Panel Searches for Ways to Rebuild Police Commission : City Hall: Passage of Prop. 5 and failure of its attempt to temporarily oust Chief Gates make it an uphill fight.

The independent panel investigating the Los Angeles Police Department is searching for a means to rehabilitate the city’s once-formidable Police Commission, which has been crippled by events after the Rodney G. King beating.

Many officials and civil rights groups warn that without a strong and healthy commission, the city will have no meaningful civilian review of police conduct. The King beating raised the issue of independent review in part because the Police Department did not launch an inquiry until after a videotape of the incident was shown on television. Repeated broadcasts of the beating also triggered numerous complaints charging that police did not adequately investigate incidents of brutality. A key focus of the Christopher Commission’s wide-ranging Police Department investigation is the five-member civilian police board and whether its mandate to oversee police conduct should be strengthened.

However, officials say that any effort to strengthen the commission’s role could run into stiff resistance in light of recent events. The commission’s credibility and legal standing were damaged severely by the commission’s failed effort to place Police Chief Daryl F. Gates on leave after the King beating.

The Police Commission subsequently lost a substantial measure of independence in June, when voters approved Proposition 5, which gave the City Council veto power over decisions by the city’s 40 citizen commissions.

Sources familiar with the Christopher Commission inquiry have told The Times that serious consideration is being given to changes that would bolster the Police Commission’s authority over investigation of citizens’ complaints against police officers.

One option under study would give the Police Commission the additional duties of a civilian review board. The commission’s staff would be increased and made independent from the Police Department, eliminating any potential for “divided loyalties” as one Police Commission member put it.

The job of the Police Commission is to oversee the department. Over the years, the commission has compiled a 1,500-page report on the assassination of Robert Kennedy, authorized officers’ use of hollow-point bullets and advised the City Council on size of knives people may carry. The commission routinely sets policies on such matters as the recruitment and deployment of officers.

Traditionally, all misconduct complaints against police officers have been handled by the Police Department. Although the commission has the authority to review those investigations, the final determination of discipline rests with the police chief.

The system, however, has created confusion and made at least one commissioner worry that the panel gets only a selective look at complaints.

“It’s not clear to me what is brought to us to look at by the department and what we never see,” said the commissioner, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

No recommendations have been finalized by the Christopher Commission. However, local officials told the panel that the Police Commission lacks the authority to oversee the city’s most powerful and important agency effectively.

“In light of recent events . . . if you are going to have an effective Police Commission, there is a need for strengthening,” said a Christopher Commission source who asked not to be identified.

Many city officials believe the commission needs political as well as legal rehabilitation, and some, like City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, say that before the commission’s role is strengthened its current members--those responsible for trying to suspend Gates--will have to step down.

The commission failed in its dramatic effort to temporarily oust Gates when the City Council quickly reinstated the chief and a Superior Court judge upheld the council’s action. In addition, many observers contend that the panel’s subsequent handling of the crisis helped deliver critics a historic victory--with the approval of Proposition 5--that shifted the entire City Hall balance of power away from the 66-year-old citizen-commission form of government.

The genesis of Proposition 5 antedated the King beating. A series of controversies in the Harbor and Airport commissions and the Community Redevelopment Agency provided the early momentum for the ballot measure. But many officials say that the conduct of the Police Commission helped solidify support for the measure before the June election.

“The commission’s action (regarding Gates) did give Proposition 5 momentum,” said Michael Woo, the only City Council member who has called for Gates’ resignation. Now, Woo added, “Proposition 5 gives a police chief the ability to run circles around a group of people that is supposed to keep (the Police Department) in line.”

In confronting the police chief, the Police Commission for a time managed to become the center of the King controversy and a symbol of the city’s inability to deal with the crisis. The commissioners were accused of violating state law by meeting in secret, and the commission’s current acting president, Melanie Lomax, was accused of leaking confidential documents to groups favoring Gates’ removal.

