Low-Key Dotson Known as Plain-Spoken Innovator : LAPD: Frankness before Christopher Commission won praise, but put him at odds with Chief Gates.

David D. Dotson spent three decades quietly working his way up the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department. But the defining moment of his career did not come until last spring, when he decided to break the time-honored police code of silence.

On June 14, 1991, the mild-mannered assistant chief went before the Christopher Commission and, in his own words, “let it all hang out.”

The LAPD was stuck in a 1950s mentality, he said. Its system of disciplining officers was weak. Its top brass couldn’t get along. Its chief, Daryl F. Gates--the man who put Dotson in the job he has today--was an ineffective leader. In short, Dotson described a police force adrift.

Those close to Dotson say he agonized for days before delivering his Christopher Commission testimony, fearing he would be perceived as disloyal to Gates, whom he still says he admires, and to the LAPD. But in the end, friends and colleagues say, he did what comes most naturally to him. He spoke his mind.

“Dave’s a guy who you can expect will speak out when the need is there, and if he’s asked a question he’ll give a straightforward answer,” said Robert Rock, who retired 13 years ago as an LAPD deputy chief. “Those are good traits. Sometimes they get him in trouble.”

As Rock suggests, Dotson’s candor may be both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. His forthright comments may have helped him gain membership in a very elite club--the group of six men in the running to become Los Angeles’ next chief of police. At the very least, they catapulted him into the public spotlight, drawing praise from department critics at a time when charges of racism and brutality had made it clear the LAPD needed a change.

But the remarks also threw Dotson’s work life into turmoil. He and Gates have been at odds ever since; Dotson freely acknowledges that it is difficult for him to do his work because the chief refuses to speak to him. Moreover, Dotson’s romance with a subordinate--a woman who is 28 years his junior and married to an LAPD sergeant--is the subject of controversy, as well as an Internal Affairs investigation that could hinder Dotson’s quest to become chief.

If Dotson overcomes the controversy and gets the job, the city of Los Angeles will find itself with a 58-year-old career police officer whose personal style stands in sharp contrast to that of the current chief. Where Gates is bold and assertive, Dotson is laid-back--some say too laid-back. Where Gates can be autocratic, Dotson is a consensus-builder who prefers drawing on the collective wisdom of his subordinates to handing out orders. Where Gates has been criticized for being insensitive to minorities, Dotson is one of the department’s leading advocates of affirmative action. His personal staff is made up almost entirely of women and minority officers.

Above all, Dotson is known within the LAPD as an independent thinker who is willing to shake up the traditional order. During the mid-1970s, he helped pioneer the concept of team policing--a precursor to the trend of community-based policing. While a captain at the Venice station, he worked with black residents to overcome tensions between them and the LAPD. Later, he helped revamp the LAPD’s methods of training recruits in an effort to bring more women and minorities into the force. The move generated such Angst that a dozen Police Academy instructors quit their jobs.

“I don’t have this burning ambition to be the chief of police for any ego-building purposes or aggrandizing of old Dave Dotson, believe me,” Dotson said. “I’d like to be chief because I believe that there are things that I can do better than anyone else to heal this department and move it into a much more sensitive, responsive organization.”

Dotson finished fourth, in a tie with two other candidates, on the list of six finalists for the chief’s job. Unlike his in-house competition, he does not command officers who patrol the city’s streets. As the director of the Office of Administrative Services, Dotson is responsible for the inner workings of the department--from its computer systems to how it spends its money to its methods of recruiting and training new police officers. These days, much of his time is spent in meetings or handling paperwork.

It is an important job, but not a particularly glamorous one. But Dotson is not a particularly glamorous person.

“He’s a no-frills kind of person, not a polished person,” said George Beck, a retired LAPD deputy chief. “He’s very bright, but it doesn’t come across that way when you first meet him. When you first meet him you think that he’s . . . how shall I put it? It’s kind of like he’s off the farm.”

Dotson has a down-home, no-nonsense attitude that may be a product of his Midwestern roots. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1933, the son of a railroad worker who eventually lost his job. Dotson’s mother died when he was 5, and his father married a woman who did not treat young Dotson well. By the time he was 14, Dotson was living on his own. He found work on local dairy farms, tending the hogs and milking the cows in exchange for his room and board.

