Criticism Over Use of Force Inhibited Police, Gates Says : Law enforcement: The chief also says that high-ranking officers made tactical errors and failed to implement longstanding plans for dealing with unrest.

Taking to the airwaves, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates on Wednesday angrily blamed his department’s critics for making officers so skittish about using force that they failed to move in and quell violence in the early moments of the riots, which would soon sweep the city.

In an interview with KABC radio host Michael Jackson, Gates said the city’s politicians and news media had turned a “once-proud” organization into one that has adopted a softer approach because of unrelenting criticism over the Rodney G. King beating.

“I know police officers on the street are scared to death to use any kind of force because they think they’re going to be second-guessed,” he said. “It doesn’t impact me, because . . . I’m retiring. But for those who have their careers to think about, they’re looking at what has been said we ought to do, and that’s the soft approach to policing.”

Although Gates laid the heaviest blame for the department’s poor performance on his critics, he saved some of it for unnamed high-ranking officers who he said made tactical errors, allowing “a degree of paralysis” to set in by failing to implement longstanding tactical plans.

But, as the chief was on the radio deflecting blame and defending the department’s preparedness, there were mounting indications that the brass may have underestimated or not understood the volatility of the emotions that some anticipated could erupt after the King verdicts.

* Many members of the LAPD’s hierarchy were either on vacation, out of town or driving home when the violence began, leaving the top command staff on the sidelines, unable to direct emergency efforts.

* More than a dozen patrol captains were attending a training seminar in Ventura. They were so intent on getting back after learning of the not guilty verdicts in the King case that some left their luggage at the hotel.

* Hundreds of officers were allowed to go home at the end of their afternoon shifts--even after the stunning not guilty verdicts had been returned in Simi Valley against the four officers accused in the King beating.

* Already chastised for its handling of the riot’s opening moments in South Los Angeles, the department came under criticism Wednesday by fire and sheriff’s department officials for failing to control a violent mob that coursed unchecked through the Civic Center, smashing windows and attempting to start fires.

As the unrest was burgeoning, half of the LAPD’s top command was unavailable.

Gates was attending a political fund-raiser in Brentwood. Assistant Chief David Dotson was driving home. Assistant Chief Robert Vernon, who had just announced his retirement, was headed out of town on vacation. After landing in Florida and hearing about the riot, he called the department to offer his services. He was told he did not have to return.

Also vacationing was Deputy Chief William Booth.

Deputy Chief Matthew Hunt, meanwhile, was attending a rally to promote a peaceful response to the verdicts at the First AME Church in South Los Angeles.

In addition, 12 LAPD captains were just beginning a three-day training seminar at a seaside resort hotel in Ventura when the King verdicts came in.

The group had been meeting behind closed doors at the Harbortown Inn’s meeting room--called the Admiral’s Yacht Club--when they were ordered back to Los Angeles, said Valerie Plank, a sales manager at the hotel.

“I didn’t even get to talk them, they were in such hurry,” she said. “Some of them didn’t even check out. They were literally running to their cars.”

“They ran and they left behind everything they had,” added receptionist Eileen McIntosh. “They took off like the place was on fire. One of them called me back the next day because he had left a suitcase in his hotel room and he wanted it back.”

In Los Angeles, officers on the day shift at Central Division were sent home Wednesday afternoon, said Area Adjutant Wanda Bell. A commander in the San Fernando Valley said officers there even inquired whether the officials in Parker Center wanted them to keep the day shift because of possible problems but were told no.

Police Commissioner Ann Reiss Lane said she had spoken with officers who were incredulous that they had been sent home from day-watch duties on the day of the verdicts.

“There had been no briefing on what would happen. . . . The verdict had come in and (officers) were sent home. There was no advance training or planning that they were able to report to me.”

City Hall leaders said they accepted cursory assurances that the Police Department was ready for any potential problems. Gates told Police Commissioners the day before the riot that his department was prepared, but the panel members acknowledge that they did not probe for details of the contingency plans.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who is not on speaking terms with Gates, sought assurances from Deputy Chiefs Hunt and Bernard Parks that the police were ready, said mayoral aide Phil Depoian. Bradley received an encouraging response and was satisfied, but the mayor did not press for details, Depoian said.

