Williams Faces Fallout From Gates’ Last Arrest

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams has the messy job of completing the follow-up on Daryl Gates’ last bust.

It probably was the ex-chief’s biggest arrest, certainly his most famous. Putting on a bulletproof vest and a combat jumpsuit, Gates led more than 100 L.A. cops and FBI agents in raids that captured the men accused of brutally beating truck driver Reginald O. Denny on the first day of last spring’s riots.

Unfortunately for Williams, the fallout from the arrest involves much more than the usual interrogation, evidence gathering and paperwork in preparation for a criminal trial.

As unlikely as it seems, the Denny beating has fostered a growing political movement, bringing the case from the courts into the streets.

On the face of it, this defies logic. Millions saw the Denny beating on television. The case against the defendants appears airtight.

But Gates and Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner managed to foul things up so the case became a rallying point for anti-police forces. Gates’ presence during the raids drew too much publicity to the arrests. Reiner heaped criminal counts on the defendants, charging them with attempted murder, aggravated mayhem, torture and robbery. Three of them were accused of attacking other victims in the area. Bail for the three main defendants ranged from $250,000 to $580,000.

This was fuel for those who charged that the accused, all of them black, were being railroaded into jail without a fair trial.

The police critics are now organized around the Free the LA 4+ Defense Committee, named for the original defendants in the Denny beating. At a news conference in front of police headquarters Wednesday, the group charged that police overreacted in handling a demonstration Monday at Florence and Normandie avenues, site of the Denny beating. More than 300 officers were deployed and 55 people were arrested after violence broke out.

As someone who has watched the rise and fall of many protest groups, I thought this one had, as they say in politics and show business, legs--the staying power for a long run.

The spokespeople presented their case in a brisk, well-organized manner, complete with letterhead press releases and phrases perfect for a TV sound bite. “We are not going to let Daryl Gates go and replace him with a black Daryl Gates,” said B. Kwaku Duren, one of the organizers.

Such organizations have played an important part in L.A. history. This committee is just the latest in a procession of ultra-liberal groups formed to protest perceived or actual law enforcement abuse against racial minorities and the political left. In the late 1930s, the Sleepy Lagoon defense committee defended East L.A. Latino youths falsely accused of murder. Similar committees were prompted by the World War II zoot suit arrests; the jailing of Latino high school youths during a ‘70s East L.A. student walkout; the police killing of Eulia Love, a black woman, and police spying on liberal political activists.

What separates the members of the Free the LA 4+ Defense Committee from their predecessors is the nature of the police chief they’re attacking.

Willie Williams is no black Daryl Gates.

Gates was a volcano, spewing angry rhetoric at the approach of any left-wing political activist. Williams is Gibraltar, a big, calm presence, unmoved by the storms around him.

To earlier generations of law enforcement critics, chiefs like Gates, Ed Davis and Bill Parker made perfect foils. Their furious rhetoric in response to criticism heated up the town and made it easy to rally grass-roots support.

Williams handled things differently after the defense committee’s news conference Wednesday. Talking to reporters at the groundbreaking of a new addition to the Southwest Division police station, Williams defended his cops strongly, but not in the us-against-them style of his predecessors. His voice was chiding rather than angry when he called the committee’s accusations against the police “really a stupid statement . . . ludicrous. Absolutely ridiculous.”

Then he posed for pictures with cops and shook hands, even those of three County Jail inmates on a work detail.

This strong but noncombative style, and the fact that Williams is African-American, has muted criticism from the black community. African-American political leaders support him.

But Williams faces more difficult tests, especially with the approach of the LA 4+ trial, scheduled for spring. The defense committee intends to grow and, as African-American City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said: “There is a level of restlessness, a level of rage, a level of recreational violence in the city that can’t be taken lightly.”