Gates Offers Plan to Revive Confidence in the LAPD : Police: Ex-state Justice Arguelles will head panel examining misconduct. Rights leaders criticize program.

In a sweeping program to restore confidence in a Police Department tarnished by the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King, Chief Daryl F. Gates announced Wednesday a 10-point plan to examine the causes of police misconduct and improve community relations.

Gates said he has asked retired state Supreme Court Justice John Arguelles to chair a five-member panel that will examine incidents in which officers have used excessive force and recommend reforms of LAPD policies.

Other elements of the plan include a psychological profile of officers who commit violent acts and an extensive review of department training procedures.

“We must look for any and all conditions that may have contributed to the development of attitudes and patterns of behavior that could have led to this kind of gross misconduct,” Gates said.

The chief added that the Police Department must develop improved methods for teaching recruits “a reverence for the law” and “a more compassionate understanding” of the city’s cultural diversity.

High-ranking department officials said the plan was the product of 2 1/2 weeks of meetings between the chief and his top assistants as the department attempts to respond to one of the worst crises in its recent history.

One of the LAPD officials involved in drafting the plan, Cmdr. Bob Gil of the press relations section, said the beating had prompted a much-needed self-reflection within the department.

Gil said the department recognizes it has its share of bad officers. “Officers are found guilty of a whole range of things,” he said. “We discipline those people; it exists. This (the King beating) shows that things were getting a little lax. . . . Something happened here. Let’s look at ourselves.”

Gates and the Police Department have come under intense criticism since the March 3 beating of King, who was struck more than 50 times by officers wielding batons. Recorded on videotape, the incident has become a national symbol of police brutality, prompting calls for Gates to resign.

The Los Angeles County Grand Jury indicted four officers in the incident on March 15.

The measures announced Wednesday by Gates were almost immediately criticized by civil rights leaders who have called for the chief to step down from the post he has held for 13 years.

“These are minor, insignificant steps, designed to quell the calls for Chief Gates’ resignation,” said Ramona Ripston of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We welcome any changes that the Los Angeles Police Department is going to implement to make itself more responsible to this community,” Ripston continued. “However, this does nothing to solve the problems of the department. The department needs new, vigorous leadership with innovative ideas about policing.”

In a tacit admission that the public has lost confidence in the department’s ability to police itself, the chief’s 10-point program includes sending teams of police supervisors to make unannounced spot checks on field officers. The program will also establish a toll-free telephone hot line for citizens to report complaints of excessive force.

Other elements of the program announced by Gates:

* Dr. Martin Reiser, the department’s chief psychologist, will profile officers involved in the King beating and other cases of police abuse. His findings will be used in the department’s screening of new recruits.

* The department will strengthen its system of random monitoring of both voice and computer communications between officers. Some of the officers who participated in the King beating were found to have made racial slurs in computer messages just before the incident.

* The LAPD’s Planning and Research Division will conduct quarterly opinion surveys in each of the department’s 18 divisions for public “feedback” on police services.

* Renewed discussions with the federal government to “commit a significant amount of resources” to the development of new police technology that will provide “more modern, non-lethal alternatives to . . . the club and pistol.”

* Cmdr. Rick Dinse, formerly a captain in the San Fernando Valley, has been assigned as the chief’s “personal, full-time” liaison to the government agencies--including the FBI--conducting investigations of the King beating.

* Cmdr. Mike Bostic, currently acting chief of operations in the South Bureau, will lead a review of the department’s training procedures. Bostic will also study police training methods in cities across the country.

Mayor Tom Bradley praised elements of Gates’ program but said it was overdue, while some civil rights groups said the plan falls woefully short of the reforms needed to prevent future incidents of brutality.

“While I am pleased that the chief is looking at these kinds of things, my only concern is it seems to me that these are things that were called for a long time ago,” Bradley said at a press conference Wednesday.

“As to why they have not been done, I do not know,” Bradley continued. “I think his efforts to have an independent committee take a look at some aspects of excessive use of force is beneficial.”

Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade, an African-American civic organization, called Gates’ program “too little, too late.”

He said his organization will continue to call for Gates to resign.

Gates said the Arguelles committee will act independently from a similar review panel soon to be established by Mayor Bradley.

Arguelles, a 63-year-old Irvine resident, was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1987 by Gov. George Deukmejian. He served two years before retiring in March, 1989.

“I know John Arguelles,” Gates said. “He’s a tough guy, a tough-minded guy. They’re not going to sugarcoat anything and I don’t want them to.”

Arguelles said he first met Gates in 1989 at a Police Academy luncheon honoring the Hispanic Command Officers Assn., a group of Latino LAPD supervisors at the rank of lieutenant and above. Arguelles was the principal speaker at the luncheon.

Arguelles said his committee will avoid discussion of the King beating, choosing to focus instead on Police Department training methods in general and other cases of police brutality that have cost the city millions of dollars in court settlements.

“I hope we can disengage ourselves from all the politics over whether Chief Gates should resign,” Arguelles said Wednesday from his Orange County law office.

“I was born in the city of Los Angeles,” Arguelles said in explaining why he had accepted the post. “It’s a wonderful city and it’s going to have a Police Department as long as it’s a city. If it has deficiencies, we want to find them and batten down the hatches. . . . Let the chips fall where they may.”

Gates said that Dr. James Zumberge, retired president of USC, had also agreed to serve as a member of the panel.

As Gates made his recommendations at a crowded downtown news conference, investigations into the King beating continued.

FBI agents and Los Angeles County district attorney’s investigators--sometimes working together--renewed their efforts to interview police officers assigned to the Foothill Division in the North San Fernando Valley, where the March 3 incident took place.

A Justice Department source said the FBI intends to finish its investigation of possible civil rights violations this week, after being met with resistance by many of the division’s 246 officers who were advised by their union to seek immunity before talking. Only a handful of officers have agreed to be interviewed.

The 14 district attorney investigators assigned to the King case are concentrating their efforts on the 17 uniformed officers who watched the beating but did not intervene. They are reviewing these officers’ actions in other cases, sources close to the case said, and are trying to determine whether still other officers might have participated in an attempted cover-up of the incident.

“The district attorney’s investigation is into the Rodney King incident and any officers who may be involved as principals or accessories,” said spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons. She said it does not parallel the broad federal inquiry into whether a pattern of racism and police brutality exists.

Late Tuesday, attorneys for King filed an $83-million claim with the city of Los Angeles, naming the four indicted officers as “perpetrators” in the beating. If the claim is not settled within 45 days, King can file a lawsuit.