Gates at the Mike : Most Calls Are Friendly as Ex-Chief Hosts Radio Talk Show

Everyone knows Daryl F. Gates, the ex-Los Angeles police chief. Now meet Daryl F. Gates, radio talk show host.

Sounding confident--and often controversial--the former chief took to the airwaves Wednesday night, responding to almost universally friendly calls as a guest host on KFI-AM. And, although a bit shaky at first, he ended up beaming like a man on the verge of a new career.

“The calls were pretty much what I thought they’d be,” Gates said, “I really enjoyed this.”

The talk show stint, which came at the invitation of the station, marked Gates’ first public appearance since he retired a month ago. Gates left office under the shadow of the Rodney G. King beating by LAPD officers and the sometimes ineffectual police deployment during the riots that followed the officers’ acquittal on charges of using excessive force.

Coincidentally, Gates’ broadcast--the first of three on consecutive nights--came just a few hours after the same officers were ordered to face federal charges of depriving King of his civil rights.

In a sometimes nervous monologue at the start of the two-hour program, Gates defended the verdicts in the King trial and denounced the indictments as “overkill.”

“We shouldn’t trash the system . . . saying the jury didn’t know what they were doing,” he said. “And now, the federal government--Big Brother--has to come in and provide justice. I think it’s overkill.”

Criticism of the verdict “troubles me,” he said, “because a lot of people did not sit there day in and day out and listen to the evidence, and yet they still vilified that jury. Even the President of the United States said he didn’t understand it.”

Gates soon hit his stride as one after another caller praised him for his 14 years at the helm of the LAPD and his handling of the riots. A couple urged him to run for mayor, something Gates said he has no plans to do.

Not until the end of the broadcast was Gates confronted with criticism from his radio audience.

“It’s scary to think that no one was ready (in the Police Department) on the night the riots started,” a Newport Beach caller said.

“We indeed were ready,” he said. “We were not the kind of aggressive force we had been in the past. It was a reaction to a whole year of being pummeled by critics. I think we took care of it very very quickly--36 hours.”

For the most part, the former chief segued smoothly into traffic and news reports. A station spokesman said Gates was paid “a little above” the $40-an-hour union scale to do the broadcasts.

Besides taking a swipe at President Bush for his comments after the King verdict, Gates jabbed at some usual targets.

He referred to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner as “politically damaged” as a result of the King case. And he chided The Times, calling it “a great newspaper that I think is putting out a lot of lousy information.”