After his high school graduation, Dotson drifted. He worked on a pipeline as a “donkey laborer” for a time, worked for an aircraft company and spent time in the Air Force. When moved to Los Angeles with his first wife, he applied to be a police officer because he needed a job. Of 3,700 people taking the entrance exam, Dotson said, he finished first.

He joined the force in 1958 and spent two years on the streets in what he described as “a most undistinguished field career.” But he quickly showed a talent for writing, and landed a job with the department’s planning and research unit. “He was a genius with administration and budget,” one colleague said.

Dotson moved steadily up the LAPD ladder. He had a knack for picking assignments that would serve as good steppingstones for the next promotion--juvenile crime investigator, North Hollywood watch commander, Devonshire community relations officer, adjutant to the deputy chief, detective commander in the San Fernando Valley, and on into a series of administrative jobs that culminated with Gates’ decision to appoint him an assistant chief in 1985.

Although his career has been filled with successes, Dotson’s personal life has been tumultuous. He is on the verge of his third divorce after a stormy 13-year marriage, and his 27-year-old son, Bill, has battled addiction to drugs and alcohol since he was a teen-ager.

Bill Dotson’s addiction was a pivotal experience for the assistant chief. The elder Dotson encouraged his son to seek therapy and joined a support group for parents of addicted children. The son recalls how his ordeal made his father more open and caring.

“Before that, he was a really strict, conservative person,” the younger Dotson said. “When he first found out I was smoking dope he flew off the handle, got outraged, screamed and cussed. . . . He changed about 180 degrees. I’m still surprised today at how understanding he is.”

The latest problem to plague Dotson’s personal life is the internal investigation of his romance with LAPD Officer Leticia Martinez, who used to work in the department’s training section under Dotson’s command. The inquiry focuses on whether Dotson reported the relationship promptly to Gates, as is required. Dotson says he notified Gates after both he and Martinez separated from their spouses and made a “commitment” to one another. “My feelings for her are my own business,” he said. “I don’t think anybody ought to be concerned with it.”

While the relationship has sparked the inevitable in-house whispers, those closest to Dotson say it would be unlike him to behave in an untoward manner. “He’s not a lover, a playboy type,” said Dotson’s second wife, Doris. “He doesn’t go out of his way to be particularly charming to women. He just has an appeal, a niceness that is appealing.”

That “niceness” also is a hallmark of Dotson’s management style. He prides himself on the fact that most people call him “Dave,” rather than “chief.” Those who work for him say he is unfailingly kind and compassionate.

But like his candor, Dotson’s compassion may be as much a weakness as a strength. Once, Dotson asked the LAPD psychologist to conduct a survey of his subordinates. Their chief criticism was that he was not assertive enough.

“Sometimes his laid-backness would be a little aggravating,” said Tom Hays, a former LAPD captain who heads security at Paramount Pictures. “I would have a problem that I needed solved and he would be slow in lending me the muscle that I needed.”

Others counter that Dotson’s style is deceiving. “Don’t let that fool you,” said Pete Nelson, a retired LAPD deputy chief. “He’s so low-key that he gets the job done with very little fuss.”

Last April, in the stormy aftermath of the Rodney G. King beating, the Police Commission put Dotson at the helm of the LAPD during its ill-fated attempt to place Gates on administrative leave. Commissioners said they asked Dotson to serve as acting chief because they felt he could steady the LAPD in a time of crisis.

Dotson’s tenure as interim chief was short-lived. The City Council ordered Gates back to work the following day, and Dotson never had a chance to show what kind of leader he could be. His past performance indicates that while he may be a reformer, he is by no means a radical.

As the captain in charge of the LAPD’s Venice Beach patrol in the mid-1970s, Dotson let his officers trade their dress uniforms for shorts and tennis shoes. But what may seem like an innocuous move outraged Dotson’s superiors; they accused him of denigrating the LAPD’s spit-and-polish image. Dotson replied that his officers were “a helluva lot more dignified in shorts than they were with one hand on their hat and one hand on their gun, trying to run down a sandy beach.” Today, the beach patrol wears shorts without generating controversy.

