Gates Voiced Concern, Anger to Commission : Confrontation: Transcript shows the chief sparring with police board members in the meeting at which they placed him on leave.

Meeting behind closed doors with the Los Angeles Police Commission last week, Chief Daryl F. Gates made it clear to his superiors that he was embarrassed by their decision to place him on administrative leave, that he planned to hold each of them personally responsible, and that their order “is going to be extremely disruptive.”

“I think these problems could have been solved in a much more effective way,” he told the three commissioners as they voted last Thursday to temporarily remove him from office.

“I think to do this just before an election also is disruptive to the city,” Gates said. “And I’m very disappointed in the action of this board. But I will respect it and follow it.”

A transcript of the hourlong session at Parker Center police headquarters, made available Monday, also shows that Gates was deeply concerned about the personal ramifications of being forced to vacate his sixth-floor office, where he has run the LAPD for the last 13 years.

He asked and was given permission to attend two social functions he already had scheduled as chief. He worried about what would happen to personal files kept in his office.

Gates was given approval to make a videotape for his troops to explain his departure, a request that was granted after commission Vice President Melanie Lomax advised him not to include any “editorializing or other comments that are likely to inflame the situation.”

Gates also won assurances that he could keep his city car and retinue of bodyguards. Citing the spreading controversy over the Rodney G. King police beating, Gates said, “I have been the subject of serious threats to my life. My family has been threatened.”

King was seriously injured by police baton blows during his arrest after a March 3 car chase in the San Fernando Valley. The beating was videotaped. Four officers have been charged with assault, and numerous investigations are under way into allegations of brutality and racism by Los Angeles police.

A week ago, Mayor Tom Bradley publicly asked Gates to resign. Gates refused and the Police Commission on Thursday ordered him placed on home leave.

On Friday, the City Council voted to reinstate Gates by ordering the city attorney’s office to settle Gates’ lawsuit seeking his job back. A Superior Court judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order allowing Gates to return to work.

At last week’s executive session, Gates barely had taken his seat when commission President Daniel Garcia told him that he was being reassigned to home duty.

With Gates gone, Garcia said, the commission “would continue and expand its investigation to determine whether there is any basis for bringing charges of mismanagement, neglect of duty or other breaches of duty.”

Gates, saying that the commission was being unfair, complained about Lomax’s comment when she was appointed to the board last year that she would bring a “shotgun” approach to the job. She has since denied making the statement.

“I don’t share your views at all,” he told her. “I think your comments right from the very beginning before you were a part of this organization . . . suggested that there would be trouble.”

Lomax, in an interview Monday, angrily termed Gates’ comments a “personal attack against me.”

“That is his style,” she said. “He likes to say, ‘I will remember you, watch out.’ He has a bullying type of style. . . . It’s the kind of lower-level dialogue that the chief too often engages in. I believe that he is unable to make distinctions between philosophical differences and personal animosity.”

Garcia told Gates that he would be relieved only if the commission’s investigation determined he was derelict in his duty. “There might be nothing that results in terms of immediate discipline against the chief,” Garcia said.

Gates criticized commissioners for removing him under a section of the LAPD manual normally used when “there are serious charges being brought and serious allegations made against an officer.”

He asked the commission to cite specific allegations against him, a challenge the commission did not meet. He also said that Bradley and the commissioners should have delayed a decision until after the mayor’s new commission investigating the Police Department had completed its work.

“This whole action of the board defames me,” Gates said. “And I would like the record to show that I hold each and every one of you personally responsible for any defamation (or) any harm that this brings me.”

Toward the end of the meeting, Garcia appeared exasperated when he wondered aloud whether both sides had properly aired their grievances. “Has everybody got it out of their system?” he asked.