Gates Refuses to Halt Promotions : LAPD: Defiant chief will not comply with the Police Commission’s order on high-level reassignments. He unleashes first public criticism of his successor.

Bitterly defiant and fighting to the end, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates told the Police Commission he will refuse to comply with its order to halt and rescind a series of high-level command reassignments so that incoming Chief Willie L. Williams can have more leeway in building his management team.

“You have a man with great pride,” Commission President Stanley Sheinbaum said of Gates, “and he’s finding it very hard to give up the reins.”

Before the chief’s blowup with the commission--and after carefully watching his words for days--Gates also took his first swipes at his successor. During an impromptu news conference in a hallway at Parker Center, Gates said the chief-designate should have “stayed out” of the debate over a police reform ballot measure and should have a four-year college degree, which Williams does not.

“This is a very prestigious organization and the position is a very prestigious position,” Gates said. “Like many other prestigious positions, I think it requires some time in academia.”

The Los Angeles Police Department has stressed the value of education, he said, and most of Williams’ competitors for the job from inside the organization are “highly educated people.” Naming a chief with a two-year degree sends a “message” contrary to that tradition, he said.

The incoming chief, Gates said, also should “think a little more” before talking about moving officers out of “soft” desk jobs. “I think he was led down the primrose path by some (City) Council people who have made those kinds of statements,” Gates said.

All in all, Gates made it clear Friday that, after 14 years as chief, he has no intention of going quietly. Among his many statements of the day, perhaps two best exemplified the chief’s attitude.

Both were made as reporters mobbed him after the Police Commission meeting. The chief said that if the commissioners do not like his stance, then they can “sue me, fire me.” And then he cautioned the commission: “I’m very good at keeping a controversy alive. Very good at it.”

Williams refused to enter the fray as he went about his crowded schedule of meetings with community leaders, police officials and politicians. After a meeting with the Police Protective League, he told reporters that criticism comes with the job.

“Being chief of police, you’re going to take lumps,” he said. “This is not something I need to get into a combative mode over.”

The latest clash between Gates and the mayoral-appointed commission, which oversees the Police Department, came at special meeting where the panel ordered the chief to refrain from making reassignments of LAPD commanders without commission approval. The three commissioners present also voted unanimously to instruct Gates to rescind all such transfers made in the past month.

The commissioners said the action was necessary to give Williams flexibility in building his own management team. Gates has made several reassignments recently--including signing orders Thursday to fill commanding officer slots at police divisions in West Los Angeles, Southeast, North Hollywood and Metro.

Gates had signaled his combativeness on the issue this week in rejecting a request by Sheinbaum to hold off on reassignments. That prompted Friday’s session, where the commission president accused Gates of “blocking off the flexibility of the incoming chief.”

His jaw tightly set, Gates retorted that the commission was improperly meddling with the department. During several sharp exchanges, Gates insisted that he was acting within his authority and had an obligation to ensure that all crucial field command positions are filled because of the potential of an earthquake or other emergency.

He stressed that without the command-level transfers, the city could open itself up to civil liabilities. At one point, Gates locked stares with with Commissioner Jesse A. Brewer, a former LAPD assistant chief, and said sternly: “You of all people ought to know this.”

The commissioners maintained that some of the positions had not been filled for months and it seemed unnecessary to act now.

Gates repeatedly demanded to know the “genesis” of the “absolutely unconscionable” effort to block his reassignments. He suggested that his longtime archrival, Mayor Tom Bradley, was behind the effort. As it became clear where the issue was headed, the chief warned: “I will tell you this. You cannot stop me from doing this.”

With that, the commissioners ended the debate and approved the restrictions on the angry chief, who again said: “I will do what I think is necessary. . . . You just take whatever action you want.”

After the meeting, Sheinbaum said the panel has not decided on its next step but said he doubts that the panel will seek to fire the chief or go to court.

Because of a city hiring freeze, Gates’ reassignments do not include promotions to higher ranks or pay increases. But they do move lower ranked officers into positions of greater responsibility, perhaps giving them an edge on the formal promotions when the freeze is lifted.

Legally, Williams can undo the reassignments--as Gates argued during the commission’s meeting. But the commissioners said the transfers nonetheless will make a tough job even tougher for the man charged with restoring public trust and morale in a department shaken by allegations of brutality and racism.

“It certainly makes it more difficult (to make command changes),” said Commissioner Ann Reiss Lane. “It’s hard on these people if they have an assumption the job is theirs. And it will build more ill will, again, for a new chief.”

Lane theorized that Gates’ defiance was linked to the chief’s book, scheduled for publication in about three weeks. “The more press he gets the better it is,” she said.

Dismissing the commissioner’s comment, Gates said in a statement that he has “enough publicity and controversy to last four books.”

After the meeting, the commissioners and a Bradley spokesman denied that the mayor was pulling the commission’s strings, as Gates had suggested. They did acknowledge that Bradley wrote the commission this month urging that reassignments by Gates be halted--but only after the office received complaints from high-ranking LAPD officers, whom Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler declined to name.

“It doesn’t take a management expert to recognize how deathbed appointments by an outgoing executive are detrimental to an organization,” Chandler said.

Gates’ fiery performance at Parker Center came immediately after an appearance on a popular radio talk show hosted by KABC’s Michael Jackson, where he began his criticisms of Williams.

Among other things, he said he thinks Williams’ much-touted record of disciplining officers paled in comparison to his own. “Let me tell you,” Gates said, “I’m so much more strong in discipline. I’ve been so much tougher than Willie Williams has been, it’s unbelievable.”

Asked by Jackson whether the politicians were looking for somebody “they could push around,” Gates at first said he did not think so. But then he asserted that the Police Commission had selected a man “who’s come in and already said, ‘I’ll do anything you ask, just tell me.’ ”

Gates noted Williams’ support of Proposition F, the June ballot measure that would set term limits on future chiefs and increase control over their hiring and firing by elected city officials.

“Obviously, someone’s gotten to him and said you should support F and he’s done it,” said Gates, who has been campaigning against the measure, a fact duly noted by his City Hall critics.

Williams, dogged by reporters throughout the day, said that he has not been campaigning for the measure but has stated his opinion when asked. “I personally don’t have a major problem with that (proposition) because I now operate in that atmosphere . . . in terms of a chief that does not have a lifetime tenure. (It) has never bothered me or my predecessors in the past.”

During an appearance in a crowded restaurant banquet room, he also defended himself against suggestions by Gates that he might become a puppet of the mayor or the Police Commission.

“My reputation and my history for four years as chief (in Philadelphia) has shown that I can do the job for all the people without becoming a puppet of one particular organization.”

As for his limited education, Williams offered this observation in a recent Times interview: “You look at the individual as a whole. The board evidently made the decision that overall I presented the best qualifications.”

Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer Louis Sahagun.