Gates Hearing Attracts a Sideshow

The portrait is as unflattering as they come: Daryl F. Gates as der Fuehrer.

Bob Stickman had taken the image of the Los Angeles police chief, painted in a Hitler mustache with the demand “GATES MUST GO” above it, and silk-screened hundreds of T-shirts to sell at $10 apiece.

After selling 175 shirts at the anti-Gates rally at Parker Center on Saturday and another 65 on Venice Beach on Sunday, Stickman wore one of his creations to the Los Angeles County Courthouse on Monday morning to witness the latest maneuvers in the political battle concerning Gates’ future.

“The object,” Stickman said, “is to keep the pressure on. . . . A couple people question the mustache. But I say, look, I got a mortgage to pay and these shirts are selling like hot cakes.” A few hours later, Lorenzo Moriel presented a different kind of image--one that cop-turned-author Joseph Wambaugh called “The Blue Knight.”

Neatly turned out in the midnight blue of the Police Department that employs him, Moriel had come to court to testify on a routine arrest he had made. He had wandered up to the 8th floor just to watch the hubbub.

That’s what Moriel was telling a reporter Monday when, suddenly, he was caught in the glaring white light of a TV news camera and microphones were in his face.

Moriel seemed taken aback at first, then responded to the challenge. The news that Gates would be reinstated to his job “kind of makes me feel like the chief’s been vindicated,” the officer declared. As far as he was concerned, Moriel added, “the chief is being persecuted for something a few officers did.”

With confidence in the city’s leaders and its Police Department wavering, there are no bystanders.

As lawyers debated legal points before Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian, a full battalion of Los Angeles’ Fourth Estate had convened inside and outside the courtroom for the media event du jour . Someone counted 17 TV news cameras in all.

“It must be a celebrity thing,” one passerby muttered.

“This here is unbelievable,” said county employee Andy Seaman, who tends the eight elevators and 36 escalators in the courthouse. “I’ve been here 10 years, and I’ve never seen this much.”

But the courthouse on Hill Street did not host the trials for McMartin defendants, Zsa Zsa Gabor or Christian Brando. As media events go, Zsa Zsa being a 10, this was about a 4.

“I’m not impressed,” sniffed city attorney spokesman Ted Goldstein. Not that it isn’t a good story, he added, saying that in more than 20 years in municipal government it was unparalleled “in terms of interest, interplay, infighting.”

Political activist Cynthia McClain-Hill, a proponent of the recall of Gates, dismissed Monday’s hearing as “the preliminary shenanigans.” McClain-Hill, who is active in the 8th District City Council candidacy of Kerman Maddox, predicted that a recall will ultimately bring Gates down. The Committee to Recall Daryl Gates needs 57,000 signatures in 120 days to bring about a special election.

“Based on what I’m seeing out in the community, it should be easy,” she said.

City Council politics offered a subplot Monday. McClain-Hill was happy to learn that Maddox’s chief political rival, Mark Ridley-Thomas of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was inside Sohigian’s courtroom, while Maddox, a former aide to Mayor Tom Bradley, was campaigning for today’s election.

“There aren’t a lot of votes in there,” she said.

But after Sohigian issued a temporary restraining order returning Gates to his job, it was Ridley-Thomas who spoke into a bouquet of microphones, disputing the notion that it was a victory for Gates.

“You just simply have to know there will be more to come.” Ridley-Thomas said.

Earlier, as reporters watched on hallway monitors, the lawyers’ debate dragged on. “What are they doing in there?” someone asked.

“They’re wasting time,” said Steve Futterman, a reporter for NBC Mutual Radio. “And they’re making lots of money.”