The commission’s actions led to “a disaster for the department, a disaster for the commission, a disaster for the mayor and a disaster for the citizens of Los Angeles who need to be protected,” said Barbara Schlei, one of Mayor Tom Bradley’s appointees to the panel, who served until 1988.

Lomax did not respond to a request for an interview. But the commission’s lawyer in the Gates case, Hillel Chodos, said the panel acted legally. “The argument that that commission acted improperly toward Chief Gates is just nonsense,” he said. “It was perfectly within its rights to put (Gates) on temporary leave.”

Despite recent legal and political setbacks, the Police Commission should not yet be written off, Chodos said. Appeals of court decisions on Gates’ leave and on Proposition 5 may “restore the Police Commission to its full powers,” he said.

Clearly, however, the Police Commission was not dealing from a position of strength in April, when it made its ill-fated move against the police chief. Most of the panel members were newcomers to the commission and were not well known as law enforcement policy advisers. The commission had lapsed into obscurity in recent years and was criticized for taking a laissez-faire approach to the chief and the department and for occupying itself with administrative chores.

“In recent years, there have been no examples of the Police Commission getting into tough fights with the Police Department or distinguishing itself solving tough problems,” Woo said.

One measure of the Police Commission’s decline is the growing debate in City Hall about what entity should be responsible for overseeing the implementation of Christopher Commission recommendations.

Gates recently suggested that he head a special committee of city officials to review and implement the recommendations. Bradley has urged the Christopher Commission to stay in business and monitor new department procedures, while City Council members are considering the roles they can play. The Police Commission has scarcely been mentioned.

There would have been little question in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a far different Police Commission exerted strong and steady influence over the Police Department. The commission, responding to controversial police incidents, pushed through policies on shooting and the use of physical force, as well as intelligence gathering on private citizens.

Nine years ago this month, the commission even formally reprimanded Gates for making controversial remarks implying that some blacks did not respond to police chokeholds like “normal people.” It was the first disciplinary action against a Los Angeles police chief in more than 30 years.

Indeed, the commission is in its current fix partly because it squandered the respect and reputation carefully built up in the earlier era, many observers believe. “All of a sudden they want to get aggressive on a politically explosive issue like this? Where’s the track record?” asked Larry Berg, director of USC’s Unruh Institute of Politics.

Added attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., a Bradley confidant and city airport commissioner: “If the commission had been strong over the years, there never would have been the shenanigans by the council.”

Some observers blame the commission’s comparative passivity on mayoral politics.

“Bradley ran for governor twice and didn’t want to look like a police hater,” said a Bradley adviser who asked not to be identified.

“I didn’t want any serious head-butting with Gates or the Police Department the last time we had an election,” said a former Bradley campaign adviser who also asked to remain anonymous.

Former commission member Dan Garcia said the commission just hasn’t had that much to do in the last few years. “Until the Rodney King episode, not all that much had been happening. Nobody was pushing for anything,” said Garcia, who resigned after the dispute with Gates, although he had been one of the leaders in the effort to put Gates on leave.

Interviews with City Council members, Bradley advisers, police commissioners and political experts indicate that any proposal to re-energize the Police Commission will face an uphill battle.

“It will be a tough sell,” Yaroslavsky said. “The commission’s staff would have to be independent of the Police Department, which it isn’t now.” He also said that giving the commission the authority to ride herd on departmental discipline might require changes in the City Charter.

Such changes would have to be approved by a public that is divided over the action that the commission tried to take against Gates.

There is also concern that the commission’s role would be too narrowly defined if it becomes preoccupied with disciplining police officers.

“The commission must remember it has several constituencies,” said former Commissioner Maxwell Greenberg. “Crime victims, the occasional arrestee who turns out to be innocent, people whose civil rights have been violated, the city’s leaders and the department itself. The police aren’t there to be kicked around by the commission. They have a tough job.”