Williams Vows Changes in Police Tactics

Calling the devastation he saw “shocking,” Police Chief-designate Willie L. Williams toured Los Angeles Monday for the first time since the riots, vowing that police would react differently if ever faced with the same situation again.

“I recognize there are going to be trials, there are going to be incidents, there are going to be events that can evoke the same type of emotions that we saw,” Williams said. “The real challenge to me is to have this department and this city respond differently.”

Williams brought with him a message of healing and change as he met with diverse people from the community--from political, business and church leaders to junior high school students--in a tour that took him from the San Fernando Valley to South Los Angeles.

Along the way, he made impromptu visits to areas hit particularly hard by the rioting that followed the April 29 not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case. Williams got out of his chauffeured police car and walked the intersection of Vernon and Central avenues--where businesses on three corners were destroyed by fire--and said the firsthand look at the damage had a strong impact on him.

While declining to lay blame or second-guess the Police Department’s initial response to rioting, Williams said he will join in the investigation of what happened and take steps to that ensure the beleaguered force is ready to handle any future unrest.

“As police chief I am going to be examining preparation and intelligence; background information about what we should have expected, what we thought would occur and how the department prepared for it,” Williams said.

He said he was interested in how information was or was not disseminated through the chain of command to street officers and the decision-making process that resulted in the pullout of officers from one of the flash points of violence, at Normandie and Florence avenues.

“I am making sure we are prepared for whatever may occur in the future,” he said.

Williams, who will become chief after Daryl F. Gates retires next month, started his day at a well-attended breakfast sponsored by City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky in Universal City, then spoke to students at Florence Nightingale Junior High near downtown.

His agenda also included a stop at a senior citizens center in South Los Angeles and a meeting with pastors and members of several churches in the area. At each stop he was warmly received and was trailed by a mob of news cameras and reporters.

The former Philadelphia police chief, who is town with his wife to look for a home and make several community appearances, said there was no doubt the rioting has made his new job tougher but added, “More than ever, I am prepared to come.”

As he made his stops, Williams fielded questions from his audiences as well as reporters. When 14-year-old Jessica Jimenez, a ninth-grader at Nightingale, asked him about an amnesty program for gang members who turn in guns, he jumped on the suggestion as a positive idea.

“I will support any kind of amnesty program, anytime, anywhere,” he said.

Williams seemed to be showing the style he said he will bring to the chief’s office. He pledged to spend part of each of his working days with street cops and citizens, saying that improving the relationship between the department and community was the way to heal the city and forge a cooperative crime-fighting effort.

“The citizens cannot exist without the Police Department and the support it gives them,” he said. “The Police Department can’t exist without the support of the citizens. . . .

“The real challenge is that you are going to have to see and hear from Willie Williams. You are going to have to see and hear from a unified leadership within the department, not one that is going in five or six different directions.”

Many of the questions Williams fielded from Nightingale’s primarily Latino students were in relation to gang violence, which they said is a very real threat to them. Williams indicated that he had a wait-and-see attitude on gang truces called in the last week and said he would be a major supporter of programs that divert youths from gangs.

“If the truces last, that’s fine,” Williams said. “But it has got to be a two-way street. . . . We are not going to let you young men and women wander off into gangs and become victims or perpetrators.”

Within the department, Williams said, examining training and citizen complaint processes will be among his priorities. He said he wants a screening system that will “pick out” overly aggressive or problem officers quickly. On the King beating, he said, “We have to examine what happened in those 81 seconds. We have to make sure that circumstances don’t again become real where more than a dozen officers could not get control of a single individual.”

Williams told a gathering of about 100 religious leaders at the Mt. Hermon Missionary Baptist Church in South Los Angeles that he and the community needed their help in restoring peace and easing tensions.

“I understand needs, I understand wants,” Williams said. “This Police Department is and will be your Police Department. You are going to be involved.”

Williams said the tone he sets will tell a lot about the future of the Police Department and the community it serves and protects.

“We can take the best of the worst and move forward,” he told the breakfast group of about 500. “It is still a very good and excellent Los Angeles Police Department. Every police department has its good and bad days. We all have something to learn about the events of the last two weeks. . . .

“We can make this Police Department return to its high level of glory.”

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* GANG BEATINGS: A party of newly united gangs ends with two men beaten. B1