Garcia Knows the City’s Power Structure Well

Daniel P. Garcia, the police commissioner who resigned Tuesday, is known in City Hall as an intelligent, ambitious attorney who rose from the barrios of East Los Angeles to become one of Mayor Tom Bradley’s most trusted confidants.

A gruff-talking man whose knowledge of the municipal planning bureaucracy is legendary, Garcia served 12 years on the powerful city Planning Commission, including 10 years as president.

Garcia resigned from the Planning Commission in 1988, after apparently suffering a heart attack. But he remained within the city’s higher circles of power, quickly establishing himself as a top City Hall lobbyist. He continued to nurture the close relationship he forged with the mayor during his years on the Planning Commission, becoming one of Bradley’s key political fund-raisers.

Even while serving as president of the Planning Commission, Garcia was host of a 1986 fund-raiser that yielded more than $5,000 from development interests and lobbyists, several of whom had controversial building projects pending before the commission. Los Angeles police investigators are now trying to determine whether Garcia improperly raised campaign funds at the event.

Garcia has denied any wrongdoing.

In 1989, one of the biggest clients Garcia had as a lobbyist was Porter Ranch Development Co., which won city permission for a 1,300-acre residential and commercial project in the San Fernando Valley. Garcia represented the developer as a lawyer for the firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Bradley named Garcia to the Police Commission last October in the wake of the controversy generated by both the Los Angeles Police Department’s Dalton Avenue drug raid and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’ remark that casual drug users should be shot.

“He was definitely part of a group of commissioners who came in to try to have Gates leave and begin the process of change and quieting the public furor,” said Antonio Rodriguez, an East Los Angeles attorney who handles cases of alleged police misconduct. “That was pretty much his assignment as he saw it. And he tried to do it.”

Garcia, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, began his career in public service in 1976. At 29, he was appointed by Bradley to the Planning Commission.

Raul Escovedo, then a member of the Planning Department staff, recalls that the young, dark-skinned Garcia cut the figure of an East L.A. “homeboy” as he sat on the Planning Commission dais.

Escovedo said Garcia’s stern demeanor allowed him to take control of raucous Planning Commission meetings when slow-growth proponents packed the commission chambers.

“You can talk with any homeowner group he came in contact with and they would say they got a fair hearing,” Escovedo said.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky contrasted Garcia’s long tenure on the Planning Commission with his brief, troubled service on the Police Commission, where Garcia said an intrusive City Council made it impossible for him to continue.

“For 10 years, he sat on the most sensitive commission on the city and walked away with a relatively unscathed reputation; that’s remarkable,” Yaroslavsky said. “He came out being respected by all sides. . . . And in four months on the Police Commission, that was being frittered away.”

Those who know Garcia say concern about his lucrative legal practice may also have influenced his decision. One council aide said the conflict between the Police Commission and City Council could hurt Garcia’s attempts to lobby council members on behalf of clients.

“He represents a lot of folks downtown who need access to City Council members,” said the aide, who requested anonymity. “With Dan in the eye of the storm, that (his relationship with the council) became awkward.”