A Tenacious Prosecutor Has Goal Within His Grasp

In a 24-year career that started with routine prosecutions of burglars and drug offenders and has brought him to the verge of replacing Ira Reiner as Los Angeles County district attorney, Gilbert Garcetti has faced his share of personal and professional hurdles.

Born in a blue-collar South Los Angeles neighborhood, Garcetti earned a scholarship to attend USC, beat cancer while in his 30s and has avenged his most embarrassing professional setback--Reiner’s decision to demote him from his post as chief deputy.

Since mid-January, Garcetti has worked 17 hours a day, seven days a week in his quest to replace the controversial eight-year district attorney as head of the nation’s largest local prosecutors’ office.

“Once I made the commitment, I decided it had to be done all-out,” Garcetti said early Friday morning, shortly after learning of Reiner’s stunning decision to quit the campaign.

Admiring co-workers say the prosecutor’s drive, intelligence and self-discipline will make him a strong district attorney.

“I have a sense of confidence when I deal with Gil that I did not have at any time when I was dealing with Ira Reiner,” said veteran Deputy Dist. Atty. P. Philip Halpin, who successfully prosecuted Richard Ramirez in the “Night Stalker” killings.

But among the district attorney’s staff of nearly 1,000 prosecutors there is suspicion as well as enthusiasm. Detractors worry that Garcetti is motivated by an unrelenting thirst for power and its trappings. They also say the 24-year prosecutor has exhibited a tendency to micromanage, handling too many decisions by himself.

“In my view, he did not have an open management style,” Curt Livesay, the office’s former No. 3 prosecutor under Reiner and Garcetti, said Friday. “I thought decisions were made with less than all the valuable input.”

In recent months, Reiner accused his former top aide of being secretive and of authorizing excessive overtime payments for himself while serving as chief deputy. Reiner said Garcetti’s “effort to hold on to some kind of status” was typified by his demands for a car radio and the transfer of furniture from his 18th-floor downtown office to the smaller bureau in Torrance where Reiner exiled him.

“It’s not a question of power and status,” Garcetti said Friday as he outlined priorities for the post he expects to take over in December. “It’s a question of opportunity and understanding the inherent positive good the D.A. and the D.A.’s office can play if each of us are committed to it.”

Garcetti described himself as “a very hands-on type of a manager,” adding that “I’ve also learned that one person can’t do it all.”

At a news conference Friday, Garcetti praised Reiner for his graciousness in suspending his campaign rather than engaging in a divisive, mudslinging contest. Noting that he cannot yet take a November victory for granted, Garcetti pledged that as district attorney he would limit plea bargaining in violent crimes, increase prosecution of domestic violence and workers’ compensation fraud, and expand his gang prevention program.

A lanky figure with a self-deprecating sense of humor, Garcetti has spent most of his career in offices rather than courtrooms. In the last decade, he has personally prosecuted only one case--a murder charge that first resulted in a mistrial, then in an acquittal.

The son of immigrants from Mexico, Gilbert Garcetti, 51, was raised at 41st and Figueroa streets. His father, Salvadore, now an 82-year-old Van Nuys resident, worked for decades as a barber. His late mother, Juanita, worked in a meatpacking plant.

Garcetti said that before his parents were married his father had a wild streak and has claimed--perhaps apocryphally--to have once been arrested for gambling by a Los Angeles policeman named Tom Bradley, now the mayor of Los Angeles.

Garcetti’s paternal grandfather was a judge in Mexico, where he had moved after emigrating from Italy. He was hanged in 1911 during the Mexican Revolution.

As a youth, Garcetti attended the 68th Street Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles. He won an academic scholarship to USC after graduating from Washington High School.

While in college, he married his wife, Sukey, whose family owned the successful Louis Roth Clothes firm. The family later sold the company. The Garcettis, who have two children, live in a futuristic, 4,500-square-foot, multimillion-dollar home in Brentwood.

Garcetti earned his law degree from UCLA in 1967, nearly joining the public defender’s office. He was persuaded to instead become a prosecutor by college classmate Harland Braun, then a deputy district attorney who has since become a leading Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer. Braun told Garcetti that a lawyer could have a more profound impact on the criminal justice system as a prosecutor than as a public defender.

Early in his career, Garcetti served as a courtroom prosecutor and a deputy in the consumer protection division. At the age of 37 he was placed in charge of the office’s Special Investigations Division, which is responsible for supervising all cases of official misconduct--including police-involved shootings.

