Bradley Wants Tougher LAPD Overseers : Police: The mayor is creating an active board of commissioners that will probe department misconduct and stand up to Chief Gates.

In a series of abrupt moves over the last month, Mayor Tom Bradley has begun reshaping the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners into an activist body that will challenge the way the Police Department is run, according to his aides and several City Council members.

Bradley and a growing number of council members say they want a commission that will tackle tough policy matters, aggressively investigate police misconduct and evaluate the performance of Chief Daryl F. Gates.

“The mayor wants an active, progressive Police Commission,” said Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani, “and he’s determined to appoint commissioners who will take seriously the responsibility of directing the department.”

An activist commission would be a marked departure from the style of the current five-member panel that oversees the 8,400-member Police Department.

In a session typical of its weekly meetings, the commission on Tuesday met for 20 minutes, taking up routine matters like granting parade permits and canceling security alarm licenses--all at a time when controversies are swirling around Gates and his department.

While commissioners were silent, Bradley was moving quickly. He demanded an investigation of possible police impropriety in the so-called “39th and Dalton” drug raid, ordered a management audit of the Police Department and, in an unusual public exchange of insults, he criticized Gates for having made “dumb” remarks.

In rapid succession, the mayor replaced one commissioner with a longtime political ally, attorney-lobbyist Dan Garcia, and then announced that Commission President Robert M. Talcott would be resigning Dec. 1.

Bradley periodically shakes up the city’s numerous commissions, sometimes because they drift too close to the officials they are supposed to monitor, sources said.

Two months ago, shortly after Gates was sharply criticized for suggesting that casual drug users should be shot, the Police Commission, rather than questioning him in public about his remark, gave him a round of applause to mark the anniversary of his 41 years of service.

If the commission begins to assert greater authority, sources said, the 1990s could be a time of turmoil for a city agency long accustomed to enacting its own agenda with little interference.

For Gates, the changes could be a watershed. A range of critics within and outside the department have said that after 12 years as chief, Gates sometimes appears uninterested in the details of his job. Sources said privately that the commission will expect Gates to become more deeply involved in managing the department or step aside.

Gates, however, recently expressed confidence in his job at a press conference at Parker Center, and stressed that he was not going to leave the department until he was ready to go.

“This is a well-run department,” the chief said. “I manage well. I may not do a lot of things. I may have a big mouth. But I know how to manage a police department. I know how to manage an organization like this.”

He also denied allegations that he had “co-opted” the current police commissioners into supporting his policies. “What’s wrong with the fact that we’re getting along?” he asked. “What’s wrong with the fact that the Board of Police Commissioners and I are seeing eye-to-eye?”

In the 1970s, the commission forced several changes in the Police Department, such as a crackdown on police intelligence-gathering activities and a revision of the department’s shooting policy.

However, in the last decade, the panel has been reluctant to buck the department on a number of controversial issues.

In 1983, after months of negotiations sought by the homosexual community, the commission recommended changes in department policy to encourage active recruitment of homosexuals, including advertisements in gay and lesbian publications. However, Gates objected and the policy was never enforced.

This fall, the commission balked at conducting an inquiry into the propriety of Gates’ public pronouncement that casual drug users “ought to be taken out and shot.” Bending to pressure from the City Council, the commission changed course and promised an inquiry.

And, the commission took a back seat to the department in ongoing investigations stemming from a drug raid two years ago during which police officers trashed a number of apartments near 39th Street and Dalton Avenue.

Outgoing president Talcott said in a recent deposition that he had only a “general idea” of the scope of the 39th and Dalton investigations. His lack of knowledge surprised some critics, who noted that scores of officers have been disciplined, four face criminal charges and a civil lawsuit against the city and the Police Department goes to trial in U.S. District Court next month.

If such a police scandal were to surface in the future, the commission would be expected to investigate what conditions or management failures in the department might have encouraged such police activity, said one source familiar with the mayor’s hopes for the revamped commission.

Talcott, an attorney who has headed the panel for five years, said in his deposition that some of his “important” duties as a police commissioner were attending Police Academy graduations and funerals of police officers.

In an interview with The Times earlier this week, he said his commission work was a part-time job that paid only $50 for each weekly meeting he attended. He said it is difficult for commissioners to follow every aspect of the daily operations of the Police Department.

“We are citizen-soldiers, so to speak,” he said. “We are there to assist as public-minded individuals in the operation of city government. It may not be the most effective way, but it’s better than most cities that have no interplay or interaction between the public and the bureaucracies.”

Stephen Yagman, a lawyer and longtime police critic who is suing the city and the Police Department in the 39th and Dalton drug raid, said he was amazed at how little the commissioners seemed to know about the highly controversial case.

“This Board of Police Commissioners is essentially window dressing,” he said. “They sit on their hands and do nothing over there. They are the equal of Nero who fiddled while Rome burned.”

Even City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who as chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee has been an advocate for the department, agrees that the commission needs to change. “I think it’s clear that the mayor is interested in . . . appointing people who are going to be more aggressive in oversight,” he said.

Some critics say the commission knows only what department management wants it to know, and acts accordingly.

George Aliano, president of the Police Protective League, said the commission under Talcott ignored the needs of rank-and-file officers. He said the commission was particularly bad at ruling against officers who filed grievances against their supervisors.

“It’s almost like we didn’t exist,” he said. “There was no response from him. Rarely--I can’t even remember a single time--when a grievance was ever approved at the police commission level.

“He never tried to resolve confrontations,” Aliano added about Talcott. “He turned a deaf ear on everything.”

Looking ahead, the union president said the new commission members should be more open-minded to the problems of officers.

“We need somebody who makes decisions and gives us an answer as to why they make a decision,” he said.