Hahn May Prevent Panel From Disciplining Gates

In ruling that Los Angeles’ police chief should remain on the job, a Superior Court judge was so critical of the Police Commission that the panel may be disqualified from disciplining or firing the chief in the future, City Atty. James K. Hahn said Tuesday.

Hahn said his office is reviewing Judge Ronald Sohigian’s order to evaluate whether the commission should be barred from taking further actions regarding Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. The judge in his ruling Monday raised questions about the fairness of the commission.

Under the City Charter, the city attorney may disqualify commissions from deciding matters in which members have possible conflicts of interest or cannot be impartial.

Sohigian’s ruling found that the City Council acted properly when it agreed to settle a lawsuit with Gates, effectively overriding a decision by the Police Commission to place the chief on leave after the Rodney G. King beating on March 3.

The judge’s 49-page order was detailed in its criticism of the Police Commission, suggesting it left the city vulnerable to a costly lawsuit through a series of procedural missteps.

For instance, he noted that Commissioner Melanie Lomax’s giving of city legal memos to civil rights lawyers “does not inspire uncritical confidence in the conduct of the (commission) members” and raises questions about her fairness and candor.

Hahn said he has not decided whether to disqualify the commission but added that there is “no question (the language of Sohigian’s ruling) presents a problem” in terms of the commission sitting in judgment of Gates in any future disciplinary proceedings. Should Hahn disqualify the commission, Gates’ future could be decided by a special five-member committee drawn from the City Council.

Possible disqualification of the Police Commission was just part of the fallout from Sohigian’s ruling, which was being combed Tuesday by attorneys representing various factions in the dispute over Gates’ leadership.

The commission voted Tuesday afternoon to appeal Sohigian’s ruling.

In strict legal terms, the ruling was fairly narrow, lawyers on both sides agreed. Rejecting the arguments of commissioners and civil rights lawyers, the judge ruled that under the City Charter, the council has the authority to settle lawsuits and properly and lawfully did so in the Gates case.

Sohigian said the elected council is the “supreme organ” of city government, and that the actions of other branches of government, particularly when they potentially involve spending on lawsuit settlements, are subject to the council’s review. In this case, the judge said there appeared to be “substantial risk” that the city could lose a lawsuit filed by Gates.

That risk was enhanced by “momentous questions” as to whether the commission acted summarily to deprive Gates of his lawful rights and may have violated the state open meetings law by discussing the chief’s future in a secret session, the judge wrote.

Sohigian stressed that he was not ruling on the appropriateness of the Police Commission’s April 4 action to place Gates on a 60-day leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

In his lengthy written ruling, however, Sohigian offered plenty of criticism of the panel’s handling of the case. He noted that the commission appeared to have already decided to place Gates on leave before it met with the chief on April 4. The judge also said that the commission may have violated Police Department procedures for disciplining personnel.

The judge said that Lomax had “unilaterally” given private memos from the city attorney to civil rights lawyers opposing the city in the case, raising the question of whether she was participating in an “orchestrated program to achieve a factional agenda.”

Hillel Chodos, an attorney representing the commission, said such comments by the judge “are not findings of fact.” He said the judge’s remarks do not damage the commission’s standing as an objective panel in the Gates case.

“We think the judge is wrong about his basic premise,” Chodos said, adding that the Police Commission has independent powers to discipline the chief under the charter. “If this ruling ultimately stands, all the commissioners (in the city) ought to quit. What’s the point of wasting your time.”

Jane Ellison, legal adviser to Mayor Tom Bradley, said the ruling broke legal ground in that it shifts commission authority to the council. “If you are sitting as a commissioner in the city of Los Angeles, you’ve got to be asking yourself, ‘What power do I have?’ ”

That view was shared by some outside legal observers. “I think the long and the short of it, whatever the outcome of the Gates controversy, the judge destroyed the Police Commission . . . making it wholly subservient to the City Council,” said UCLA law professor Henry McGee, who teaches local government law.

But Hahn said the ruling had not shifted any balance of power or broken new ground. He said the judge merely reaffirmed a longstanding City Hall legal philosophy embedded in the charter.

“All the powers remain exactly as they were before this case was filed,” he said. “The City Charter was designed to spread the balance of power.”

The City Council’s authority over Police Commission decisions only arises in the context of threatened or actual litigation, Hahn said. He said the Police Commission strayed outside the charter when it hired its own lawyer and went to court to oppose the council’s reinstatement of Gates.

The city attorney said the “very logical beauty” of the charter is that the council must settle matters of litigation or “the taxpayers would be at the mercy of rogue bodies of government going off on their own,” incurring millions of dollars in legal liability with the elected legislative body powerless to stop them.

Hahn was an across-the-board winner in Sohigian’s decision. Among other things, the judge flatly rejected arguments that Hahn had a conflict of interest in advising both the Police Commission and the City Council in the Gates case. He pointed out that both bodies are part of a single governmental entity.