City Council Acts to Reinstate Gates Despite Plea by Bradley : 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.

By JANE FRITSCH and PAUL FELDMAN

April 6, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

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 decision by the council was a major setback for Bradley, who on Tuesday called for Gates to resign, and for weeks has been working behind the scenes to orchestrate Gates’ ouster in the aftermath of the police beating of Rodney G. King.

“We wanted to assert our authority,” said an elated Councilwoman Joy Picus, who called the council’s action a “political decision.”

The mayor swiftly condemned the council vote and questioned its legality. His staff and Police Commission members began working Friday night on a strategy to attack it. And Garcia said he might resign from the commission to protest the council’s dramatic move.

“They have now destroyed the whole Civil Service system in one fell swoop,” Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said.

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

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 putting Gates on paid leave, before making the action official at a public meeting Thursday morning.

Council President John Ferraro branded the commissioners’ 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. Hahn said Gates could resume his job as early as the next Police Commission meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

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 for monetary damages. “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 Police 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.

In a statement Friday evening, Bradley said the council’s action threatened the independence of the Police Commission and the other city panels he appoints. “I am concerned that . . . 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.

“It is an incredibly damaging precedent if it’s allowed to stand,” Fabiani said.

No decision had been made late Friday about whether to fight the council action in court on Monday, Fabiani said, adding, “It will be a long weekend of deliberation and legal research.”

Garcia said Friday he is “personally considering” whether to resign from the commission because of the council’s interference.

“Do they or do they not want civilian oversight (of the Police Department)?” Garcia said. “If they want to take over the functions of the Police Commission, that’s fine with me.”

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.

The council also 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. 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 broadcast around the world repeatedly.

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 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.”

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.

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.

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 urged businesses to boycott the city by scheduling their conventions elsewhere, and announced the start of a drive to register 1 million new voters.

Flanked by leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, Jackson said a rally would be held at noon today in downtown Los Angeles. The group 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.

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.

Police union officials said Friday they plan to organize mass gatherings of their members beginning next week to decide on a course of action that will indicate their unhappiness with Bradley and the commission for their action against Gates.

George Aliano, president of the 8,400-member Los Angeles Police Protective League, said the union “may well” organize an effort to recall Bradley. Other options range from a work slowdown to a “severe case of the Blue Flu,” Aliano said, referring to a sickout. He said he would advise against any measures that would hurt the public.

Times staff writers Leslie Berger, James Rainey and Tracy Wood contributed to this story.