City Candidates Split on Whether Gates Should Quit : Elections: Some say the chief’s resignation would clean up the Police Department. Others claim it would make him a political scapegoat.

Candidates for two Los Angeles City Council seats representing San Fernando Valley districts are divided over whether Police Chief Daryl F. Gates should resign to atone for the police beating of a black motorist, but they offer many suggestions for preventing similar incidents.

The motorist, 25-year-old Rodney G. King of Altadena, was struck up to 56 times by several police officers in a March 3 incident that was videotaped by an amateur photographer. Four police officers were indicted last week in connection with the beating, which generated widespread calls for Gates to quit. Gates has repeatedly refused.

In the northwest Valley, five challengers are running in the April 9 election for the 12th District seat held by incumbent Hal Bernson.

Bernson, a longtime Gates supporter who has used the chief’s picture in campaign literature, said he will not call for Gates’ resignation and that the chief should make up his own mind.

“That’s going to be his call. . . . I think he’s been a good chief,” the councilman said.

“There’s a lot of pressure from the ACLU and other groups that are anti-police from way back. I think they just think this is an opportunity to get rid of Daryl Gates.”

Bernson said the Police Department should institute periodic psychological evaluations of police officers, particularly “those put in situations of confrontation,” in an effort to prevent incidents of excessive force. But he opposes Mayor Tom Bradley’s recent proposal to subject all city department heads, including the police chief, to a performance review and possible firing every five years.

Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein, generally considered the strongest of Bernson’s challengers, said Gates should quit.

“The controversy has gotten extremely out of hand. He’s lost his credibility now. I just think it would be better to start with a clean slate,” she said.

Korenstein said the Police Department must improve its training for officers in “dealing with human beings in a variety of situations.” She added that the City Council and the Police Commission must exercise tighter control of the department.

Korenstein said she supports the concept of performance reviews but believes they should be done more frequently than every five years.

Printer Allen Hecht of Granada Hills, another challenger, said he too believes Gates should quit.

“The LAPD has the reputation, in some places, of being the finest in the world. It’s a shame that reputation is being sullied. If we can start to clean up that reputation by cleaning up at the top, we should do that,” Hecht said.

He said a police chief sets the tone for officers’ behavior, and if they are guilty of using excessive force, responsibility lies with the top commander. He contrasted Gates and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the victorious U.S.-led forces in the Persian Gulf War.

“You never heard of one case with any of the coalition forces committing an act of brutality. That comes from the leadership. If the leadership fired them up in a certain way, they could have been as vicious as the people they were capturing,” he said.

Hecht said the police academy must do a “better job of screening people.” He said he backs Bradley’s review plan.

Challenger Arthur (Larry) Kagele, himself a Los Angeles police detective, said he thinks Bradley and members of the City Council bear as much responsibility for the beating incident as Gates.

“Everyone is passing the buck to Daryl Gates. . . . You can’t hold just one man responsible. You’re just looking for a scapegoat,” Kagele said.

He said police community-relations officers must do a better job of assuring residents they can go to the police with excessive-force or other complaints and know they will be heard.

“We need to tell people . . . that we’re your friend, not your enemy,” he said.

Kagele said he “doesn’t feel comfortable” with Bradley’s proposal, because “they can use it as a political thing to get rid of a good chief or to keep a bad one in.”

Businessman Walter Prince of Chatsworth said he thinks that before any decision is made to oust Gates, an inquiry should be made to determine if the Police Department is guilty of a pattern of excessive force against minorities.

If no such pattern exists, Gates should not quit. If there is a pattern, he should be “thrown into the street as soon as possible,” said Prince, who also supports the Bradley review proposal.

Prince urged the Police Department to establish “some kind of recurring training in the sensitivity area” so that officers could better appreciate racial and cultural differences among residents they encounter on the streets.

Candidate Leonard Shapiro, who publishes a small, City Hall-oriented newsletter from his Granada Hills home, said: “Gates should go. Not today, but yesterday.”

In the City Council district covering the central and northeast Valley, two candidates are running against incumbent Joel Wachs.

Wachs declined to say whether he thinks Gates should quit, saying that would “shift the focus away from” the real issue, which is restructuring police training and other procedures to prevent more beatings. He said outside experts, not “political demagogues,” should be brought in to perform a “top-to-bottom analysis” of the Police Department to determine “if the problem is greater than a onetime incident.”

Wachs said he favors the idea of performance reviews, but the mayor’s proposal “doesn’t sound like the best way to go.”

Wachs challenger Peter A. Lynch, a developers’ consultant from Sun Valley, said he thinks Gates should quit.

“I just think he’d be better off, and the city would be better off, to get this behind us. I thought we were in Eastern Europe when I saw that” videotape of the beating, he said.

Lynch, who backs the review proposal, suggested the city establish an independent ombudsman to receive complaints from citizens about police behavior as well as from officers who believe their colleagues have committed an offense.

Candidate Tom Paterson, a longtime North Hollywood homeowners group leader, said Bradley and members of the City Council and the Police Commission should share the blame for the beating incident with Gates.

“Where were those people when all these problems were piling up?” in the Police Department, he said. “To call for Daryl Gates’ resignation is to make Daryl Gates a political scapegoat.”

Paterson said those in City Hall suggesting Gates should leave are doing so only to “keep the spotlight away from them” and distract attention from the fact that, under the City Charter, they bear some responsibility for oversights regarding the Police Department.

He said a federal grand jury investigation should be conducted into whether the King beating is part of an overall pattern of abuse against minority citizens.