NEWS ANALYSIS : Gates’ Defense of LAPD Faces Searching Inquiry : Tactics: Police Commission to begin new look but appears unlikely to back chief’s conclusions, observers say.

When all is said and done, when the investigations are over and the reports are written, it is unlikely that Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’ analysis of how his department responded to the recent riots will survive the scrutiny.

In the face of charges that he and his department had performed miserably, Gates said Friday that the only “glitch” in an otherwise beautiful performance was a field lieutenant’s failure to restore order to a South Los Angeles intersection where motorists were brutally attacked.

In fact, however, the mounting evidence suggests that the Police Department’s slow response to the rioting at its early stages was the product of circumstances that were in motion long before the first rock was hurled or the first liquor store was set afire.

There is, it seems, plenty of blame to spread around--from the Police Department to the mayor’s office to some community leaders, who had counseled police against a show of force in the days before a jury returned not guilty verdicts in the beating of Rodney G. King.

The Police Commission will soon begin an exhaustive investigation of the department’s response to the riots and whether the violence could have been quelled more quickly, thus sparing lives, property and trauma to the city’s psyche and image. On Monday, the commission is expected to appoint a special investigative panel to explore the many complexities of the department’s conduct during its moment of truth.

When the riots first broke out, conditions within the city and its bureaucracy were far from optimum for stopping a riot. For months, the Police Department had been racked with bitter rivalries among the agency’s top leaders, who were vying to replace Gates after his retirement late next month.

From the shadows, some hurled barbs at one another in the hopes of undercutting the competition. At the same time, Mayor Tom Bradley had not spoken personally to Gates for about a year, since officers were captured on videotape beating King. The mayor’s information on the department’s preparedness came instead through other police officials.

Some City Hall observers and Police Department insiders contend that the poisoned relationships and atmosphere in the city family may have hurt efforts to plan a comprehensive strategy for combatting possible violence in the wake of the verdicts.

Compounding the problem was the belief by many that at least some of the four officers on trial would be found guilty by the Simi Valley jury--lulling them into a belief that widespread trouble was possible but not likely.

That mind-set may explain why so many of the department’s leaders were not around when the verdicts were returned, why some officers had been allowed to go home that day when their shifts ended and why there was a delay in calling a tactical alert to begin mobilizing the forces.

Gates himself was on his way to a political fund-raiser in Brentwood when the trouble erupted at Florence and Normandie avenues in South Los Angeles. Although he would later say that he stayed for only a few minutes, The Times determined that he was there for about half an hour.

When informed during his appearance that people were being beaten up and that no officers were in sight, he remarked that “there are situations where people are without assistance. That’s just the facts of life.”

Questions also have arisen over whether there was inadequate planning by Gates and others in the days and weeks before the beating verdicts, which may have slowed the department’s response to the unrest. That issue will be targeted by Police Commission investigators.

Deputy Chief David D. Dotson has said publicly that he was in meetings during which another deputy chief told Gates that more planning was needed to clarify organizational responsibilities and command lines because of the prospect of violence.

Dotson--who criticized Gates’ leadership when he testified before the Christopher Commission--quoted the chief as saying that “this will take care of itself when the time comes.”

Gates purportedly made the remark to Deputy Chief Matthew Hunt, who commands officers in South Los Angeles and questioned Gates about the department’s preparedness.

Hunt, in an interview with The Times, was later critical of the planning and of the response to his commands in the early hours of the disturbance. According to Hunt, some LAPD officials were reluctant to gear up because of the city’s budget problems, especially since few seriously believed that not guilty verdicts would be returned.

Also complicating the department’s planning for possible violence were complaints that had begun surfacing in the black community. As Gates has noted, he was accused of inflaming tensions by merely setting aside money to pay overtime to officers who might be pressed into action because of riots.

On top of this, the mayor and the Police Commission sought only cursory assurances from the Police Department that it was prepared for the worst. The Police Commission received its briefings in secret. When reporters found out, commissioners pleaded with them not to publish or broadcast stories on the sessions for fear of planting the idea that rioting was expected.

The upshot was that the department was left to its own devices. Under normal circumstances, that might have been fine, but with the fractured relationships in the uppermost ranks of the department, it was chancy.

All this served as a backdrop for when the riots actually began. And with them has come a new set of questions about the department’s performance.

In what Gates acknowledged was a major tactical blunder during the first hours of unrest, no police were around while a nation watched on television as truck driver Reginald O. Denny was savagely beaten at Florence and Normandie while news helicopters hovered overhead.

The police had deserted the intersection an hour earlier and had not returned as they should have in accordance with the department’s longstanding riot plans.

“You cannot respond softly to a riot,” Gates said. You must move in and move in quickly. . . . We regret we did not go in and do what we should have done and that is rescue Mr. Denny . . . If we had it to do over, we would have used deadly weapons to get into that intersection.”

Gates attributed this failure to the actions of one lieutenant--Michael Moulin--not to any lack of planning and training.

But a number of other failures, according to police officers, are indicative of poor preparation and training for the possibility of widespread rioting after the King verdict. And not all of those failures rest with Moulin, according to officers deployed during the riots.

In the south-central portion of the city, where much of the rioting took place, some officers said they were being dispatched from a command center, four to a car, without instructions, even on the riot’s second night.

The first night was even more chaotic, they said. Some elite Metro Division officers have told colleagues that they were shifted from one part of the city to another and to yet another without ever actually being deployed on the streets.

Scores of motorcycle police from the Central and West bureaus were ordered to the Police Academy near downtown, where they were told to leave their motorcycles and board a bus to go to a South Los Angeles command post. When they got there, the bus left, leaving the officers stranded with no way to get into the fray. Gates has acknowledged that that was a poorly executed maneuver.

Deputy Chief Hunt, the top officer at that command post, said he had trouble even getting phones hooked up. Meanwhile, in the fast-spreading riots, the city was starting to burn.

“It was a management screw-up,” said a captain, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Essentially you have an organization that’s in a state of disorganization.”

Some of the sharpest criticisms of the police have come from the Fire Department, which has accused the LAPD of reneging on promises to provide cover for firefighters in extremely dangerous areas.

This occurred, according to one ranking fire official, while numerous officers were sitting around a South Los Angeles command post. Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said his department was told by officers that firefighter escorts “were not a top priority.”

Police officials have said the matter is under investigation.