Also in Venice, Dotson helped develop the concept of team policing, in which officers were divided into groups and assigned a neighborhood, with a lieutenant in charge of each group. Dotson wanted the lieutenants on call 24 hours a day, and gave them city vehicles to enable them to return to work at any time. But the plan ran afoul of city auditors, who said it violated regulations. Dotson thought the rules were ridiculous, but he abandoned the program without a fight.

“I push the outside of the envelope,” he said, “but I’m not rebellious.”

The Venice job was the last time Dotson had extensive contact with the public. When he took over the command, tensions were running high between the LAPD and the black residents of Venice’s Oakwood section. There were allegations of police brutality, as well as complaints that white neighborhoods were heavily patrolled at the expense of Oakwood.

Community activists remember Dotson as a willing partner.

“I came away with the opinion that he was a decent type of person,” said Chester Powell, a longtime Oakwood resident. “He could sit and listen to problems, which was something. We didn’t get that kind of cooperation from most of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

In the early 1980s, as the commanding officer of the LAPD’s Personnel and Training Bureau, Dotson was again confronted with a controversial issue involving minorities--this time within his own department. The LAPD was under a court order to increase the number of women and minorities on the force. It did not happen without a fight.

In an attempt to keep women from dropping out of the Police Academy, Dotson, in conjunction with others in the top brass, proposed a radical restructuring of training practices. The Marine Corps “boot-camp” technique that had been used for decades--with its emphasis on developing physical strength and humiliating recruits--would be replaced with what the department leadership called a “college campus” atmosphere.

The idea was to make the training more sensitive and humane. But the plan caused a revolt at the academy. The entire physical training staff quit in protest, saying the changes would put unqualified officers on the street. Dotson, with Gates’ backing, stood firm. “I made it very clear that if they didn’t like it, then they could go seek another job,” he said. “And they all did.”

The episode illustrates what many say is Dotson’s commitment to helping women and minorities advance within the LAPD. Even the estranged husband of Dotson’s girlfriend--who is personally furious with the assistant chief--has praise for him in that regard.

“This department has a fraternity of Caucasian management,” Sgt. Gus Martinez said. “Dotson has always been a thorn because he wants to change that.”

While Dotson says there are other changes he would like to make to help bring the LAPD out of its “1950s world view” and into the 1990s, he does not throw his blanket support behind the proposals advanced by the Christopher Commission. He says he is strongly in favor of what the commission is trying to accomplish, but disagrees with some of the methods it suggests.

For instance, Dotson opposes the panel’s recommendation of term limits for the chief of police, saying he prefers making the chief more accountable by giving the civilian Police Commission more power to remove the chief. Currently, the chief may only be removed for cause.

“I think what we ought to be doing is attempting to accomplish what was intended by the recommendations, and not necessarily the letter of each recommendation,” Dotson said.

If he were named chief, Dotson says, his first step toward reforming the LAPD would be to concentrate on the broad task of defining the department’s mission. As is his style, he would begin by putting together a committee, or perhaps several committees, of LAPD officials and citizens who reflect the city’s diversity.

“All this is sort of ethereal. I recognize that,” Dotson said. “But that’s what I think Los Angeles today needs--a kind of leadership that tries to re-establish just exactly what we’re here for.”

Profile: David D. Dotson

Dotson, who was tied for fourth on a list of six finalists to become Los Angeles’ next police chief, has spent 34 years with the LAPD and is one of the department’s two assistant chiefs.

Born: April 9, 1933, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Residence: Newhall.

Education: Mitchellville High School, Mitchellville, Iowa, 1951. Holds an associate degree from College of the Canyons. Also attended Pepperdine University.

Career highlights: U.S. Air Force, 1951-1955, rank of airman 1st class; joined LAPD in 1958 as a patrolman. Promoted to sergeant in 1964, to lieutenant in 1967, to captain in 1972, to commander in 1974, to deputy chief in 1980. Named assistant chief in 1985.

Personal: Separated, three grown children. Stepdaughter is an LAPD officer. Enjoys jogging, reading, tinkering with old cars. Serves as first vice president of the Los Angeles Police Memorial Foundation and second vice president of the Los Angeles County Peace Officers Assn.

Known for: His laid-back, consensus approach to management. “My style is one of involving everyone that I possibly can in decision-making,” he says.