Racial Tensions, Economics Cited in Riots : Survey: Poll by independent commission also shows that 75% said the slow police response was because of poor planning and a lack of leadership in the LAPD.

As part of its broad inquiry into the Los Angeles Police Department’s handling of the riots, a special panel has conducted a detailed telephone survey in which a majority of participants blamed the civil unrest on underlying racial tension and economic conditions rather than the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case.

Preliminary results of the survey for the so-called Webster-Williams investigation show that three-quarters of the 1,000 people polled blamed the LAPD’s slow response on a lack of leadership and poor planning, although they also sympathized with the department’s lack of resources.

In fact, 82% of those interviewed said they consider the LAPD understaffed--”one of the strongest responses of the entire survey,” said Los Angeles attorney Richard J. Stone, general counsel and chief of staff to the probe’s chairmen, former FBI Director William H. Webster and Police Foundation President Hubert Williams.

The three-day survey, which employed more than 300 volunteers who conducted interviews in four languages, is indicative of the scope and intensity of the larger investigation, whose final results are expected to be released in October.

In an interview this week that outlined the commission’s work so far and previewed some of its findings, Stone said the poll presented participants with 50 multiple-choice questions devised by a Des Moines, Iowa-based firm specializing in opinions and attitudes. Many of the interviews--conducted in English, Spanish, Chinese and Korean--lasted as long as an hour. Those interviewed either lived or worked in Los Angeles.

Stone emphasized that the opinions sought during the survey, conducted July 31 through Aug. 2, will mainly provide insight for the overall study and do not necessarily reflect final conclusions.

Stone, who conducted 25 phone interviews himself, said he was impressed by the level of interest in the survey and the thought that people gave to their responses.

“People wanted to participate. They were willing to stay with it despite the length of the questionnaire,” Stone said. “Some were interrupted and asked to be called back or said they couldn’t do it then but would do it later. I think this is almost unheard of.”

Overall, the panel has collected thousands of documents, conducted 200 interviews with public officials and civic leaders, and surveyed 75 cities and their police departments in its effort to draw lessons from the civil unrest that was the worst in 20th-Century American history.

The mainly volunteer group is studying 11 police departments in depth, Stone said, and hopes to hold at least one meeting with rank-and-file LAPD officers before release of its report.

The effort began in May when Webster and Williams were named special advisers to the Los Angeles Police Commission and asked to examine the LAPD’s preparedness before the riots and its response once the violence erupted April 29, after four police officers were acquitted on all but one charge in the King beating.

The group announced this week that it has scheduled seven community meetings next month to give city residents a chance to voice their opinions and gain direct access to either Webster or Williams, who plan to attend the town hall-style events. Community leaders who have not been interviewed will have a chance to testify at two hearings planned for September.

Stone said the panel is looking not only at the Los Angeles Police Department but at the city, state and federal agencies that also were involved in quelling the violence. It is also studying the historical responses of police here and elsewhere to civil unrest, and comparing those incidents to the riots in Los Angeles.

In short, Stone said, the LAPD’s preparedness and its response to the riots last spring cannot be studied in a vacuum.

“It was not alone, it was not the only responding agency and it was heavily dependent on other aspects of the city and state to deal with this unfortunate circumstance,” Stone said. “You just can’t look at it in isolation.”

In the phone survey, economics emerged as a key factor, Stone said.

“People felt very strongly that the best way to prevent riots in the future was jobs,” he said. “So there’s a real stress on economics here--a stress on underpreparation and under-resourcing for the agencies responsible for responding and a real focus on jobs as the solution.”

Though he emphasized that the phone survey’s final analysis is not completed, Stone said the preliminary findings show that 82% of the 1,000 people interviewed believed that the LAPD was understaffed.

In other preliminary results:

* When asked what caused the riots, the two leading responses were racial tension (73%) and poor economic conditions (60%). Only 25% attributed the riots directly to the King verdicts.

* Asked if the riots were justified, 58% said they were “totally unjustified.”

* Asked what worked best to stop the riots, most credited the National Guard presence in the city, followed by the curfew, community leadership and arrests. (Stone declined to provide percentages on this response.)

* Asked what affected the LAPD’s response, the top answers were poor planning (76%) and lack of leadership (75%).

“Only a small percentage blamed the response on a lack of equipment and that may not be a very educated response because communications was a clear problem,” Stone said. He added that money spent by the city on such equipment is “something we’re going to be focusing on.” He declined to elaborate.

He also declined to discuss the role of politics in the Police Department’s response, saying only: “I think the department found itself in a very difficult position, and I think we will want to comment on that position and what created it. To say more now would be real unproductive.”

Sixty percent of those surveyed work either full or part time, he said. The racial-ethnic mix of those surveyed, who were chosen at random by the polling firm, were 27% Latino, 27% African-American, 30% Anglo, 3% Korean, 3% Chinese and 10% a mix of other minorities.

“I think you’re going to find the department under-resourced in terms of personnel and infrastructure, and the city would be well advised to focus” on those areas, Stone said. “You really have to think of it as the way the city responds and how the LAPD responds within that context.

“I think given the resources available and the severity of the circumstances, the restraint of the response in many respects was admirable. Deadly force was not used to the extent it might have been used,” Stone said.

“On the other hand,” he added, “there’s no question there were a large number of structural problems.”