DISTRICT ATTORNEY : Garcetti Signals Shift in Management Style

One day after the election, Gil Garcetti was already on the move.

The 51-year-old career prosecutor will not take office as the newly elected Los Angeles County district attorney until Dec. 7, but he was walking through the agency’s downtown Los Angeles offices Wednesday, armed with a memo for his new staff that already showed a change in style from his more aloof predecessor, Ira Reiner.

Garcetti will immediately seek to fill about a dozen executive positions that will become the core of his management team. The decision of whether the current chief deputies and assistants will stay or be replaced is up to him. But the memo asks for suggestions from the legal and support staff of more than 1,900.

“I seek your help in making these decisions,” Garcetti wrote. Reiner never asked for such input, Garcetti said, but he wants to be approachable. The memo was his first signal.

“I’m not going to be isolated. I’m not going to get my information filtered three or four times before it gets to me,” he said.

Garcetti once held one of those choice jobs, as Reiner’s chief deputy between 1984 and 1988. But the pair had a falling out and Reiner demoted Garcetti. Garcetti’s subsequent transfer from the downtown office of power to the Torrance branch office sparked a feud that eventually led him to unseat his former boss.

Reiner’s eight-year tenure in office virtually ended two months ago, when he abruptly withdrew from a potentially bruising race against Garcetti, who led the pack in a four-way primary last June. Tuesday’s election brought Garcetti 82% of the vote, and Reiner--whose name remained on the ballot--got 18%.

“Welcome back,” clerk Anita Castellanos said as Garcetti moved through the carpeted 18th-floor offices.

“It feels good,” Garcetti said.

Reiner was not there. He was “out of town” with friends and not reachable for comment, according to district attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

Ironically, Garcetti’s $116,000 salary as district attorney will be less than he was earning as chief deputy in Torrance, where through tenure he said he was earning “about $130,000. It’s a pay cut,” he said. “Four years ago Reiner did not get a pay raise he should have because he forgot to ask for it. So I’m stuck with the $116,000 salary.”

Gibbons said no pay raise was requested but she could not explain why.

The mood among prosecutors appeared upbeat. Given Garcetti’s 24-year career in the office, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie A. Felker said, “We think Gil as an insider has a good handle on what the office needs. Gil is one of the children of the office. He grew up here.”

Top-level staff changes are inevitable with a new leader, and likely to be positive, Felker added. “He knows the good people from the bad.”

“We need considerable change. Ira Reiner was getting some pretty bad advice in his recent tenure,” said veteran prosecutor Philip Halpin, referring to a string of high-profile cases the office lost, including the trial of four Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney G. King beating. Reiner was also heavily criticized for a recent decision to remove a black judge from the case of three principal suspects charged in the beating of white trucker Reginald O. Denny.

“I hope Mr. Garcetti will be a bit more open to suggestion from the people that actually do the work, instead of career management types,” Halpin said.

So far he hasn’t made any decisions, Garcetti said. In meetings with the current top staff Wednesday, he asked for briefing memos on the current major cases. Although Garcetti has publicly stated he may consider plea bargains for the Denny beating defendants, he maintained, “This case is not going to be given away.”

Garcetti had said previously that the possibility of riots was enough of a “legitimate concern” to consider plea bargains. But now, he said, a disturbance is not likely because he would make sure African-Americans would be on a jury. Such representation would provide greater assurance to minority communities that race is not involved in the verdict.

His new executive team will be instrumental in helping Garcetti deliver on his campaign pledge to be active in youth crime prevention, he said.

As chief deputy in Torrance, he started a volunteer program among deputies who served as mentors to young children at risk of becoming gang members or chronic truants. He would like to see similar programs in district attorney’s office countywide, or lend the prestige of his office to other programs. “I want to be a positive force in the community, not just a reactive force that prosecutes people and puts them in prison,” Garcetti said.