Gates Battles to Restore His and the LAPD’s Image : Law enforcement: Chief goes on offensive to defuse beating furor and its impact on the entire department.

As soon as the black-and-white images of what he calls the “infamous incident” flashed across the nation’s television screens, Daryl Francis Gates was back on familiar turf.

Many times in his turbulent 13-year reign as Los Angeles police chief he has been on the defensive: the “normal people” controversy, the “Aryan broad” gaffe, the “El Salvadoran drunk” furor, the casual drug users “ought to be taken out and shot” uproar.

This time, the stakes are higher.

Every day he has had to endure repeated telecasts of his officers beating an unarmed Altadena man; he has been mercilessly heckled and jeered; civil rights activists are trying to oust him; newspaper ads have branded his department a “gang,” and many opponents have compared him to Richard M. Nixon in his final days.

So Gates, bolstered by a show of confidence from his fellow officers and what he says are numerous cards and calls from citizens, has unleashed a public relations counteroffensive aimed at restoring his and the department’s image during what is perhaps the most critical episode of his four-decade career.

Since the tape was first aired nearly two weeks ago, Gates has appealed for support at a press conference, issued a somewhat equivocal apology, made peace with the Salvadoran community, appeared on “CBS This Morning,” “Prime Time Live” and “Face the Nation,” and, to top it off, will address the Los Angeles chapter of the Public Relations Society of America on Thursday.

He has met with the mayor, huddled with his top commanders, welcomed a call of support from Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, and written a bewildered letter to columnist George F. Will after the right-wing wordsmith lashed out at Gates as a “special problem for thoughtful conservatives.”

Those who have grown accustomed to sparring with him say he has appeared surprisingly cooperative, even docile, in his efforts to undo the damage and quiet the growing chorus calling for his resignation.

“He was not the blustery, argumentative, you know, swaggering Chief Gates,” said Melanie Lomax, a member of the Police Commission who has spoken with Gates several times in recent days. “He appeared more conciliatory and somewhat worried.”

The few confidantes in Gates’ extremely private world insist that the chief’s resolve to keep his $168,000-a-year job has only been strengthened by the controversy. If at times he has seemed less hard-nosed, they contend, it is because he has been so heartbroken by the images of uniformed officers repeatedly striking a prone and apparently defenseless Rodney G. King.

“His press image is not the real Daryl Gates,” said former Deputy Chief William Rathburn, who recently resigned to head the Dallas Police Department. “He’s an amazingly compassionate man. I’m sure he’s taking this very, very personally. Probably more personally than he should.”

However, in his efforts to smooth things over, Gates has often fanned the flames. Those who know him agree that he thinks more like a soldier than a politician, relying more on hyperbole than prudence, and always speaking off the cuff and on the record.

When asked at a press conference about his much-publicized apology--which has been described as backhanded because Gates mentioned that King is a parolee--the chief restated the offending passage.

“You have to understand that the hardest thing there is for a police chief or a police officer is to apologize to a convicted armed robber with a long arrest history,” he told reporters.

“In spite of that,” he added, “in spite of how difficult it is, he deserved that apology and I apologized. . . . Now that’s the point I was trying to make, but like so many things that have been said today and all throughout my career, there has been an awful lot of misinterpretation.”

Requests by The Times to interview Gates last week were declined. But the chief agreed to have a reporter present during a meeting with The Times’ publisher and editors Thursday--a meeting instigated by Gates because of concern that the newspaper’s editorials have been unfair.

During the hourlong conversation, Gates touched on a wide range of topics, from the problem of excessive force to the continuing integration of his department. Asked if under any scenario he could envision himself resigning now, Gates said he would first heed the advice of his wife of 21 years, Sima, whom he affectionately calls “Sam.”

“You think it’s hard on me?” said Gates, 64. “Actually, I can handle it. But, boy, it’s really tough on her. . . . So, I asked her this morning. I said, ‘Sam, would you rather I quit?’ She said, ‘Ab-so-lute-ly not. Ab-so-lute-ly not. You can’t.’ So that’s my answer. Absolutely not.”

Gates predicted that the department would degenerate into chaos if he were to leave, with morale plummeting and an exodus of top officers continuing. He will stay, he said, “because I need to stay.”

“You know, in so many situations, I could be a good guy,” said Gates, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he lingered on the last two words. “(But) my police officers would say, ‘Oh, man, the chief is selling us out.’ I could be a great guy. I could be very popular. . . . But that’s not the way you develop confidence and respect from your personnel.”

