Gates Bars Uniforms at Festival : Police: Gay and lesbian officers can wear only civilian clothes at Sunset Junction fair. Chief also dismisses gay recruitment as a waste of time.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates announced Tuesday that he will not allow gay or lesbian officers to appear in uniform to recruit police officers at a community festival this weekend, and he dismissed such recruitment drives as “a total waste of our time.”

Gates made his comments at the close of the weekly meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission, where the five-member panel selected Stanley K. Sheinbaum as its new president and former Los Angeles Assistant Police Chief Jesse Brewer as vice president.

But the commission took no action on the question of gay recruitment, sitting silently as Gates and a leader of the Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force exchanged salvos over the appropriateness of openly homosexual officers being permitted to enlist officers while in uniform.

However, Sheinbaum said after the meeting that he was opposed to Gates’ position. He said he would prefer that gay and lesbian officers participate in recruitment drives while wearing their LAPD uniforms.

Asked if the chief’s thinking about homosexuals was outdated, the new commission president answered: “The world has changed in that respect.”

Sheinbaum also pledged that the commission will review the LAPD’s policy on gay and lesbian recruitment later this year, when it begins evaluating the reforms proposed by the Christopher Commission.

“It’s something that will keep coming up,” he said. “As we get into the Christopher Commission’s findings, it will be addressed. It is not a dead subject, not a dead subject at all.”

Brewer indicated he supports Gates’ position that the LAPD not selectively recruit officers based on their sexual orientation. He said “this is not one of those cases” where the Police Commission should immediately intervene.

The flap was reminiscent of a public furor in June, when Gates relented and allowed gay and lesbian officers to wear their uniforms while staffing a recruitment booth at a gay pride festival in West Hollywood.

Gates said he was permitting homosexual officers to be in uniform at that event only because a subordinate had already given them permission to do so. Many gay community leaders applauded the chief for making the exception. But others warned that Gates really was not changing his position--a prediction that came true Tuesday.

During a public comments session at the end of the commission meeting, Sandra Farrington Domingue, co-chair of the Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force, demanded that Gates rescind an order barring homosexual officers from appearing in uniform at a recruitment booth at this weekend’s Sunset Junction festival in Silver Lake.

She sharply criticized the department for requiring that gay and lesbian officers dress only in civilian clothes while at the festival, allowing them to merely “hang around” the booth.

“We believe it is imperative,” she said, “that the officers be at this festival in uniform.”

But Gates quickly responded that while the officers may assist in the recruitment drive, they specifically were not authorized to wear their uniforms. He said the booth was not being manned to recruit gay and lesbian officers alone. “We’re there to recruit good, quality people who want to be police officers,” he said.

The chief also said similar recruitment drives during that community event have not been successful. “We’re only doing it (this year) as a good will to that community,” he said. “But it’s been non-productive. It’s been a total waste of our time.”

However, Domingue said that 60 to 70 potential recruits were identified during the gay pride festival in June.

In other developments Tuesday, a state appellate panel agreed to decide whether Superior Court Judge Bernard J. Kamins should continue to preside over the criminal trial of four LAPD officers in the Rodney King beating.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal also revised its indefinite stay on all pretrial proceedings in the case, except to temporarily bar Kamins.

Patrick Thistle, an attorney for accused Officer Laurence M. Powell, welcomed the court review. “This appears to us to be a step in the right direction to getting these people a fair trial,” he said.