Ballot Drive to Overhaul Rules of LAPD Begins : Police: A year after the King beating, a cross-section of civic leaders opens campaign to implement Christopher proposals. The charter measure goes to voters June 2.

One year after the beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers, a group of civic leaders--conspicuous for their prestige and ethnic diversity--gathered Tuesday to launch a campaign to change the way the Police Department has been run for most of the past century.

The gathering at the Biltmore Hotel marked the beginning of a three-month drive to persuade voters that the treatment of King was not an isolated incident but a symptom of a Police Department that is no longer accountable to residents.

Voters are being asked to support a June 2 ballot measure that would amend the City Charter to grant City Hall greater authority over the Police Department. This would come primarily by giving the mayor and the City Council new power to fire the police chief. The proposed amendment also would limit a police chief’s tenure to two five-year terms. There are currently no limits.

Although passage of the proposed changes, initially recommended by the Christopher Ccommission, would mark a political sea change in the way Los Angeles is run, the campaign kickoff event was distinctly low-keyed, as befitting the blue-chip roster of executives and local leaders who participated.

Warren Christopher, the lawyer and former statesman who headed the commission, gave the only speech--one laced with historical alllusions and calls to to civic duty but short on political rhetoric or emotional appeals.

Christopher did not criticize Police Chief Daryl F. Gates for opposing the proposed charter amendment, and his references to the Police Department were far more positive than negative.

Police accountability was the theme of Christopher’s remarks.

He said the Christopher Commission “concluded that at the heart of the problem is the fact that the top LAPD management is not accountable to the citizens it is sworn to protect.”

“The Los Angeles Police Department belongs to the citizens of Los Angeles,” Christopher said. “They want to support it. They want and need the protection of its brave and dedicated professionals. They want to remove the tarnish of the Rodney King incident. They can do so Tuesday, June 2, by voting ‘yes’ on the charter amendment.”

Early in his speech, Christopher talked at greater length about the King beating, describing it as “an ugly landmark on the history of law enforcement comparable to the Scottsboro case in 1931 and the Serpico case in 1967.”

In the Scottboro case, nine black youths were sentenced to life in prison in Alabama on trumped-up charges of raping two white women. The Serpico case, stemming from the testimony of a New York City policeman by that name, focused on evidence that a substantial part of that city’s police force was taking bribes from drug dealers.

After his speech, Christopher was asked the question that is expected to dog the charter campaign for the next three months: Why won’t charter changes lead to the kind of political corruption that beset the city in the 1920s and ‘30s--the last time City Hall controlled the destiny of the police chief?

Christopher replied that in those bad old days, “a police chief could be removed by a single phone call from the mayor,” and that would not be possible under the proposed amendment. Instead, he said, a system of shared power by the Police Commission, the mayor and the City Council would insulate the chief from the political whims of one irresponsible official or faction in City Hall.

“There is no unilateral power created,” Christopher said.

The gathering at the Biltmore was, for Los Angeles, a classic expression of coalition politics in which a cross-section of community leaders, representing business, law, the clergy and various civil rights groups, come together to lend an air of moral rectitude to a political campaign.

“The point is this is not a black, or a brown or a gay group, or any interest group with an agenda,” said one spokesman for the event. “This is the best of the city coming together in behalf of what is best for the city.”

Opposing charter change is a group headed by actress Peggy Estrada. The group has its share of prominent members, including former Mayor Sam Yorty, Republican U. S. Senate candidate Bruce Herschensohn and former U. S. Ambassador to Mexico Juilian Nava. But the opposition’s firepower is expected to come mostly from Chief Gates, who already has hit the campaign trail, arguing that changing the charter will reduce the chief of police to a toady answerable to political hacks.

Joining Christopher at the Biltmore Tuesday were many of the 56 members of Citizens for Law Enforcement, which is heading the drive for the charter amendment.

Among those present was Tom Redden, a former Los Angeles police chief backing the ballot measure. Others included civil rights leaders John Mack, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban league, and Joe Duff, president of the local NAACP chapter. Several business leaders were present, including Roy Anderson, chairman emeritus of Lockheed Corp., and David Carpenter, chief executive officer of Transamerica-Occidental Life. Also on hand were a number of the city’s leading corporate and real estate lawyers, such as Gilbert Ray, Andrea Ordin and Daniel Garcia, who is now a vice president for real estate at Warner Bros. Leaders of prominent Jewish and gay groups were there, among them Rabbi Laura Geller of the American Jewish Congress and Roger Coggan, director of legal services for the Gay & Lesbian Community Service Center.

Many of those present agreed with Christopher’s statement that the main challenge facing the campaign is “education”--explaining the complex ballot measure and making it relevant to voters.

“Getting it synthesized down to a simple message will be hard,” said Leo Estrada, a member of the Christopher Commission and a UCLA professor of urban studies.

Remarking on the formal, subdued tone of the occasion, however, some of the participants said that the campaign to change the charter will have to be a more rousing affair if it is going to capture the hearts of some voters.

“It’s got to be a hard-hitting message in South-Central Los Angeles,” Mack said. “The point to be made is that if these reform measures aren’t passed, Rodney King will have been beaten in vain.”

Leo Estrada said that he and other proponents of the charter amendment will have to make sure that Latino voters do not dismiss the matter as a dispute betwen blacks and police.

“We will have to remind people of what we, as commission members, heard at public meetings regarding the lack of respect by the Police Department toward various kinds of people.”

In the San Fernando Valley, an area noted for its support of the police, the charter campaign could sound yet another chord.

“One theme you are going to hear is that reform will make the San Fernando Valley a safer place,” said Janet Reznik, a lawyer and member of the committee.