Top Brass Gave Candid View of LAPD Faults

They were members of the palace guard, the inner circle, entrusted with the secrets of the Los Angeles Police Department. But in the end, it was their testimony that may have most damaged their king--Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Meeting separately behind closed doors with the Christopher Commission, current or former top members of Gates’ Administration offered unprecedented criticism of how they and, by extension, their leader, police the police.

“We have failed miserably. . . ,” said Deputy Chief David D. Dotson. “In my judgment, we do a very poor job of management and supervisory accountability.”

One after another, Dotson and other ranking officers--men who would be chief themselves, or who once aspired to be--confided administrative laxities under Gates, the commission’s final report shows.

In criticizing, they helped lay the foundation--consciously or otherwise--upon which the commission Tuesday structured its diplomatically phrased yet unequivocal recommendation that it is time for the 64-year-old chief to go.

“Certainly, the willingness of the Police Department’s senior management to be candid about management problems had to have an influence” in reaching the recommendation that Gates retire, said Raymond C. Fisher, one of 16 deputy general counsels on the commission staff.

At least two commissioners, attorney Willie R. Barnes and educator John Brooks Slaughter, said they were particularly influenced by the observations of Dotson and retired Assistant Chief Jesse Brewer.

“Dotson and Brewer spoke with a sense of people who had been there more recently and who were in unique positions to make critical observations that were important to us,” said Slaughter, president of Occidental College. “They spoke with a degree of knowledge, experience and currency that was hard to overlook.”

To depict the testimony of Gates’ subordinates as evidence of an attempted coup would be to overstate the case. The slings and arrows Gates suffered in the testimony of those who have worked under him were aimed more at broad, institutional deficiencies within the department than at the chief personally.

Yet by all indications, the commission’s efforts to explore police brutality in Los Angeles left considerable opportunity for the disgruntled, frustrated and concerned among Gates’ staff to take their best shot.

And some of them did.

In all, 31 current and former Los Angeles police officers--from Gates himself to detectives and street cops--offered testimony to the commission in a series of sessions closed to the public.

In addition to Dotson, those who testified included Assistant Chief Robert L. Vernon, the department’s No. 2 administrator, Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker and former Deputy Chief William Rathburn, who now heads the Police Department in Dallas.

Vernon, however, is quoted just once in the 228-page document and Kroeker not at all. Neither is given to public criticism of the department.

Most of the command officers who testified, at one time or another, have expressed aspirations or were rumored to be in line to succeed Gates. The chief, however, has repeatedly frustrated his would-be replacements in recent years by hinting that he would retire but staying on.

Gates’ determination to remain on the job has prompted many ranking officers, including Rathburn, to leave the Police Department and seek top positions in other police agencies.

Members of the commission said Tuesday that while they weighed each police administrator’s comments uniformly, it was the cumulative impact of their statements and those of others who testified before the commission that prompted the recommendation that Gates go.

“What was most persuasive and makes the report so compelling was the testimony and other information provided by high level LAPD command officers. . . ,” said deputy general counsel Gary E. Feess.

Among the most outspoken of Gates’ administrators was Dotson, a highly regarded 33-year police veteran who perhaps stood more to gain than any of the department’s top brass in openly questioning department procedures. Dotson, who heads the department’s Office of Special Services, is considered among many a leading in-house candidate to replace Gates. For example, when police commissioners recently ordered Gates to be placed on administrative leave--an action overturned by the City Council--they named Dotson acting chief.

The commission’s report, which quotes Dotson liberally, shows that he did not hesitate to testify that, “higher command officers, when learning of (incidents of excessive force) . . . took no action or very indecisive action . . . . Let me tell you that none of those people (the higher command officers), with rare exception, have been disciplined. And I’m not even sure they’ve been counseled in many of these incidents.”

One department source suggested Tuesday that such remarks do not reflect so much a desire by Dotson to undermine the chief as Dotson’s tendency to speak candidly.

“He’s always been a straightforward type of guy,” said the source, who requested anonymity.

Moreover, Dotson expressed straightforward concern over the manner in which Gates sometimes overrules subordinate commanders in the discipline of rank-and-file officers.

“In a lot of cases, not only in discipline, an officer will appeal to the chief, and the chief will mitigate whatever the situation may have been. . . ,” Dotson testified. “And he frequently does that without informing the chain of command. . . . “

Indeed, in reviewing Police Department documents, the commission found that Gates in 1986 inexplicably reversed at least nine sustained complaints of unspecified officer misconduct in the department’s South Bureau.

In each case, according to the commission, Gates ordered that the complaint not be sustained, ignored the recommendation of reviewing officers that punishment be imposed or substantially reduced the recommended punishment.

“The unfortunate by-product of these reversals was that the involved officers were led to believe that their conduct in these matters was acceptable,” the commission’s reports stated.

Dotson told commissions that the Police Department under Gates has been “stuck” in a “1950s sort of world view” that encourages officers to be confrontational with people on the street and to fabricate the legally required “probable cause” officers need to detain someone.

”. . . That,” Dotson said, “gets us in, time after time, into these conflict situations that end up, frequently with use of force, frequently with manufacturing or at least puffing of the probable cause.”

One officer who had little to lose in speaking out was Brewer, the highest-ranking black officer in the department’s history.

Brewer, a 38-year department veteran who served as assistant chief from 1987 until he retired in February, told commissioners that lack of management attention is the “essence of the excessive force problem” within the department.

“We know who the bad guys are,” the normally soft-spoken Brewer testified. “Reputations become well known, especially to the sergeants and then of course to the lieutenants and captains. . . . We know the ones who are getting into trouble more than anyone else. But I don’t see anyone bringing these people up and saying, ‘Look, you are not conforming. . . . You need to take a look at yourself and your conduct and the way you are treating people. . . . “

Brewer said he has believed for several years that officers’ conduct “is out of control” in terms of rude and disrespectful treatment of the public.

In an interview Tuesday, an hour before the Christopher Commission’s report was released, Brewer lauded Gates as having been “innovative and effective” in creating the concept behind SWAT teams and the DARE anti-drug training program.

“Other departments have followed the LAPD for years,” Brewer said, “and Chief Gates has been in the forefront all along.”

Nonetheless, both Brewer and Dotson said they favor the commission’s recommendation that Los Angeles police chiefs serve no more than two five-year terms.

Gates has been chief for 13 years. Friends say his goal is to surpass the record 15-year term served by his mentor, the late William Parker.

“All the chiefs I have known,” Dotson said Tuesday, “have reached a point where their effectiveness has diminished in the second half of their term, no matter how long their term.”