“We are not into the deployment tactics business,” Depoian said. “Nor should we be.”

Some officials suspect the slow response was exacerbated by top-level LAPD rivalries and retirements stemming from the King beating scandal and the intense competition to replace Gates as the new police chief. The infighting, many observers say, has caused a poisonous atmosphere at Parker Center, making top-level communications strained, at best.

Gates has barely been on speaking terms with some of his top commanders, notably Assistant Chief Dotson, whom he demoted Wednesday.

In addition, several of the top commanders had extremely strained relations as a result of clashes during the chief selection and a lawsuit filed against the city by former Assistant Chief Vernon, who announced his retirement just days before the riot.

Vernon was Gates’ chief commander of officers in the field and would normally have overseen the riot response. Commissioner Lane said Wednesday that his absence “makes a big difference. He’s the only one who had had the tactical planning experience.”

Today, the Police Commission will get its first detailed briefing on what went wrong. Citing the “many questions being raised,” Commission President Stanley K. Sheinbaum has instructed Gates to provide detailed reports, maps and graphs on the deployment of officers during the first three-days of the violence.

For the most part, criticism of the department’s slow response has focused on the spot where the long days of violence began--at Florence and Normandie avenues, where rioters dragged motorists from cars and looted businesses.

But questions are also being raised about the departments conduct when a rowdy mob rampaged through the Civic Center, smashing numerous windows and setting fires.

Los Angeles city fire and sheriff’s department officials said the LAPD appeared to have lost control of much of the Civic Center to the violent rioters the first hours of the disturbance.

Deputy City Fire Chief Don Anthony said battalion chiefs who radioed in to the department’s command center reported that they saw little evidence of any city police presence outside of Parker Center, where officers in riot gear had dispersed an angry crowd of demonstrators shortly after 8 p.m.

“In the reports I got from fire companies, they said there were some police (in evidence), but more often than not, there was none,” Anthony said. “My sense from the reports was that outside Parker Center, they were fairly few and most of those were already committed.

“It clearly showed either a lack of planning downtown or (that police were) overwhelmed so quickly they never recovered from it,” Anthony said.

Several high-ranking sheriff’s officials said that for much of the first night of the riot, it was sheriff’s units, and not the LAPD, that combed downtown streets on anti-sniper patrols and began patrolling most government buildings.

Capt. Doug McClure, a spokesman for Sheriff Sherman Block, said a contingent of 40 deputies from a command post set up in the Carson Station was dispatched to secure the Hall of Administration, Hall of Records, the Courthouse, Hall of Justice and the federal courthouse “because LAPD at that time was unable to provide manpower to police the Civic Center.”

The sheriff’s department criticism comes a day after Block blasted the LAPD’s initial response because it “didn’t make any sense.”

LAPD spokesman Robert Gil would say only that “the early hours of this incident are being looked at because the chief isn’t satisfied with our response. I think because initially this incident was spread out to include at least three different areas. It taxed our ability to muster sufficient troops to handle each area. We were very spread out.”

In his radio interview, Gates denied that the department was unprepared for the violence. He said he had directed the command staff to review longstanding tactical plans and to implement them should trouble arise, which some field commanders failed to do.

Specifically, Gates said that a tactical alert should have been implemented earlier.

A tactical alert precedes a mobilization of all officers onto 12-hour shifts with no days off. In a tactical alert, only emergency calls are handled and cars assigned to specific divisions can be dispatched to aggressively stop trouble anywhere in the city.

A citywide tactical alert did not go into effect until nearly 7 p.m., about an hour after the riots broke out. It was called not by field commanders but by communications division officers.

Gates defended his own decision not to mobilize all officers as a precautionary move when it became apparent verdicts were near in the King case, saying it would have been too expensive.

