Officer Faulted on Riots Rejects Gates’ Criticism

The Los Angeles Police Department field supervisor publicly singled out by Chief Daryl F. Gates as having mishandled the initial response to the recent riots fired back Wednesday, saying Gates was ultimately responsible for a dismal lack of preparedness and “sold me down the river” without knowing what really happened.

In his first public response to the chief’s criticism, Lt. Mike Moulin strongly disputed Gates’ contention that the department was well prepared for violence in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating verdicts.

Despite being in charge of all nighttime patrols in the LAPD’s 77th Street Division in South Los Angeles, Moulin said, “I received no training, no briefing of any type. Nothing. There was nothing.”

Even when he asked a supervisor, Capt. Robert Hansohn, a week before the riots about contingency plans, and expressed fears that he could be caught short of personnel and equipment if troubled erupted, Moulin said he was told: “Don’t overreact. We can handle it.”

Hansohn said he recalled no such conversation.

Delays in deploying officers once looting and assaults on motorists began at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues were a direct result of poor preparations and a paralysis in decision-making by LAPD commanders above him, Moulin said.

“Many decisions went unmade because people didn’t want to assume command and (possibly) screw up their careers” by making crucial decisions about how to respond, Moulin said. “No one wanted to seize control.”

The failure to prepare rests “absolutely” with Gates, Moulin said, because the police chief several months earlier had taken personal control of the 77th Division as part of a community-based policing experiment.

LAPD officials said Gates did not return control of the 77th Division to the area commander, Deputy Chief Matthew Hunt, until 4:30 p.m. April 29. That was an hour after the King verdicts were announced and about the time some of the first disturbance calls near Florence and Normandie were coming in.

Moulin decided to talk to The Times after his LAPD superiors told him this week that they could not prevent him from exercising his 1st Amendment rights.

Moulin is a 21-year veteran of the LAPD and has worked in the 77th Street Division for the past three years. At 77th Street, he worked as a watch commander for the night patrol.

On April 29, when he learned the verdicts would be announced, he left for work early. “I was scared to death,” he said. “I knew I had to get to work, do whatever I could to prepare. . . . I knew we had no plan.”

When he arrived he found one captain was away attending a conference in Oxnard, and the acting commanding officer of patrol had taken the day off. He said he shuddered when two sergeants who were left in charge told him no extra vehicles, radios and personnel were being assembled. “It was all pointing to one thing. That was a disaster.”

In an interview Wednesday night, Gates said, “I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to respond at this time. “We’re in the process of looking into it, and we’re talking to a lot of people.” However, Gates bristled at the suggestion that he had treated Moulin unfairly.

“I’m not trying to sell anybody down the river at all, certainly not him,” Gates said.

Gates added that he did not blame Moulin for the decision to pull officers out of the intersection of Florence and Normandie. That was an appropriate decision for the field commander to make, Gates said.

But “we are critical of the failure to redeploy in squads fast enough,” he added.

On the question of whether the department was adequately prepared for the rioting, Gates said that “all of us shoulder responsibility for adequate preparation.”

That includes “lieutenants, who have large numbers of officers under their command,” Gates added.

Gates has called the LAPD’s overall response to the riots “beautiful” except for a few “glitches,” most notably mistakes Moulin made. Moulin ordered a group of about 20 to 30 officers to retreat from a rock- and bottle-throwing mob at Florence and Normandie about an hour before trucker Reginald O. Denny was dragged from his vehicle and beaten.

During a televised news conference May 8, Gates singled out Moulin for blame, saying the lieutenant had a responsibility to quickly regroup his officers and retake the intersection. Gates suggested that had Moulin done so, the brutal, televised beating of Denny might have been prevented.

Moulin, interviewed at his Fullerton home, defended his decision to retreat from the intersection and reassemble at a command post, saying it averted a possible deadly confrontation with a crowd that was overwhelming in size.

But Moulin angrily disputed Gates’ contention that he failed to redeploy officers to the intersection. “It wasn’t my decision. . . . I’ll be damned if I’ll be blamed for doing something I didn’t have the authority to decide.”

After the retreat, Moulin said, he transported a badly injured New York Times photographer back to the 77th Street station, where an ambulance was awaiting.

Capt. Paul Jefferson, the division commander, told The Times earlier this month that he instructed Moulin to “get back out there,” meaning take officers back to the area of Normandie and Vermont. Moulin insisted Wednesday that Jefferson instructed him to go by the intersection and assess the situation, and then meet him at the command post.

Moulin said he followed orders because Jefferson was, in effect, taking field command of the situation.

Jefferson could not be reached Wednesday evening. A watch commander at the 77th Street station said Jefferson was declining to comment publicly on the handling of the riot.

Within 15 minutes of his own arrival at the command post at 54th Street and Arlington Avenue, the lieutenant said, Jefferson arrived. A short time later Cmdr. Ron Banks, the second in command at South Bureau, arrived, as did a captain from the elite Metro Division, Moulin said.

“I was never in charge to make a decision to go back,” he said. “If Capt. Jefferson told me to take two squads to Florence and Normandie, I would have. . . . They did not give direction.”

He said at one point a frantic call came in from the head of the 77th Division detectives, who was screaming that television was broadcasting pictures of motorists being beaten at Florence and Normandie. He said he handed the phone to Jefferson. Later, Jefferson ordered two squads of Metro officers out, but the situation was too dangerous, and they could not reach the intersection.

If elite, specially trained Metro squads could not get to the intersection, Moulin said, how did Gates expect him, or anyone else, to immediately retake the intersection when they were so outnumbered?

“Chief Gates sold me down the river without knowing the facts,” Moulin said.

He said he found it “astonishing” that Gates felt it necessary to assemble a force of 200 officers and FBI agents to return to the neighborhood near Florence and Normandie to personally arrest one of the suspects in the Denny beating.

“If I had 200 officers for every one suspect on the street, I never would have had to pull out” of the Florence and Normandie area the night the riots broke out, Moulin said.

Moulin, 43, said Gates’ attempt to place the blame for the Denny incident on him has turned his family’s life upside down.

He was ordered home the day of Gates’ news conference because, he said, his superiors said other officers were upset with his handling of the incident. They said they could not guarantee his protection. He also was advised not to speak to the media.

He said he had no indication Gates would single him out, saying he was stunned as he sat in his living room and watched Gates point the finger at him.

“I turned to my wife and said: ‘I don’t believe it. They either lied to him” or did not properly investigate the incident, Moulin said.

On Monday, Moulin said, he was advised that he was being transferred by mutual agreement of Gates and Deputy Chief Hunt. He said he is being reassigned to an office job “counting paper clips” in Hunt’s bureau. Currently, he said, he is taking some time off on his doctor’s orders.

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