Council Orders Reinstatement of Gates Despite Bradley Plea : King beating: The vote of 10 to 3 is a major setback for the mayor, who is unable to sway the lawmakers. Police chief agrees not to sue the city for monetary damages.

The Los Angeles City Council ordered the reinstatement of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates on Friday, just one day after the Police Commission relieved him of his duties pending the outcome of a wide-ranging investigation.

The council’s action followed an extraordinary four-hour closed session at which Mayor Tom Bradley and Police Commission President Dan Garcia tried to persuade the council to back away from plans to thwart the commission’s action.

The 10-3 vote by the council was a major setback for Bradley, who on Tuesday called for Gates to resign and who for weeks has been working behind the scenes to orchestrate his ouster.

“We wanted to assert our authority,” said an elated Councilwoman Joy Picus.

The reinstatement was also a personal victory for Gates, who had stubbornly resisted pressure from Bradley as well as calls by community activists for his resignation.

In a statement, the mayor questioned the legality of the council’s action and said it threatened the independence of the Police Commission and the other city panels he appoints.

“I am concerned that the City Council action today sets the precedent whereby any action of the independent citizens commission could be invalidated based upon the whims or the political motivations of the City Council members,” he said.

Neither Bradley nor Garcia, who said the council’s action had plunged the city into a “pretty severe constitutional crisis,” would say whether they would legally challenge the council.

Council members said their decision reflected their anger at the treatment of Gates and the secretive manner in which the commission operated.

Under questioning Friday, council members said, Garcia acknowledged that three commission members met privately Wednesday night to discuss Gates’ ouster before making the action official at a public meeting on Thursday morning.

Council President John Ferraro branded the Police Commission’s unannounced Wednesday night session a violation of the state’s Open Meetings Act.

“We did not agree with the commission’s action--they acted illegally and irresponsibly,” Ferraro said. “They besmirched a public servant of 42 years.”

The council made Gates’ reinstatement contingent on his agreeing not to sue the city for monetary damages. City Atty. James K. Hahn and lawyers for the chief said Gates will agree to the terms.

One of Gates’ lawyers, Harry G. Melkonian, said the chief told him he was “absolutely delighted and anxious to get back to work” and that he had no plans to sue the commission. “I’m not interested in any money from the city,” Gates told Melkonian. “I just want to be back in my office.”

“But he still is going to wait for things to take their course (over the weekend),” the lawyer said. “He wants to see it happen first.”

Technically, the council voted to direct Hahn to reinstate Gates as part of a settlement of a lawsuit Gates plans to file against the Police Commission on Monday. Under the City Charter, the council does not have the power to overrule the commission’s removal of Gates, but the council does have the authority to settle lawsuits filed against the commission.

Representatives of the city attorney’s office were in the council chambers throughout the session and conducted negotiations by telephone with Gates’ attorneys, who agreed to the council’s terms.

Besides moving to reinstate Gates, the council voted 9 to 4 to appropriate $150,000 to the Police Commission to hire an independent counsel to investigate the operations of the Police Department in the wake of the beating of Rodney G. King. The council also voted to order Gates to report to the council on a biweekly basis about the state of the department.

The chain of events was set off by the March 3 police beating of King, a 25-year-old black parolee from Altadena, after a car chase in the San Fernando Valley. The incident was captured on videotape by an amateur cameraman, and the stark, black-and-white images have been repeatedly broadcast around the world.

In calling for Gates’ resignation this week, Bradley said it would begin a “healing process” that would start to repair the city’s tarnished reputation.

Others, including council President Ferraro, said the Police Commission’s action and Bradley’s “premature” attack on Gates had further divided the city.

“If you’re going to take an action . . . especially with a prominent figure,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, “you had better have your ducks lined up.

“What the commission did, above all other things, is that it undermined the confidence that 10 of us (council members) had in them.”

Councilman Michael Woo, the only council member who has called for Gates’ resignation, questioned whether the council’s move Friday would further cripple city government.

“It heals some of the wounds and opens others,” he said. “It’s extremely chaotic. It shows the city government is in disarray.”

Woo and council members Ruth Galanter and Robert Farrell voted against the move to reinstate Gates.

Council members said Bradley and Garcia made short statements after being invited into the meeting and that most of the council’s questions over the next hour and a half were directed at Garcia. The mood, said Picus, “was calm, reasonable and reasoned.”

Ferraro said Bradley “came in, he pleaded his case, and maybe convinced three council members. . . . He wanted to stand by his commission’s action.”

Bradley declined to comment when he emerged from the council chamber at 2:45 p.m.

“In an executive session, and this was exactly that, you are not supposed to reveal what was said or done,” Bradley said.

Earlier, Bradley told reporters he requested the meeting with the council to put the Gates controversy “in the proper context.” Bradley insisted that the commission’s removal of Gates was an “independent” decision, free of influence from the mayor’s office.

“They did share with me their plans, but at no point did I try to influence them one way or another,” said the mayor.

In a flurry of phone calls over the previous 24 hours, the mayor’s office had tried to persuade council members to back away from overturning the commission’s action.

As the council was meeting, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, flanked by leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union and National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, announced a major rally set for noon today. They urged citizens to demand a change in city government that would make the Police Department accountable to civilians.

“Don’t just stop by focusing on Gates . . . but turn our anger into action,” Jackson said during a press conference at the office of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

“We have our marching feet,” Jackson said. “We have our dollars and we have our votes and all those tactics should be employed to bring about an effective, nonviolent resolution to this crisis.”

He urged businesses to boycott the city by scheduling their conventions elsewhere, and announced the start of a drive to register one million new voters.

Jackson called King’s beating “a watershed moment in our nation’s history,” and compared the widely televised incident to such historic moments as the arrest of Rosa Parks, a key event in the civil rights movement.

Jackson was joined by Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California; Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles); William Gibson, national chairman of the NAACP, and William Robertson, executive director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Times staff writers Richard A. Serrano and James Rainey contributed to this story.