is difficult for part-time commissioners who are paid $50 for each weekly meeting to be aware of everything that happens at Parker Center.

“Our overall mission is to act as an intermediary between the bureaucracy and the citizens of Los Angeles and to set policy where appropriate for the Los Angeles Police Department,” he said.

“It absolutely is not to run the department, and I don’t think anybody ever construed that the Police Commission or any other commission within city government has that obligation or responsibility. That’s exactly what the chief of police is paid to do.”

But City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said the commission under Talcott has been inactive, and he noted that on Tuesday, the City Council approved $1.25 million in police liability claims for wrongful deaths and police brutality complaints.

“It’s been pretty quiet over there (at the commission) for the last few years,” he said. “A lot of things have been happening and, if the commission was concerned about it, they’ve kept it to themselves.

“But the mayor now has an opportunity to take the bull by the horns,” Yaroslavsky continued. “We need a commission that will work as a team, someone honest and tough and willing to call them as they see them. And not to be timid. They need to be held accountable like every other department.”

Cmdr. William Booth, the department’s chief spokesman, said Gates would not comment on Talcott’s resignation because the chief had not yet received official word by late Tuesday afternoon.

However, in an interview a week before Yslas resigned, Gates expressed hope that the mayor would not replace any commissioners.

“In the last several years, we’ve been doing very well, and it’s not that the commission is any less vigilant, or not paying attention, or that they’ve been co-opted by me,” the chief said. “That’s just not the case.”

But, Gates added, “there was a desire on the part of the administration, on the part of the mayor, to have a commission and a chief work on things together, and try to find solutions.”

In a related development, Talcott said in a sworn legal deposition last week that he has only a “general idea” of what happened in the controversial drug raid at 39th Street and Dalton Avenue two years ago and that he is unfamiliar with the investigations leading to disciplinary measures for scores of policemen and criminal vandalism charges against four officers.

He said he did not know whether the chief’s office conducted an investigation. He also said he did not know and was “not really” curious about what happened with an investigation by an assistant chief. When asked whether there was ever a police Internal Affairs Division review of the case, he said “I believe there was but I’m not sure.”

Stephen Yagman, the attorney who is suing the city over the 39th and Dalton raid, during which officers allegedly trashed several apartments, said Talcott’s answers in the deposition show that he is unconcerned about problems at Parker Center.