L.A. Officer Hired as Police Chief by Dallas : Law enforcement: William Rathburn gained a solid reputation for anti-gang efforts. His departure continues exodus of top LAPD administrators.

William Rathburn, a Los Angeles deputy chief who coordinated security measures for the 1984 Olympics and has been one of the Police Department’s most successful anti-gang crime fighters, was named chief of police Friday in Dallas.

His departure, after a 27-year Los Angeles Police Department career in which he was considered a potential successor to Chief Daryl F. Gates, marks another example in recent years of top police administrators leaving during Gates’ long tenure at the helm of Parker Center.

Jan Hart, the Dallas city manager who hired Rathburn, 49, said she was particularly impressed with his work in the department’s South Bureau, where gang-related homicides have declined for the first time in years.

“We have about 250 identified gangs in the city of Dallas,” she said in a telephone interview. “While the problem has not grown like the proportion in Los Angeles, it is our hope that with Chief Rathburn we can turn the problem around.”

In a phone interview from a Dallas hotel room, Rathburn said his new post will have responsibilities similar to those he held in the Los Angeles department.

“Like Dallas, South Bureau covers an area that is ethnically very diverse,” Rathburn said. “There’s a lot to do here. Helping build a better relationship with the community is going to be one of the major challenges of this job.”

Danny Bakewell, president of Brotherhood Crusade, an organization in Los Angeles’ black community, said he “reluctantly” gave Rathburn a glowing recommendation when Dallas city officials contacted him two weeks ago about Rathburn’s work to improve police-minority relations. He said Dallas’ gain is a loss for Los Angeles.

“He brought a breath of fresh air to the African-American community that had been lacking or smothered by many of his predecessors and by the overall demeanor of the police department,” Bakewell said.

“In Rathburn, we finally had somebody we could work with, somebody we could communicate with, someone who was open and who didn’t come to the table with a closed mind,” he added.

Rathburn’s appointment was announced at a morning press conference in Dallas, where he said he had agreed to a five- to seven-year commitment as chief of police.

When he assumes the $95,000-a-year post March 4, he will be heading a 2,700-member force that has experienced strained relations with minority communities and seen its last chief indicted for lying to a special investigative panel reviewing a police shooting.

In addition, the Dallas crime rate, led by a 30% jump in homicides, has reached an all-time high.

“I have some different ideas,” Rathburn said at the press conference, “different from what you’ve seen here or even what we’ve tried in Los Angeles. But I can tell you this right now: I’m not willing to accept this high violent crime.”

While some minority groups in Dallas criticized Rathburn’s appointment because he is white, others hope that he will ease race relations and restore community trust in police.

When the nationwide search for a new Dallas police chief began four months ago, County Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, said he would issue a “call to arms” if the city chose a chief insensitive to minority concerns. Price said he and others would “not only shoot at police, we’re going to take the whole city.”

On Friday, Price said Rathburn had “such a good reputation that you’d be hard-pressed to say anything bad about him.”

“My only hope is that he brings everything positive he had in Los Angeles to Dallas, and more,” Price said. “I only had one criterion and that was that the new chief not be a ‘good ol’ boy,’ and he’s definitely not.”

Gates could not be reached for comment, but his office issued a short statement in which the chief praised Rathburn for his “impeccable credentials.”

Rathburn becomes one in a series of top administrators who have left the department to head police agencies in other cities. Many Parker Center insiders said the officials grew frustrated because there was little room for career advancement as long as Gates remained in the chief’s office.

“If I thought Chief Gates was leaving anytime soon and I had a chance to be chief in Los Angeles, I wouldn’t have left,” Rathburn said. “But that wasn’t my reading of situation. I may never have had the opportunity to compete for the chief position.”

The 63-year-old Gates, who was appointed 13 years ago, recently said he had no plans to leave. Among those who have left during his tenure are Assistant Chief Marvin D. Iannone, now police chief in Beverly Hills; Cmdr. Lawrence Binkley, who became police chief in Long Beach; Cmdr. Thomas Windham, now police chief in Ft. Worth; Cmdr. William Burke, who resigned to become police chief in Burlington, Vt., and Deputy Chief Llewellis Ritter, who quit to head security for the California Lottery.

Herbert R. Boeckmann, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, said that none of the top police staff members have been guaranteed that, even if they did stay long enough, they would become chief of police.

“There’s only one head of anything,” Boeckmann said, “whether Chief Gates was here or not.”

Times staff writer John H. Lee contributed to this report.