Bradley Differs With Gates on Panel Report but Backs Police Unit

Contradicting the testimony delivered a day earlier by Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, Mayor Tom Bradley said in federal court Friday that he agreed with the Christopher Commission’s findings that there are problems of excessive force and racism in the department.

But Bradley, testifying as a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit, also praised the Police Department, saying, “It is the finest large-city department in the nation.”

Bradley also called the department’s Special Investigation Section--the subject of the U.S. District Court trial--a legitimate arm of the department that has helped protect citizens from harm.

The mayor’s testimony came at the end of the second week of trial in a $10-million lawsuit that contends that SIS officers opened fire without provocation or warning on four men after the men held up a McDonald’s in Sunland on Feb. 12, 1990. Three were killed and one wounded. Bradley is a defendant along with Gates, the Police Commission and 18 members of the SIS.

Bradley was questioned for nearly an hour by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Stephen Yagman, about the conclusions of the commission, which investigated the Police Department after the March, 1991, beating of Rodney G. King.

The conclusions--that the department has significant problems with use of excessive force, racism and management style--are similar to Yagman’s contention that the SIS is a unit of “assassins with badges,” fostered by the department’s custom of excessive force, racism and lax management.

Bradley, a former police officer, disputed none of the commission’s findings, which Yagman read to him.

But while agreeing with the damning conclusions of the Christopher Commission, Bradley also told the 10-member jury: “That commission said there were 8,300 officers and the overwhelming number conduct themselves properly.”

On cross-examination by Deputy City Atty. Don Vincent, Bradley called the department the finest big-city force in the nation.

And while acknowledging that he had never heard of the SIS until an investigative report was published in The Times in 1988, he said he was satisfied that the unit was a legitimate law enforcement tool.

“They perform a function of surveillance of career criminals,” he said. “This unit provides that surveillance for the protection of the public.”

He said SIS officers “do all things possible to prevent undue harm coming to the public.”

Many of Bradley’s comments about the Christopher Commission conflicted with the testimony of Gates, who disagreed with many of the commission’s findings concerning management, use of force and racism. He called the King beating an aberration.

In other testimony Friday, a police expert hired by the plaintiffs testified that he reviewed police reports on the surveillance of the McDonald’s robbers and concluded that the police operation was “set up” to end in a violent confrontation.

“This had no other possible outcome,” said James Fyfe, a former police officer who is now a professor of criminal justice at American University in Washington.

The key conflict in trial testimony has been whether the four robbers were armed. SIS officers have testified that they opened fire after two of the holdup men pointed weapons, which turned out to be pellet guns.

The lone surviving robber, Alfredo Olivas, 21, who is serving a 17-year prison term for robbery, said the robbers had placed their pellet guns in the trunk of their getaway car before SIS officers surprised them and opened fire.

Olivas and the relatives of the three dead men are plaintiffs in the suit.

Fyfe said his review of the police reports showed inconsistencies between the police officers’ statements after the shooting and physical evidence at the scene.

“I don’t believe these folks were armed,” he said of the robbers. “I don’t think there were guns near them.”

Fyfe acknowledged on cross-examination by Vincent that he is being paid $1,500 a day by the plaintiffs to testify as an expert witness.

The trial is expected to last another week.