The difference between this and previous controversies, he said, is that few others have so greatly impacted the entire department. In most cases, officers are divided in their opinions. “There are no divided opinions in this one. They all know it’s bad.”

The bonfire erupted March 3, when amateur photographer George Holliday focused his new camcorder on the street below his Lake View Terrace apartment. On the tape he captured 15 officers, at least three of whom appeared to be taking turns kicking and clubbing King, a 25-year-old construction worker.

The video first aired March 4 on a Los Angeles television station, but Gates was in Washington, D.C., attending a meeting on crime with the U.S. attorney general and did not see it until the next day. By then, it had been shown on Cable News Network and the national furor had begun to brew.

Gates said he has now seen the tape “too many” times, “more than I would like to count.” But the first time, he said, was the worst.

“It made me physically ill,” he said.

Literally?

“Physically ill,” he said. “Physically ill.”

That first afternoon, at a meeting of the Police Commission, Gates called the tape “shocking.” But when he added that he would withhold judgment until after the incident had been fully investigated, the furor quickly began to mount.

Steve Delsohn, a writer who is helping Gates with his autobiography, said that he spoke with the chief shortly after the incident and was certain that Gates intended to take action.

“As soon as he said the tape was ‘shocking,’ that word jumped out at me,” said Delsohn, whose last book was a collaboration with former NFL running back and activist Jim Brown. “I know Gates. I knew that meant somebody was going to get nailed.”

Two days later, in his first press conference since the tape was aired, Gates attributed the incident to “total human failure” and called for the criminal prosecution of the three officers who appeared to be beating King.

But by calling it “an aberration,” he failed to resolve the issue for hundreds of critics who have insisted that excessive force is a commonplace occurrence, especially in the city’s minority communities.

“Gates is simply not good at public relations,” said Mark Ridley-Thomas, head of the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a candidate for the 8th District City Council seat. “He has exacerbated the ‘us against them’ mentality.”

Still, during several recent exchanges, he has extended what some considered newfound warmth to those with whom he has traditionally been at odds.

In a private meeting with the mayor and several members of the Police Commission about the beating incident, Gates was “surprisingly cooperative,” said one official in attendance who asked not to be identified. “He was a very different man.”

Later that afternoon, Gates embraced leaders of the Salvadoran community, who last month had demanded an apology for what they called his racist remarks about the killer of a female Los Angeles police officer.

Although the meeting had been scheduled before the videotaped beating was aired, Gates up to that point had been “very angry . . . very unresponsive . . . on the defensive,” said Madeline Janis, executive director of the Central American Refugee Center.

During the 45-minute gathering at the chief’s Parker Center office, he agreed to all their demands, Janis said, including a public statement of regret, which he told Salvadoran leaders they could draft for him.

“We found a changed person,” she said. “He was still Chief Gates, but he was attentive and responsive and he listened. We were flabbergasted, frankly.”

His small circle of assistant and deputy chiefs insist that they have seen only “a tower of strength.”

When Gates first called in his top commanders to announce some corrective steps--including both a criminal and internal investigation, a review of all training material and the preparation of psychological profiles of officers in excessive force cases--he was in total control, said Deputy Chief William Booth.

“He said, ‘Here’s your mission and yours and yours and you” Booth said. “Then he said, ‘Now I’ll listen to comments and views . . . just don’t anybody tell me we’re not going to do.”

Assistant Chief Robert Vernon, head of operations, said: “We don’t have pity parties. We do business.”

Through it all, one thing Gates has been in no danger of losing is his sardonic, often self-mocking wit.

Last week, before running off to federal court to testify in a civil suit brought by a 22-year-old Latino man who has claimed that officers “brutalized” him in a 1989 incident in El Sereno, Gates quipped that the man’s attorney apparently hoped that the chief’s “bad publicity” would rub off on jurors.

Once on the witness stand, Gates acknowledged that he was not aware of many details of the lawsuit, which claims that the department has an unconstitutional policy of “hogtying” suspects by using a rope and handcuffs to bind their hands and feet together.

The plaintiff’s attorney, John C. Burton, then asked: “Do you understand that you are a defendant in this case?”

Gates replied: “I understand I am a defendant in almost every case.”

Clearly, the most publicly emotional moment for Gates came during a rousing speech last Wednesday to officers who had gathered at the Police Academy for an “LAPD Day” luncheon.

