Gates Attacks Charges That 2 Were Framed

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, reacting to allegations that his officers helped send two innocent men to jail for 17 years, on Tuesday urged the district attorney’s office to either charge the officers or clear them of allegations that they framed the murder suspects.

“Somebody ought to either put up or shut up,” Gates told reporters as he entered a weekly Police Commission meeting. “Those are very, very serious charges. . . . I don’t know of anything that suggests that anybody has been framed.”

In his first public remarks on the case, Gates said an internal LAPD investigation is under way. But he lashed out at news reports citing defense lawyers’ allegations that their clients--Clarence Chance and Benny Powell--were framed.

“I think the media ought to be very, very careful about that,” he said.

Chance and Powell were convicted in 1975 of killing an off-duty sheriff’s deputy. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Bozanich agrees that the LAPD did not make crucial information--including one witness’ failure to pass polygraph tests--available at the trial.

Gates questioned the stance of prosecutors, who have joined defense lawyers in arguing for the release of Chance and Powell, saying the case has been infected by the failure of the LAPD to provide the evidence in question.

Gates said: “I’m very concerned no one is talking about the district attorney’s office. They were part of the prosecution.” He said that if a mistake was made, everyone involved should take blame, “not just some officers.”

Bozanich declined to respond to Gates’ comments, but stressed that the district attorney’s office has not alleged that the police officers tried to frame Chance and Powell. “All we are saying is, as a result of our own independent investigation, the trial appears to have been unfair,” he said.

“I have found no evidence of willful concealment” of evidence by LAPD officers, he added.