Gates Greeted by Cheers in N. Carolina : Chief: He gives speech at DARE conference in Winston-Salem to enthusiastic crowd of police officers from across the nation.

“It’s nice to be anywhere but L.A.,” Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates told an assemblage of law enforcement experts convened here Friday.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why he felt that way.

Back in Los Angeles, the clamor for his resignation was intensifying in the wake of the Christopher Commission’s recommendation that he step down.

But in Winston-Salem, there was clamor of a different sort Friday--the sounds of cheers, of applause, of enthusiastic supporters asking for his autograph.

Gates was in Winston-Salem to attend a national conference of DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program that has spread nationwide since he created it in Los Angeles eight years ago.

The smiling chief, looking trim and fit in a sports coat and tie, was greeted with a standing ovation as he mounted the podium at this city’s Benton Convention Center to address the crowd of 2,500--about 2,300 of them rank-and-file police officers from across the nation.

“He looked like he’s been on a beach some,” said Charles Dunn, deputy director of the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation, noting the chief’s trademark tan.

A television camera panned the cheering crowd.

“I hope the cameraperson sends that photo back to my mayor and City Council,” Gates quipped. “Better yet, how about you guys coming back to L.A. and joining me at a City Council meeting?”

For the next 30 minutes or so, Gates talked about the drug education program, his measured remarks interrupted repeatedly by applause.

The chief also took aim at another favorite target--the news media.

First he accused the media of ignoring the conference until he showed up.

“Suddenly, suddenly, they pay attention,” he said. “I wonder why?”

The crowd appreciated that, all right, but their cheers grew even louder, punctuated by shouts of, ‘Go for it, chief!’ when Gates railed against the criticism he had received in the media after he remarked that casual drug users should be taken out and shot.

“The anger that I saw in the media indicated to me that there’s a hell of a lot of casual drug users in the media,” Gates told the crowd.

Overall, the audience’s enthusiasm seemed universal.

“I liked what he said, because he put the media in its place,” said one officer from Arizona, who asked that his name not be used. “I liked it because I liked him.”

The officer--like Rodney G. King, the victim of the videotaped police beating that led to the campaign against Gates--is black. Gates referred obliquely to the King incident. The chief recalled how a videotape of one of his speeches had been shown to then-Vice President George Bush, and then said:

“I’m not much for videotapes these days, as you probably know.”

The chief said that with all the controversy in Los Angeles, it had been difficult to get away, “but I’m so happy I did.”

May reported from Winston-Salem and Malnic in Los Angeles.