Gates Rips Into Bradley in Autobiography Proposal : Police chief: Document also takes a swipe at Ueberroth and says LAPD dropped the ball in Hillside Strangler case.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, in a free-swinging and wide-ranging proposal written to sell his autobiography to a publisher, calls Tom Bradley a “lousy mayor,” acknowledges that there is a “code of silence” within the Los Angeles Police Department and discloses that he nearly quit to run for mayor after the 1984 Summer Olympic Games.

The chief also said the LAPD “dropped the ball” in the Hillside Strangler slayings in the late 1970s and “should have solved that case much sooner,” before the death toll mounted to 13.

Gates said, moreover, that the highly controversial 1979 police shooting of Eulia Love caused a “tremendous hardening of policemen’s attitudes” toward the public because of the extensive publicity. In the end, he said, some officers came to believe that she deserved to be killed.

Gates’ 53-page proposal, obtained by The Times, was written by Steve Delsohn, a Ventura County author who has collaborated on autobiographies of football star Jim Brown and John Wayne’s daughter, Aissa. Based on the proposal and Gates’ high profile, the autobiography was purchased by Bantam Books.

The proposal describes Gates as “an ultimate insider who has seen exotic things, made critical decisions, and understands how power works. . . . (He is) a man who’s bold enough to tell it all.”

The proposal was written eight months before the March 3 police beating of Rodney G. King. Since then, the focus of the book has shifted to include the scandal and Delsohn was replaced by author Diane K. Shah.

Delsohn, however, declined to discuss the book proposal. He would say only that it was drawn from “candid” conversations with the chief and that he both directly quoted and paraphrased Gates. The new writer, Shah, could not be reached for comment.

“What attracted us to the project initially,” said Bantam Books spokesman Stuart Applebaum, “was the promise by Chief Gates of candor and forthrightness, not only about his long career with the LAPD but about the circumstances about his life.”

Gates declined to provide any clue into how the finished product will emerge. “We’re rushing to publish,” he said, adding that he is “very much” happy with the way it is taking shape.

The original proposal for the book, titled “Top Cop,” deals primarily with Gates’ tenure as chief and with his reflections on other city leaders and events. His harshest criticism, by far, is reserved for Bradley, a former lieutenant who left the LAPD for a life in politics.

Although Bradley has maintained that black officers could not rise higher than the rank of lieutenant, Gates calls that assertion “absolutely untrue . . . unadulterated baloney.” Bradley could have been promoted higher in the department if he had worked harder, according to Gates.

The chief also chastises the mayor’s leadership, specifically for cutting the size of the Police Department at a time “when crime was at its highest.”

“He’s never had a vision for this city,” Gates says of Bradley. “He’s a poor manager. I think he’s a lousy mayor.”

Bradley was out of town this week and could not be reached for comment. But his spokesman, Bill Chandler, said he was speaking for Bradley when he released this sharp rejoinder:

“Gates is known for his arrogant, self-serving rhetoric, and it’s hard to believe anybody would be willing to pay money for a book just to hear more of the same. Gates’ denial of racism in the LAPD is an indication that he is and has been out of touch with reality.”

Another target of Gates’ wrath in the book proposal is Peter V. Ueberroth, who was president of the Los Angeles Olympics.

The police chief describes in detail an agreement he says he reached with Ueberroth in which Gates would resign from the department to oversee security for the 1984 Olympics. In return, according to Gates, Ueberroth would give him “total support” in a bid for mayor after the Summer Games.

But the deal soured, Gates said, when Ueberroth became unhappy with his public suggestions that Soviet Jewish emigres were planning to disrupt the Olympics. “I just can’t have you on my team,” Gates says Ueberroth told him. The chief said he shot back: “Screw you. I don’t want to be part of your team.”

Ueberroth, interviewed this week, strongly denied Gates’ assertions.

“Chief Gates,” he said, “was not offered any position of any type on the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.”

Ueberroth declined to comment further. “I don’t want to pick a fight with Daryl Gates,” he said. “But maybe he’s just trying to sell his book.”

Discussing other events in his tenure as chief, Gates said he believes the media furor and racial unrest brought on by the police shooting of Eulia Love sparked a drastic change in the mind set of rank-and-file officers. Love, a 39-year-old black woman, was shot numerous times in front of her home by two officers--one white, one black--after she allegedly threw a knife at them.

“There was a tremendous hardening of policemen’s attitudes,” Gates said in the proposal. “Officers were saying, ‘She deserved to be killed.’ That was sad. The whole thing was sad.”

In the proposal, Gates also recalls his anguish over the department’s handling of the Hillside Strangler case. He said investigators were sometimes misdirected and that one detective “was in Never Never Land for half that case.”

He said that, while trying to be “cool for the public,” he couldn’t sleep at night, worried that “we are not getting the job done, and the bodies keep showing up!”

“We dropped the ball in that investigation--badly,” Gates said.

The proposal also says that Gates “can and will” talk about The Brotherhood, his term for the code of silence fostered by police officers when they close ranks during times of stress. He described it in these words:

“Paranoia. A siege mentality. It’s like any other minority in America. When you inbreed too much, you start believing a lot of the crap.”

In contrast, he also spoke of his harsh feelings against officers who go bad.

“I go from shock to hurt to anger,” he says in the proposal. “And then I say to myself, ‘I’m getting every one of these SOBs, and I’m gonna do my best to put them in jail. Send them to prison.’ Then I go about trying.”

Turning his attention to other events during his tenure with the LAPD, Gates describes the 1974 police shoot-out with the Symbionese Liberation Army, and his fear, which was unfounded, that kidnaped heiress Patty Hearst would be among the dead. And on the death of comedian John Belushi, once a “hip” model to millions of youths, Gates dismisses him with one line: “He died a fat guy, lying in a bed with a needle in his arm.”