As his colleagues finished their grilled chicken and rice pilaf, Gates took the podium and spoke extemporaneously about the numerous recent shooting attacks on police. There were the two officers wounded in North Hollywood, he said, for one of whom the only concern was whether he had done the right thing in shooting the suspect.

The other, on his back in the hospital with a bullet lodged in his neck, told him: “Chief, I am just so proud to be a member of the Los Angeles Police Department,” Gates said.

Then there was Tina Kerbrat, the first female officer killed in the line of duty, whose husband told Gates at the funeral, “Chief, she was so proud, so very proud. . . . I want to thank you and the department for what you have done.”

Then, Gates, his voice beginning to boom, said: “This man, who just lost his wife, the mother of his children . . . wanted to thank the Los Angeles Police Department.

“Folks . . . if that does not encourage your heart, if that does not nourish your spirit, if that does not make you want to stand up and say proudly . . . ‘We love the LAPD, we are proud to be part of the LAPD, and we hold our heads high’. . . . “

Then he paused, maybe eight seconds, the words hanging in the silent gymnasium where they were gathered.

“Thank you,” he finally said, “for encouraging and nourishing my heart.”

Times staff writers Sheryl Stolberg, Hector Tobar and Patt Morrison contributed to this story.

QUOTES FROM CHIEF GATES

Since he became Los Angeles’ 49th police chief in 1978, Daryl F. Gates has made a number of controversial statements that have offended, in varying degrees, blacks, Jews, Latinos, women, casual drug users and even the State Department.

1978: He had been in office barely one month when he remarked to a Latino audience that some Latino officers were not promoted within the LAPD because they were “lazy.” Gates said that he was only trying to encourage Latino officers to work harder and attain leadership positions.

1979: Gates casually commented at a news conference in England that if President Jimmy Carter could not rescue the 52 American captives in Iran, Gates could by sending in his SWAT squad. A short time later, “the State Department called and said, ‘Chief, we’d appreciate it if you’d mind your own business,’ ” according to Gates. The chief said he was only trying to be witty.

1980: At a closed dinner meeting of deputy district attorneys, Gates called KABC-TV anchorwoman Christine Lund “an Aryan broad.” Gates later apologized, saying the comment was meant “in jest” and was “in the spirit of a raucous evening.”

1982: Gates angered many Jews by releasing an in-house report that suggested that the Soviet Union was sending criminals disguised as Jewish immigrants to Los Angeles to disrupt the 1984 Olympics. Gates went out of his way to make peace with Jewish leaders, saying that the report was purely speculative and that he had never expected the media to publicize it.

In an interview, Gates said he had instructed his staff to investigate “a hunch” he had about why so many blacks die from police use of the carotid chokehold, which cuts off the blood supply to the brain. “We may be finding that in some blacks when it (the carotid chokehold) is applied, the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal people.” The remark, Gates said, was no more than a careless choice of words.

1984: The City Council approved a ballot measure that would increase the city’s power to discipline and fire department heads, such as Gates. Then the chief alleged that this would permit undue political influence by council members on the police and the rest of the city departments. Then in a statement that angered some council members, Gates said he was going to “rummage around in my mind” to cite examples of how council members ask the police to do “all kinds of things that are inappropriate.”

1988: In an interview, Gates conceded that he is more “patient and sensitive” in his dealings with people. But, he added, “I can still be an arrogant bastard. I’ve grown harder and softer.”

1989: In a videotaped message to LAPD officers, Gates used the term “pantywaists” to describe officers who opposed his Halloween deployment plan that was intended to prevent a recurrence of the near-riot that occurred in Hollywood the previous year.

1990: At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the first anniversary of the Bush Administration’s war on drugs, Gates said “casual drug users ought to be taken out and shot.” His statement was aimed at those “who blast some pot on a casual basis and the damned hypocrites who go out and party on the weekends and snort cocaine.”

Gates said Mayor Tom Bradley had written a “dumb letter” calling for an investigation of possible police improprieties in the defense of four officers charged with vandalism during a drug raid two years ago near 39th Street and Dalton Ave.

1991: In an angry statement after the shooting of rookie policewoman Tina Kerbrat, Gates referred to Kerbrat’s killer as “an El Salvadoran drunk--a drunk who doesn’t belong here.”

In response to an outpouring of anger from Los Angeles residents over the videotape that captures LAPD officers repeatedly striking defenseless Rodney G. King, Gates offered an apology to King, but further enraged people when he added that he would apologize “in spite of the fact that (King’s) on parole and a convicted robber.”

Compiled by Times editorial researcher Cecilia Rasmussen.