Battle Lines Form Over Control of New Chief : Politics: Hiring and firing of LAPD head emerging as ground for turf war. Some council members oppose Christopher Commission recommendations; they seek to share authority.

Proposed changes in the hiring and firing of future Los Angeles police chiefs are emerging as the most politically contentious recommendations facing the City Council in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating.

Council members are staking out a range of positions, interviews show, on how the mayor, council and Police Commission should share authority over the city’s most influential department head. “The appointment of the chief . . . will be a heated debate,” said Council President John Ferraro.

That debate, charged by warnings that 1930s-style bossism and corruption could return to the city, turns on proposals by the independent Christopher Commission that now are being weighed by the council and could go to voters next year.

The Christopher panel, citing evidence of racial bias and brutality by some officers, called for dozens of changes in how the 8,300-member Police Department trains, disciplines and promotes officers. There appears to be a consensus on the council for the bulk of those proposals, interviews show.

But considerable dissent is developing over the Christopher panel’s call for an overhaul of procedures for the appointment and removal of future police chiefs.

“It is one of the most important issues, and one of the hottest,” said Councilwoman Joy Picus, a member of the special council committee reviewing the proposals.

The independent commission concluded that the Police Department is not sufficiently responsive and accountable to the public or their elected representatives, in part because the chief serves an unlimited term and is heavily protected by Civil Service rules.

The Civil Service protections should be removed, the Christopher panel said, and the mayor given the authority to hire and fire the police chief, with input from the Police Commission and review of the City Council. The mayor would pick chiefs from a list of up to six candidates prepared by the Police Commission, which oversees the department. The chief would be limited to two five-year terms, and could be removed by the mayor on the recommendation of the Police Commission. The council could reverse the action, but only by a two-thirds vote.

Currently, the Police Commission, made up of appointees nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council, names the chief and can attempt to remove him. Charges must be serious, such as insubordination or misuse of office. And they must be sustained through a long procedural process that includes hearings before the Civil Service Commission, and often appeals in the courts.

“I regard the selection and tenure and removal of the police chief as being the central core of our recommendations,” said Warren Christopher, who chaired the independent investigating panel. “We have a fairly integrated set of recommendations. We think this is a good balance.”

Several council members now say they support Christopher Commission-type changes. But in turf-conscious City Hall, debate is intensifying over just how the power to hire and fire police chiefs should be reconfigured.

At least three council members--Hal Bernson, Nate Holden and Richard Alatorre--are opposed to having the mayor choose the chief. They argue that having the mayor involved in selecting and removing the chief will “politicize” the Police Department.

And they, like Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and his supporters, point to an era of revolving police chiefs and rampant City Hall corruption that culminated in the ouster of Mayor Frank Shaw in 1938--the first American mayor to be recalled.

“Essentially, you could buy your position in the Police Department,” said Jay Grodin, Gates’ attorney. “Vice and graft and organized labor corruption just went wild.”

The downfall of Shaw and his police chief, James Davis, came after the car of an investigator working for government reformers was bombed, injuring him. It turned out the bomb was planted by police officers from an elite intelligence squad close to the chief.

Bernson said the reforms devised in that era, which were intended to professionalize the Police Department and insulate chiefs from political pressure, should be preserved.

Alatorre said he feels “very strongly that politicizing (the selection and removal of the chief) will be the death” of the anticipated public vote next year on the entire package of Christopher recommendations. Opponents will exploit fears of a patronage system, as they did to defeat past ballot measures that would have removed department heads from Civil Service protection, Alatorre said.

Gates, who was not available for an interview, has hinted he may campaign against the new hiring and firing proposals. Grodin, his attorney, said Gates “certainly has the right to speak out” and “certainly believes in keeping politics out of the Police Department, which is not giving the appointing and removal process to the mayor.”

Mayor Tom Bradley, Gates’ longtime rival, is strongly pushing the Christopher Commission proposals. Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said warnings of corruption “are transparent excuses used by a few of the remaining council members who are defending the chief in one way or another.”

He said the old system did not sufficiently insulate the chief from politics, and the current system makes the chief unaccountable to elected officials. “It is possible to swing too far in either direction,” he said.

A great deal is likely to be heard in the coming months about the infamous Shaw era. But some students of the city’s past warn that history, like statistics, can be used to support any argument.

Bruce Henstell, author of “Sunshine and Wealth: Los Angeles in the Twenties and Thirties,” said allegations of corruption in the Police Department continued in the 1940s, well after the series of Charter reforms that politically insulated the chief. And he argues that August Vollmer, one of the city’s best chiefs and the founder of the Police Academy, was appointed under the politicized system of the 1920s.

Los Angeles history suggests the caliber of people elected mayor and council members will determine how much corruption occurs, rather than the Christopher proposals, Henstell said. “If you elect a quality of person that you did then--if you elect crooks to office--you are going to get the government you deserve,” he said.

Newspaper articles from the 1930s also show reformers under Mayor Fletcher Bowron, who ousted Shaw, felt the Police Department and the chief had gained far too much independence and power. In 1939, Bowron’s Police Commission sought unsuccessfully to have the chief’s Civil Service protections removed and the disciplinary system of the Police Department brought directly under the civilian commission.

Since the 1930s, the “threat of corruption (has been) a very effective instrument” used by police supporters to beat back increased oversight of the department, said Steve Erie, associate professor of political science at UC San Diego, who studied Los Angeles political history.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who generally supports the Christopher proposals, said: “Chiefs of police have hidden behind this insulation as means to protect themselves. There are many departments of the city that have more accountability that are not corrupt.”

Several council members--Picus, Marvin Braude, Michael Woo, Rita Walters and Mark Ridley-Thomas--are endorsing the Christopher proposals on the chief’s job.

Others, including Ferraro and Yaroslavsky, are urging amendments to give the council a stronger hand.

While he supports mayoral selection of the chief, Ferraro wants the council to have the ability to initiate the removal of the police chief--the same power proposed for the mayor and the Police Commission.

Should the city find itself with a corrupt mayor in league with the police chief, the council must have the authority to act, he said. “We don’t want to forget . . . why we do have this situation,” he said.

Yaroslavky wants the council to be able to overrule the removal of a police chief by the mayor with a simple majority vote, rather than the two-thirds vote called for by the Christopher panel.

Even some of those strongly supporting the Christopher proposals worry that the corruption argument may sway voters when the matter reaches the ballot. This is particularly sensitive now because of two years of investigations and ethics controversies surrounding Bradley.

“The unpopularity of the mayor could bring it down,” Picus said. “In the district I represent, the mayor is very unpopular. . . .” Deputy Mayor Fabiani discounted such concerns, saying voters will see that the issue goes far beyond Gates, Bradley and the politics of the time.

The Christopher panel’s deputy general counsel, Raymond C. Fisher, said the proposals for hiring and firing the chief are indeed political, but “in the best sense of political.”

“The elected representatives of the public are appointing the chief,” he said. “Everyone wants to avoid the cozy deals and influence peddling. . . . The idea is to have public accountability.”