After seeking to prosecute a handful of law enforcement officers, Garcetti had to fight off an attempt by the county Sheriff’s Department to have him replaced for allegedly being overeager to prosecute police.

Later, the Special Investigations Division came under intense criticism for undertaking few prosecutions of law enforcement officers. The Kolts report, which examined the Sheriff’s Department earlier this year, said: “The D.A.’s office must take substantial blame for its failure to prosecute more than one questionable shooting incident in the last decade out of 382 referrals of possible prosecutions to it.”

Garcetti was in charge of the division for only a short period of the time covered in the report.

During his stint as head of special investigations, he also survived surgery and chemotherapy treatment for a case of lymphoma.

When Reiner decided to run for district attorney in 1984, he relied on Garcetti as an adviser. Garcetti was rewarded with the No. 2 position in the office, and for the next four years they were nearly inseparable.

The two men oversaw the unsuccessful “Twilight Zone” manslaughter trial of film director John Landis, significant portions of the Ramirez case and the failed McMartin Pre-School child abuse prosecution.

Garcetti, a meticulous administrator, took copious notes summarizing his daily conversations with Reiner--filling 173 spiral notebooks. The trait came in handy earlier this year when Garcetti said he planned to use the notebooks to defend himself against Reiner’s allegations that his deputy had been secretive and untrustworthy.

Working under a prosecutor who courted media attention during his eight years, Garcetti was also careful to maintain high press visibility--usually being available to comment on cases and chat with reporters.

Some observers say that Reiner became concerned about eventually being overshadowed by his deputy--a key factor in Garcetti’s demotion in 1988, a move that Reiner never explained publicly.

Although Garcetti took the demotion hard, he refused to resign. Instead, he undertook low-profile bureaucratic assignments and was finally reassigned to serve as head deputy of the Torrance bureau.

During his two-year tenure in the South Bay, Garcetti proved to be a popular leader who mingled freely with his troops. He launched a gang prevention program to steer youths from lives of crime.

For years, Garcetti, a Democrat, flirted with the possibility of running for a county supervisor’s post. But in January he announced that he would take on Reiner, whom he termed a “shoot-from-the-lip” publicity seeker.

Reiner quickly fired back, accusing Garcetti of authorizing $62,000 in overtime for himself and the former director of management and budget--who wrote the checks--at a time when Garcetti was refusing overtime for other deputies. Garcetti eventually acknowledged taking $18,000 in overtime but said office policy permitted him to do so.

In the June primary, Garcetti, who far outstripped Reiner and two other opponents in campaign fund raising, came in first with 34% of the vote. Reiner, who finished second, won 26%.

Office insiders said Garcetti will have a difficult time accomplishing anything if the Board of Supervisors carries through with its proposal to trim 127 prosecutor positions as part of a sweeping, countywide budget-cutting plan.

“He’ll need an adequate budget or he won’t survive,” Santa Monica Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald H. (Mike) Carroll said. “He should be able to tell the Board of Supervisors that if you cripple the office you’re not helping at all.”

Carroll said that after the election Garcetti will at least have the advantage of hitting the ground running. “As former chief deputy, he has a very good overview.”

Gilbert Garcetti’s Career

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert Garcetti, a Brentwood Democrat, is the son of immigrants from Mexico. Raised in South Los Angeles at 41st and Figueroa streets, he became one of the county’s top prosecutors. Here are some highlights in his career. 1967: Works for a year for the Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign. 1968: Begins legal career as a courtroom prosecutor in the district attorney’s office. 1972: Promoted to assistant head deputy district attorney in the Consumer and Environment Protection Division. 1978: Named director of the district attorney’s Special Investigations Division.

Heads controversial Operation Rollout, which investigates all police shootings. 1983: Named head deputy in the Felony Trials Division. 1984: Serves as chief aide to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, supervising day-to-day management of the office. 1988: Demoted by Reiner from the No. 2 spot. 1990: Transferred to the district attorney’s Torrance office, supervising 30 prosecutors.

Develops dropout prevention program for at-risk children with Torrance School District.

Personal Profile Born: Aug. 5, 1941 Residence: Brentwood. Education: Attended 68th Street Elementary School in South Los Angeles and graduated from Washington High School in Southwest Los Angeles. Attended USC on scholarship before earning law degree at UCLA in 1967. Hobbies: Photography and bike riding. Family: Married 29 years to Sukey, a Los Angeles native; two children, Dana, 23, and Eric, 21. Compiled by Times researcher Cecilia Rasmussen