He noted that the day before the riots broke out, he was criticized by City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and others for allegedly trying to incite trouble by disclosing that he had set aside $1 million in the police overtime account as a contingency.

Although Gates was critical of his department’s response to the riots, he said it must be viewed in the broader context of the relentless criticisms suffered by the LAPD during the last year.

“They have pushed us and pushed us and pushed us,” he said of the detractors. “So we have turned to community-oriented policing. . . . That’s the watchword. Don’t use force.

“I know police officers on the street are scared to death to use any kind of force because they think they’re gong to be second-guessed,” he added. “It doesn’t impact me, because . . . I’m retiring. But for those who have their careers to think about, they’re looking at what has been said we ought to do, and that’s the soft approach to policing.”

The department’s leaders were “constantly barraged by politicians telling them to make sure that they don’t overrespond,” he said. “And I have a feeling that that impaired their ability to do what we know we’re supposed to do. And that’s move in aggressively and stop the thing.”

Police spokesman Gil, who said Gates did not want to be interviewed by The Times, insisted, like the chief, that the department took the prospect of violence seriously and had held a series of strategy sessions.

One of the sessions, according to a participant who asked not to be named, occurred April 10 at Parker Center for all patrol area commanders. Assistant Chief Vernon told them to prepare for several potentially violent events, including repercussions from the King verdict. Other potentially violent events discussed at the time included a planned Communist Party rally in MacArthur Park, planned anti-abortion demonstrations and earthquakes.

One ranking officer, who was present, said the department seemed to be making an effort to talk about several possibly violent events together--not just post-verdict riots--to avoid being accused of inciting unrest.

“There was a tremendous degree of concern that we would be the precipitators of this incident, because if (it was known that) we were getting ready for a riot, we could be (accused of) instigating one,” the captain said.

Vernon reportedly told them to inspect their inventories of weapons and ammunition, update their lists of officers’ home phone numbers in case of a departmentwide mobilization and review special tactics outlined in the department manual--such as squad formations.

The assistant chief also provided commanders with lists of the gun stores in their jurisdictions and directed that they be made aware that they could become looting targets.

Although meetings and training exercises were held in anticipation of the King verdicts, no departmentwide contingency plan was drafted for the possibility of rioting. Instead, officers were told to rely on their respective station’s tactical manual, which cover responses for natural disasters and other major emergencies.

In contrast, the Sheriff’s Department updated its own contingency plans for civil disorder just three weeks ago, Sheriff Block said late Wednesday.

He said the department’s field operations staff assembled a 9 1/2-page contingency plan two weeks before the King verdicts. The plan was called “Operation Monarch,” a play on the last name of LAPD beating victim Rodney G. King.

Although he declined to discuss the specific contents of his plan, Block said that a similar effort would have been crucial to the LAPD’s efforts to maintain order.

“The first question I would ask is was there a plan?” he said. “A plan is important, otherwise you lose control. It’s the difference between sending a SWAT team in and sending in 10 officers in radio cars. There are so many details you have to consider.”

Lt. Bruce Ward, head of the LAPD’s tactical planning section, said that even if a major preparation plan had been drawn up, the violence swept so fast through the city that police still would have been caught off guard.

“It was such an incredible problem and so widespread that it was very difficult to catch to it,” he said. “And it happened so quickly.”

Another of the lingering controversies surrounding the Police Department’s initial response to the riots focuses on what fire officials say was a failure to provide police escorts for firefighters, who were coming under violent attack. The Times reported Wednesday that fire officials were “furious” because units could not get police protection, even though many officers appeared to be idle and available at a South Los Angeles command post.

In a letter to Mayor Bradley on Wednesday, Fire Commission President James E. Blancarte complained that “in a significant number of cases” firefighters and paramedics were left unprotected, with some becoming “victims of violent attacks.”

“The non-deployment of police officers,” he said, “severely compromised this department’s overall ability to respond to major fire and rescue emergencies.”

Times staff writers Stephen Braun, Leslie Berger, Kenneth Reich and Santiago O’Donnell contributed to this report.

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